Dominion > Variants and Fan Cards
Dominion: Ice Age
Gazbag:
Dominion: Ice Age is a homemade Dominion expansion. I am designing it as if it were an official expansion and so am limited to a few featured mechanics. Ice Age features 2 main mechanics, Ice tokens which strand cards out of your deck for a number of turns and Reserves, some which also strand cards out of your deck.
Ice Tokens
A number of cards in the set involve setting aside cards and putting a number of Ice tokens on them, referred to as "freezing" them. At the start of your turn you remove 1 Ice token from each card you own that is frozen with Ice tokens on it and when the last token is removed you put the card into your discard pile.
Snow Hag
This was one of the first and most obvious concepts - a cheap Witch but the Curses are delayed. This means that the junk will take longer to enter the opponents deck, but if the game ends before all the tokens are removed then your opponent won't have a chance to trash the curse, which could be interesting.
Edit: Changed from 3 to 6 tokens.
Yeti
This one needs to fixed up, but the concept is there.
Frost Spirit
Originally a cantrip, now changed to +2 cards. The cantrip version was far too efficient as an early game thinner and a late game Province setter asider. Hopefully making it terminal makes it harder to keep on top of icing things, we'll have to see. Masquerade is a crazy card, so I wouldn't be surprised if this follows suit. Province setting aside probably needs to be fixed, but it kind of needs to be able to set aside Estates so might be an ugly fix, unfortunately.
Crystal Ball
A Contrabandy thing, it delays your good cards and topdecks the Victories, ouch! Needs a new name now...
Nomad
A simple +Buy card with Ice tokens, referencing Nomad Camp.
Frigid Village
Replacement foe Mountain Village and pretty much the same concept. I know that Lost City for $2 seems crazy good, but Encampment does it and these take a year to enter your deck.
Glacier
I'm still keen on a Victory that starts off frozen, but no more Coffers so I have these variations. Any thoughts?
Igloo:
I'm not sure about this one, it's seemed okay in playtest games but it still feels off for some reason. What do people think?
Reserves
Mountain Outpost
A cheap Smithy makes a future turn worse if you want it back.
Wanderer
I thought a Reserve that costed an Action to call would be potentially interesting, this plays itself from the Tavern, I think that's fine, other wording would be comparatively convoluted. The actual effect of the card was Inspired by Asper's Road, which I think is an awesome card idea.
Reclaim
Why isn't there a Reserve that looks through the discard? That seems like one of those low-hanging fruits that you have to do. The set needed a remodel variant and after many attempts I settled on this.
Bastion
Not actually a Reserve but uses the Tavern mat so it's in this section. Everybody likes action-victories so let's hope this works out!
Spelunkers
A simpler reserve and this sets Gold gainer, has nice synergy with Wanderer.
Sanctum
I've really enjoyed this in playtesting, it's terminal and a bit awkward so it's been good at $2.
Periapt
This actually seems pretty fun, it might have to cost $3 because stacking a bunch up is pretty easy.
Fishing Boat:
An attempt at a spin on Minion. You get both the $ and the draw, and the benefit of reserves, but there's no attack and the numbers are lower.
Outcast:
I think this is pretty cool, either getting stranded on your Tavern mat or getting a bigger effect but losing it forever.
Warship:
Cantrip Militia that's hard to get back. Getting attacked by an opponent's Warship makes it easier to get yours back. I think this might make it a bit too automatic so I'll be trying some new handsize attacks. I also probably have too many reserves and could do with some more simpler off-theme cards.
Off theme cards
Cabin:
Cabin is back with a brand new effect. I had the idea of terminal draw that gives you a bonus if it's played terminally, the worry of course is making a big money beast that is lacklustre in engines. Hunting Grounds sucks, even for big money and I don't think +Buys improves it too much, +Buys also gives this a reason to be played terminally in an engine so I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.
Hillside Village:
This a simple village to replace Campsite, also similar to Sleigh. I originally had this alternate between Village and Peddler but that basically cut the amount of village you got from this pile in half, which isn't particularly fun. It might be a little strong in this form, although probably still not up to minstrel and Port.
Hunter
Young Witch was cool so let's try a friendly version. YW gets weaker as the Bane gets better, but Hunter gets stronger as the Prey gets better. The actual card is a $5 Fugitive, but when you draw one with the Prey it becomes a Lost City! The Prey costs $5 so that getting a good Hunter:Prey ratio becomes a little more tricky, hopefully leading to interesting decisions.
Scarecrow:
A Candlestick maker variant with a weak Moat reaction, I think that's kind of thematic for a Scarecrow, only the weaklings are fooled! It works pretty well in this expansion because of the two cheap attacks.
Scrounger
This is from that bunch of random cards I posted, but with updated Mountain Village wording and nice snowy art. I needed another $5 smithy and this seems cool to me. Adds to a small discard pile mini-theme with Reclaim which is nice.
Outtakes
Cold Storage
A Workshop variant that can gain $5's, but you have to wait a bit before you get them. Could be brought back, didn't seem too exciting.
Frozen Cache
Boring, could be revisited as an Event if I ever get around to deciding whether this set should have Events.
Citadel
Bit boring, but the top seems fine if something else needs a simple-ish action.
Ice Cave
Didn't work out, Wayfinder is sort of doing this kind of thing.
