I don't understand Revolutionary... missing multiple turns already is a huge disadvantage that you probably can't overcome. This card punishes you with more junk on top of that. Even if you changed it around to give you Golds or something, it would be completely impossible to ever balance... there's a huge difference between joining a game after 2 turns, and joining a game after 8 turns. Anything balanced for one scenario would be too good or absolutely terrible for the other scenario.
All that aside, I'm not sure when such a card would really get used... does it happen a lot in your playgroup that 2 or 3 people are playing Dominion, and in the middle of a game, another person comes over and wishes he could just jump in? It's a pretty short game; he can just join the next game.
*Edit* Just saw trivialknot's post and also just read your own explanation... so yeah, my criticism was probably not needed. Also, I was thinking that you'd add those cards to a regular starting deck, as opposed to starting with just Revolutionary.
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Vultures needs something to limit it. As it is, if you play 5 in a row, your opponent has no hand and you can lock him out of the game forever by doing that every turn. There's good reason that
Militia says "discards down to 3" instead of "discards 2".
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Trade Mission actually seems pretty interesting. Keep in mind that giving your victory cards +1 card +1 action is very similar to
Cellar, which lets you discard X cards to draw X cards. But each version has some advantages over the other.
I'd be worried that the interesting decision you mention (which is indeed interesting) might lead to too much analysis paralysis on your opponent's turn. Also, it can be hard to track how many VP cards were played; you just have to remember, which could be a lot to remember.
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Reinforcement's ability ends up being a lot like
Market Square. At least, +1 card, +1 action, +1 buy is the net effect you end up with. But the ability to dig for an action means that it's much better so long as it discards any junk along the way. As a whole, I like it. I think it probably should cost
though. Due to the double-gaining, you could drain the pile really quickly.
Also, it needs a "discard the rest" instruction for revealed cards. And, there's no way to actually track if another player has bought a Province yet. I'd just change it to "unless a Province has been gained"; which is trackable. Though you lose some player interaction there. But it's not like anyone is going to turn down a Province just to stop you from getting these.
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Pilgrims - The effect is super-strong as an opener; but hard to say how it compares to
Chapel. I know other people have tried fan cards with a "the player to your left gains this" clause.
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Locusts seems maybe too swingy. When it works, it's just a very cheap
Familiar. Maybe it's not worse that
Swindler though. You'll want to say "reveals and discards", because they technically wouldn't have to show the other discarded cards otherwise.
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Acculturation has an interesting problem. Both the reaction effect and the on-play effect are pretty good; and because you can't do both, you have to choose. Now, normally that might be an interesting choice to have to make, but the time that you have to make it is awkward; as soon as your opponent plays his 4th action. So you have to stop his turn to decide if you want to discard it or not.
The on-play effect is probably too strong. It's better than
Workshop in multiple ways (puts the gained card in your hand, and lets you trash a card), for the same cost. Of course the downside is that what you gain is dependent upon your opponent's hand. Kind of like
Smuggler. But once you're past the beginning of the game, I think it's pretty likely that you'll find a card you want. But be careful with gaining cards directly to hand; it can get crazy pretty quickly. You could instantly drain the Acculturation pile if you had a +1 action token on them, or
Champion in play.
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I think the problem with Commerce is that it's only good if your opponents also have them... so nobody will want to buy them. More often than not, it's just a
Copper.
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Commons is very weak. In a 2 player game, if you buy just 1 or 2 of them, it's 4
; same as a
Distant Lands. But as soon as a third is bought, they are now just Duchies with the potential to get worse. It scales differently for 3-4 player games of course. I think the idea is good; it just needs the potential to net more VP. But I don't know how to scale it so that it's not overpowered.
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Emissary has a tracking problem too; it's up to all players to remember who bought one or not. You could introduce Emissary tokens to track that if you want. But that aside, I think it's pretty interesting. I'd remove the parentheses around the "otherwise", it's a regular card instruction, not a reminder or an aside.
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Expatriate - I don't know when I'd buy this, unless I just had
and there were no other
s on the board. On average, it is just really good for everyone; not especially good for one player over another; meaning there's no way to base a strategy on it. That is to say, the on-play effect and the special gaining effect will just accelerate games as a whole, without really giving an advantage to a player who made good decisions about when to buy or play it.
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Guerrilla has accountability issues... this specific idea is talked about in rinkworks' guide. I don't have to show you my hand when I start my turn or anything. Aside from that, it has a similar problem to Expatriate... both players will end up using each copy about the same number of times, except for bad luck of one player getting
Cutpursed every shuffle while the other draws it with a Silver and is done with it. So I'd have almost no reason to spend coin and a buy getting one of these, as in the end, it has an equal chance of hurting me or my opponent more. Ok, not completely equal as it will hurt him an extra .5 times on average (if the game ends while it's in his possession). But still.
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Monopoly can lock players out of the game if you get it early enough. Just make them discard all their Copper every turn. Compare it to
Taxman... although Monopoly costs
instead of
, it still has multiple advantages over Taxman for a similar effect.