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[werothegreat]

Most of us, once having discovered some of the more basic nuances to Dominion, try creating our own cards.  Almost invariably, we all come up with a Treasure/Curse card, inevitably called Blood Money.  It's usually something like $3/-2V, and it costs $3.  In our minds, we think "well, since the victory penalty comes with it, you'll think twice about buying it."  Then we realize that, with a trasher in almost every game, there will usually be a way to ditch the Blood Money before game end.  And $3 for $3 with no penalty during gameplay is just far too powerful.

Now, what if there were some additional penalty?  What I was thinking would be something like additional text, reading: "This card may not be Trashed."  So if you buy it, you're stuck with it.  Or instead of just a big $3 and a big -2V, have an upper text saying "Discard 1/2/3 cards.  (the amount discarded would be balanced in testing) If you do, this is worth $3."  Then a line, then the -2V.

Thoughts?

[Kirian]

Heh, yeah, this has been discussed to death, most impressively in Rinkworks's article stickied up at the top of this forum.  It's widely acknowledged that it's impossible to balance a card that is just Good Stuff plus severe -VP.  With trashers around, buying them is a no-brainer; without trashers, they'll never get purchased.  The main way around it is to create an on-use penalty; you mention discarding but still include the base VP penalty, which is still trashable.  Better is to have the -VP stack up separately from the cards.  The major proposals are "When you play this, gain a Curse" and "When you play this, gain a -VP token."

For instance, I think the following is probably mostly balanced:

[Name] - $4
Treasure
Big $3

When you play this, choose one:  discard a Curse, or gain a Curse.
----
When you gain this, gain a Curse.

[petrie911]

I'll admit, I never came up with such a card.

Anyways, pricing it at $5 goes a long way towards fixing the card.  It's not *that* much cheaper than gold, and on boards with trashing, you still do have to take the time to trash it by the game's end.

[werothegreat]

I'll admit, I never came up with such a card.

Anyways, pricing it at $5 goes a long way towards fixing the card.  It's not *that* much cheaper than gold, and on boards with trashing, you still do have to take the time to trash it by the game's end.

I think at $5, I might change it to -1V.

[werothegreat]

OR how about:  The cost is $6.  Text on card: "When you gain this card, gain any number of Curses with it.  This card costs $1 less for each Curse you gain, but not less than $0."

[popsofctown]

3$ Blood Money
Treasure-Curse
Big 3$
"When you trash this card, gain a Blood Money"
-3 VP

[DStu]

OR how about:  The cost is $6.  Text on card: "When you gain this card, gain any number of Curses with it.  This card costs $1 less for each Curse you gain, but not less than $0."

Is for free when the Curses have run out. Or with watchtower.  And be carefull with Trader, though I would say this version works with it. Maybe another lower bound than $0?

That said, I think gaining additional Curses is I think the only way to get this balanced. Cache kind of does something like that, so in principle it should work.  Having negative VPs on the card has, especially in 2-player the disadvantage that -2VPs, even -6VPs, is often not much if it helps you gaining an additional Province, causing a 12VP-swing.  Gaining bad cards on the other hand works directly against you, and can thus balance the good card.

[Dubdubdubdub]

3$ Blood Money
Treasure-Curse
Big 3$
"When you trash this card, gain a Blood Money"
-3 VP

I kind of like this one ^

My variant was called
Midas, $5
-X VP (X varied), 'Trash any number of cards from your hand, gain one gold for each gained card.' Awfully unbalanced, but I liked the theme.

[petrie911]

OR how about:  The cost is $6.  Text on card: "When you gain this card, gain any number of Curses with it.  This card costs $1 less for each Curse you gain, but not less than $0."

Is for free when the Curses have run out. Or with watchtower.  And be carefull with Trader, though I would say this version works with it. Maybe another lower bound than $0?

Watchtower is problematic, but if the curses run out, then you can't gain curses to reduce the price, and Trader replaces the curse gaining, also preventing price reduciton.  You can restrict the possible infinite silver gain with Trader by restricting it to "up to 2", which still puts it at the very reasonable $4 and compares favorably to Cache.

Also liked the "when you trash this card, gain a copy of it" one.  Though Trader and Watchtower can still put a stop to that.

[DStu]

OR how about:  The cost is $6.  Text on card: "When you gain this card, gain any number of Curses with it.  This card costs $1 less for each Curse you gain, but not less than $0."