Venturer
This was the losing combination of strange and unpopular, even though I like the idea of the Iced-Coppers on gain.
Rediscover
Again I'm not particularly happy with the name - it's hard to think of so many ice themed things! This is a cheap expand but the gained card is delayed based upon how much more expensive it was than the trashed card. Gain and play shenanigans are hard to do with this but trashing $5's into set aside Provinces might be too good, so this might have to be limited to gaining non-victory cards. Retired, it was okay but a bit wonky and a bit boring, I can do better.
Barbarian
I think there's something here, this was kind of secretly broken though. Turns out Coin token Oasis is a pretty good $4 without any attack potential! Warlord is the successor to this, hopefully it works out. Now Swashbuckler is doing the whole saving Coffers thing, and Villain has a similar attack so I guess this had some okay concepts going into it?
Taiga
A Peddler variant. In my mind this was just trash it to do the stuff, but then I thought it could Ice itself for a bit instead. It seems strong, but maybe it's Another one that just wasn't too interesting really, I might return to this freezing from play idea but I'd probably make it mandatory as a kind of soft one-shot. Probably something Pixie like, a slightly above the curve $2 that's fine if you never get it back and not particularly broken if you can play it 2-3 times in a game either.
Outcast
It's like a small Menagerie. Probably don't need this and Sleigh in the same set but it's not the worst. Yeah this was just a hole-filler because I needed some $2s, I can do better.
Cauldron
A nice simple thing. Gaining Silvers doesn't seem great, but imagine gaining a Village and a Smithy! Gets truly crazy with cost reduction, like most gainers. Really no problem with the card, I still really like it, it was just I have on-theme gainers and trashers so there just wasn't room for it in this expansion.
Igloo
This started out exactly the same as Cargo Ship from Renaissance (different wording but the intent of the effect was the same) I'll give myself a pat on the back for that. I eventually made it a reserve because I'm not a huge fan of having just 1-2 Durations in a set and reserves are doing a pretty similar thing anyway but it's still pretty redundant next to Cargo Ship. I will definitely still have an Igloo card in the set though!
Cargo Ship
The name is taken now and Coffers have been removed due to Renaissance making them redundant.
Cabin
Coffers, but I'll probably make a rework (or just another card with the same name/image.)
Mountain Village
Name and Coffers taken by Renaissance, replaced by Lake Village.
Seer/Avalanche
I still love this, but Coffers are out and the name was taken (a recurring theme of this set!). I might try to fix it somehow or just have it as a random card not associated with the set.
Signalman/Beacons
I'm not sure about these State things, they were kind of experimental anyway and I don't really love them anymore. They also all used Coffers tokens to track things in some way so not a great fit anymore.
Outrider/Frozen Wilderness/ Bountiful Wilderness
Outrider might return as a cheap +buy card with no accompanying state. Sinister Plot kind of does the whole building up tokens thing I was trying here too.
Campsite
Good concept but not right here.
Sleigh
Boring card.
Pioneer
It took me a while to admit it but this is a dud.
Spyglass
THis was pretty lame, but I think something can be done with it.
Massive shoutout to Violet CLM's card image generator. It was used for all of the card images in this set. http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=16622.0
And of course thanks to all those who helped me out with their insight and suggestions!
Chappy7:
Wow, I really like this idea. Since I'm supposed to be actually working right now, I don't have time to talk about all the cards, but one thing that I thought is that ice cave could probably let you put 2 ice tokens on victory cards.
Nice job. Creative idea.
LastFootnote:
I think the idea of Ice tokens is very cool. And I like a lot of the card concepts. I do think that instead of having 11 cards that use them, you'd be better served focusing on 5 or 6 of the simplest and best ones.
ThetaSigma12:
--- Quote from: LastFootnote on December 04, 2017, 05:07:36 pm ---I think the idea of Ice tokens is very cool. And I like a lot of the card concepts. I do think that instead of having 11 cards that use them, you'd be better served focusing on 5 or 6 of the simplest and best ones.
--- End quote ---
I agree with this.
Snow Hag is probably too similar to Witch and a little strong at 4.
Yeti is probably too similar to Giant and a little weak at 5.
Venturer is nice, and seems to work well, but it might be too good with strong trashing.
Rediscover is probably too similar to expand, but if you could add another twist to the remodel-ice thing I would love it.
Mountain Village is cool.
Ice Cave (should have Buys then coins) looks nice, but does need better wording.
Glacier seems overpriced. I think it could cost 5.
Frozen Cache, meh. We have Cache and Treasure Trove and this doesn't seem interesting. I would consider cutting it.
Frost Spirit is good.
Cold Storage is boring, I like MultiTalented's Exotic Traders better.
Citadel only gives you 1 Ice token, so it seems like you could cut it easily.
pacovf:
Some of the wording could be improved by adding a "freeze" keyword.
So, the "rulebook" would say: "freeze a card: if the card is not already frozen, set it aside with an Ice token on it; otherwise, add an Ice token on it. At the beginning of each of your turns, remove an Ice token from each of your frozen cards. A frozen card with no Ice tokens on it is immediately put on your discard pile; it is no longer frozen".
And then something like Ice Cave could be: "In games using this, when you gain a Victory card, freeze it once per Ice Cave you have in play", Mountain village would be "if you have any frozen cards", etc.
I know Dominion expansions tend to avoid adding keywords, but this feels like a time when you want to introduce one.
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