So, as the thread title says, I want to speculate about Night cards.
My main point: Nights might be another phase besides Action and Buy phase.Problem: To be worth introducing an additional phase, there must be a relevant difference between the old phases and the new one.
What I'm trying to look for is what options exist to make a new phase besides Action and Buy phase worthwile. By finding out about these options, we might be able to narrow down what Night cards could do. Let's go!
Option 1: Resource production:Given that Night cards are played after both the Action and Buy phase, and assuming you can't just go back (as the flow of time would imply), Night cards can't produce coins - simply because there is no buy phase to use them at.* However, Night cards might set up stuff for next turn, attack opponents, gain or trash. Neither of these however is sufficiently different from standard actions, as Actions already offer these options. Personally, I can't think of a resource Action cards couldn't just also produce.
Option 2: Leftover use:At the time you play Night cards, you already produced some good stuff, like coins. So, Night cards could use these, to transform them into something. However, if we just talked about a card that takes leftover coins or Action at the end of the turn to do something, I'm pretty sure a "When you discard this from play" would've worked. Unless the leftovers are what lets you PLAY the cards in the first place. Which leads us to...
Options 2B and 3: Play limitation:Treasure and Action cards are not only different in what they do, but also in how they are played. Action cards are used by expending Actions 1:1, Treasures can be played in unlimited numbers.
So, maybe Night cards are special in what they cost to be played.
There are some obvious options here:
- Night cards could be played using up Money
- Edit: Night cards use up cards in play
- Night cards could be played using up something entirely different.
I think leftover Actions won't work. A night card might translate leftover Actions into something else, but requiring them to be played would just make them Action cards. Also, I briefly considered using cards (in hand) to be played, but that just won't work most of the time. Cards in play are another resource that's best available after the buy phase, and some of you have mentioned it already. So about the reasonable choices:
Option 2B: Night cards cost coins to play.There's some potential here: Do I buy that Gold, or do I rather buy a 5$ and play that Vampire? The fact that Nights happen after the buy phase and after you played Treasures means that the fan-favorite "-1$" instruction actually becomes possible now. Night cards would basically be Events that go round in your deck. To some degree, you could have approximated this with nonterminal Debt cards (check out my Scientist, yo!), but of course this is cleaner. On the other hand, it means you pay twice for these cards: Once when you add them to your deck, and then each time you use them.
Option 2C: Night cards use up cards in playThis is an option I had not considered in my initial post. Just like you could use up coins, you could use up cards in play. Perhaps not each play, but it's a complementary option to coins.
Option 3: Night cards cost something entirely different to play.So, how about using something that was NOT produced earlier in the turn. What could that be, you ask?
One idea would be to just have them be a second Action phase, that starts at 1 "Night-Action". Basically, two Action phases that don't affect each other.
Another idea I had was to use a unit similar to Actions, but instead of having each card cost exactly one, have some cards cost more of it than others. For example, each Night could last 6 hours, and each card costs a set amount of hours to play. So do I play three Ghouls costing 2h, or just one Ghoul and a Vampire for 4h? I'm sure you get the idea. Probably such a unit would get relatively complex if you had cards that re-add hours, or cards that put new cards in your hand mid-night**. So the cards would basically have to be stop cards. After thinking for it a while, I'm not sure how fun this would be.
There are a lot more options here. What do you think could make Night cards special? Feel free to add your own ideas or pick apart my analysis/speculative rambling.
Cheers.
*Obviously this could be wrong - feel free to suggest how this could be solved.**See what I did there?