Also think this has some timing uses. The timing is buy->would gain->gain. So as I understand it, when you gain the card it is already too late to change the price. And even if it would work, you can not buy the Blood Money with $5 in play, so you can't gain it, so you can't get any discount. So this might only help you with multiple buys. Probably something like this works:

Code: [Select]

In [At the start of] your buyphase, gain any [up to two] Curses. This card costs $1 less for each Curse you gained
Worded like this is it would stack with multiple buys, so you only have to gain Curses once and get the discount for every Blood Money you buy.

[Davio]

I've been thinking about cards like this too and what absolutely doesn't work is to make the card a Treasure-Curse dualtype. There can never be another Curse, it just doesn't work, for various reasons.

What can be done, is making a reverse IGG.

Blood Money - $5
Treasure
$3
------
When you gain this, gain a Curse.


So it's like Cache, but giving a Curse instead of 2 Coppers. Which is worse? I think the Curse, but trashers or a Wachtower can easily solve that. Even better is Trader: I'll gain a Gold+Silver thank you.
The on-gain effect could be replaced by an on-buy effect, but that would make it too powerful I think.

It's a decent $5 for when you miss your $6 for Gold. And it keeps things simple, which should always be encouraged.

[WanderingWinder]

You want to read this thread.

[DStu]

You want to read this thread.

I think the thread is about more powerfull cards than dicussed here. Cache perfectly proves that you can use the "cursing" of your deck to balance the price of a card.

The points are I think.
a) A discount of $1 for Gold is not the same as trying to balance a Level2City or better by adding some negative VPs on it.
b) The real balancing factor is not the negative VPs (they usually also aren't the reason why Witch is powerfull), it's the clogging of the deck. Even if you can trash the Curse, it prevents you from trashing something else or playing another action, so you pay a price for the powerfull card even with trashers. How much depends on the kingdom, but what doesn't?

But Cache also tells us that this method does not have much potential. We get a $6->$5 discount for a card which already exists in every kingdom (so there is not really a reason to take the penalty with $6), and already gain two additional cards to the deck, and the resulting card, despite not valued much, beats BMU. So there is not much space to really craft a really powerfull action.  Estates and Curses are worse as penalties than Coppers , but you certainly don't want to gain more than 2 cards, probably not even 2 Curses because they would run out too quickly. So the upper bound is "gain a Curse and an Estate".
And Cache after all is a treasure, and while Gold is a good card, its value is pretty determinated and usually does not like to explode when you mass it or have other kingdoms as support. So it's probably more difficult to craft a good action card with penalty than a cheap Gold.

I think Davio's Blood Money is a valid variation of Cache, probably not very interesting given Cache. It clocks the deck a little less, when you want to transition to engines (but why do you want a cheap Gold in this case?) or want to get rid of the Curse again, I can imagine that it's weaker in moneyesque decks, and obviously for things like Garden/Silkroad/whatever.

[Captain_Frisk]

You want to read this thread.

I think the thread is about more powerfull cards than dicussed here. Cache perfectly proves that you can use the "cursing" of your deck to balance the price of a card.

I agree in general, that the other thread of balancing otherwise disgusting cards (pre activated cities being a good example) with a negative VP gain doesn't work.  In particular, I think that any card that makes total deck draw engines  more viable is probably not going to be balanced by tacking on some negative VP, because of the ease in which they could then be removed.  However, this card isn't obscene in power, and doesn't really facilitate that type of game.

Comparing this card to Cache is valid, and I agree that this card wouldn't be a game breaker from a power creep perspective.

That said, Cache is already considered to be a bad $5 (near the bottom of Qvists rankings), and I would assume that this card is actually worse than Cache.  (How many times have you discarded to torturer when you could have bought a gold if you had gained a curse?).  Cache is viable when the extra coppers are a bonus vs. a hindrance.  I'm struggling to find a reasonably common situation in which I would willing buy either of these cards, but skip Cache in favor Blood Money (in the $5 gold that gains a curse variation).  The traders / watchtower scenarios are neutral / favor cache.  The best I can do is picking up 2 varieties of cards to push your fairgrounds over a threshold, and that just doesn't seem interesting enough.

It's not "strictly" worse than cache, because 1 card gunking up your deck is better than 2, but I'd say it's probably similar to Hunting Party vs. Lab in terms of % of time that one card is better than the other.  Unfortunately, lab as a medium grade $5 has room for power above it... and cache as a bottom tier $5 has little room for stuff underneath it.

A straight "-2vp" on the card would be interesting.  Yes - I know that Rinkworks feels that its unbalanced with presence of trashers... but remember that you still have to get that trasher and this card lined up.  This card would be far from an auto buy, even in the presence of trashing (with or without benefit).

Other penalties that could be explored in favor of making it more interesting could be:
On gain - all players draw a card (and discard one if that turns out to be to good?)

[theory]

Blood Money - $5
Treasure
$3
------
When you gain this, gain a Curse.

The drawback is that this is a total freebie in games where the Curses run out.  Maybe this is not that big a drawback, but it counts for something.

[Captain_Frisk]

Blood Money - $5
Treasure
$3
------
When you gain this, gain a Curse.

The drawback is that this is a total freebie in games where the Curses run out.  Maybe this is not that big a drawback, but it counts for something.

Good point, and something I overlooked in comparison to to cache.  I'm 100% in favor of easier access to coin when all curses are in play.

[theory]

Blood Money - $5
Treasure
$3
------
When you gain this, gain a Curse.

The drawback is that this is a total freebie in games where the Curses run out.  Maybe this is not that big a drawback, but it counts for something.

Good point, and something I overlooked in comparison to to cache.  I'm 100% in favor of easier access to coin when all curses are in play.

You socialist!

[Fragasnap]

Blood Money - $5
Treasure
$3
------
When you gain this, gain a Curse.

The drawback is that this is a total freebie in games where the Curses run out.  Maybe this is not that big a drawback, but it counts for something.

You could state something along the lines of:

Blood Money

$3 When you would gain Blood Money, gain a Curse as well. If you do not, trash Blood Money and instead gain a Silver and a Copper.

$5 TREASURE

Because you must first acquire a Curse from Blood Money, you'd have to not block the Curse in order to gain the card (admittedly, Watchtower trashes the Curse after you gain it, so that would work, but Trader stops you from gaining the Curse altogether). If all the Curses were gone, purchasing Blood Money would only put that card in the trash and earn you Silver and Copper. If you were in a Gardens game, you could purposfully dodge the Curse to trash Blood Money and get 2 cards instead of 1. Though I'm sure I've forgotten something or worded this incorrectly...

[DStu]

You could state something along the lines of:

Blood Money

$3 When you would gain Blood Money, gain a Curse as well. If you do not, trash Blood Money and instead gain a Silver and a Copper.

$5 TREASURE

Because you must first acquire a Curse from Blood Money, you'd have to not block the Curse in order to gain the card (admittedly, Watchtower trashes the Curse after you gain it, so that would work, but Trader stops you from gaining the Curse altogether). If all the Curses were gone, purchasing Blood Money would only put that card in the trash and earn you Silver and Copper. If you were in a Gardens game, you could purposfully dodge the Curse to trash Blood Money and get 2 cards instead of 1. Though I'm sure I've forgotten something or worded this incorrectly...

I'm with Comrade_Frisk here and say that you don't have to make it so complicated and can just live with having a cheaper Gold after all the Curses ran out. It's just a $1 discount for Gold, in some of the games. Maybe it's a nice twist for these Cursing-games when you can recover a little easier, I don't think it is a great problem to have that. No reason not to keep it stupid simple.
And at least a clear advantage over Cache.

[Davio]

Of course, we can all keep worrying about edge cases, but not every game has a curser (or IGG) that will run out the Curses. Not every game will have both Cache and this card, making Cache a better buy (which I think is not as bad as its reputation). We all love to scrutinize card ideas, but we have to remain fair.

There are a lot of games which are just BMU+ and once you've got those few terminals, you're just buying money anyway and would spend the remaining $5's on Silver. So the question is: Would you buy this over Silver? I think a few of these might be better than the Silvers you would have bought.

But this would actually be quite easy to simulate, I guess.

[Captain_Frisk]

Of course, we can all keep worrying about edge cases, but not every game has a curser (or IGG) that will run out the Curses. Not every game will have both Cache and this card, making Cache a better buy (which I think is not as bad as its reputation). We all love to scrutinize card ideas, but we have to remain fair.

There are a lot of games which are just BMU+ and once you've got those few terminals, you're just buying money anyway and would spend the remaining $5's on Silver. So the question is: Would you buy this over Silver? I think a few of these might be better than the Silvers you would have bought.

But this would actually be quite easy to simulate, I guess.

I'd be interested to see simulations, but I"m pretty sure I would not want to buy this over silver without help (total deck draw, trasher, ambassador / masquerade)

Cache == $5 / 3 cards = 1.67 coin / card.  Worse than silver, but in the case where you want a larger - flatter coin curve, I can see this making some sense.
Blood Money = $3 / 2 cards -> 1.5 coin / card, and the extra card is dead weight in your deck.  I'm generally of the opinion (although I think someon's simulations of mine show me to be wrong), that Gold + Copper is better than 2 Silvers, but I'm pretty confident that a single silver is better than a gold + a curse in most situations, and that doesn't even begin to discuss the negative VP on the curse.

[DStu]

I'd be interested to see simulations, but I"m pretty sure I would not want to buy this over silver without help (total deck draw, trasher, ambassador / masquerade)

So, I hacked it into my copy of dominiate. It's running at my Desktop without domain with dynamic IP, but at the moment you can get it at

[edit: offline]

Code: [Select]

{
  name: 'Blood Money'
  requires: ['Blood Money']
  gainPriority: (state, my) -> [
    "Province"     
    "Duchy" if 0 < state.gainsToEndGame() <= 5
    "Estate" if 0 < state.gainsToEndGame() <= 2
    "Gold"
    "Blood Money"
    "Silver"
    "Copper" if state.gainsToEndGame() <= 3
  ]
}
loses to

Code: [Select]

{
  name: 'Cache'
  requires: ['Cache']
  gainPriority: (state, my) -> [
    "Province"     
    "Duchy" if 0 < state.gainsToEndGame() <= 5
    "Estate" if 0 < state.gainsToEndGame() <= 2
    "Gold"
    "Cache"
    "Silver"
    "Copper" if state.gainsToEndGame() <= 3
  ]
}
86:14.

Not much debugged, but I think it workes...

[Asklepios]

Of course, we can all keep worrying about edge cases, but not every game has a curser (or IGG) that will run out the Curses. Not every game will have both Cache and this card, making Cache a better buy (which I think is not as bad as its reputation). We all love to scrutinize card ideas, but we have to remain fair.

There are a lot of games which are just BMU+ and once you've got those few terminals, you're just buying money anyway and would spend the remaining $5's on Silver. So the question is: Would you buy this over Silver? I think a few of these might be better than the Silvers you would have bought.

But this would actually be quite easy to simulate, I guess.

I'd be interested to see simulations, but I"m pretty sure I would not want to buy this over silver without help (total deck draw, trasher, ambassador / masquerade)

Cache == $5 / 3 cards = 1.67 coin / card.  Worse than silver, but in the case where you want a larger - flatter coin curve, I can see this making some sense.
Blood Money = $3 / 2 cards -> 1.5 coin / card, and the extra card is dead weight in your deck.  I'm generally of the opinion (although I think someon's simulations of mine show me to be wrong), that Gold + Copper is better than 2 Silvers, but I'm pretty confident that a single silver is better than a gold + a curse in most situations, and that doesn't even begin to discuss the negative VP on the curse.

I agree. And I'd be entirely happy to see it as a $4 card. $4 for gold and a curse sounds very reasonable to me and about on a par with a lot of $4 out there.

After all, money acceleration is most powerful in the early game and thats also when curses hurt the most. Sure, there's some nice combos in there with trader or watchtower or masquerade or ambassador, but that doesn't mean it'd be a bad or overpowered card, rather that it'd be a neat combo.

[Davio]

Well, I'm not a genius at pricing these things, I just put it at $5 initially because that's where Cache / Contraband and some enhanced Silvers are.

If through playtesting or simulations it would show it's better at $4, than I'm fine with that. It doesn't change the simulation however, since the gap between $3 and $6 is filled by Blood Money anyway.

But we have run into a problem: It's often worse than Silver due to the way it averages out. Is that fixable? Maybe if the card would deal out an Estate instead of a Curse? It wouldn't be in line with the original idea, but it could help it out.

We could also make it give $4 instead of $3 but I have no idea what it should be priced at if this were the case...

[DStu]

Even if you make it worth $4 it seems to be worse than Cache in BigMoney, worth $5 is tied [edit: even better if you buy it over Gold], but I don't think that is a good card...

edit2: Worth $3, cost $5, gain an Estate seems quite good:

Code: [Select]

{
  name: 'Bloodier Money'
  requires: ['Bloodier Money']
  gainPriority: (state, my) -> [
    "Province"     
    "Duchy" if 0 < state.gainsToEndGame() <= 5
    "Bloodier Money" if 0 < state.gainsToEndGame() <= 2
    "Estate" if 0 < state.gainsToEndGame() <= 2
    "Gold"
    "Bloodier Money"
    "Silver"
    "Copper" if state.gainsToEndGame() <= 3
  ]
}

Endgame has some potential for optimization, Bloodier Money:Cache : 988:1014