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Gazbag

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Dominion: Ice Age
« on: December 04, 2017, 04:30:07 pm »
+34

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!
« Last Edit: October 12, 2019, 01:50:29 pm by Gazbag »
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Chappy7

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #1 on: December 04, 2017, 04:41:12 pm »
+4

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.
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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #2 on: December 04, 2017, 05:07:36 pm »
+4

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.
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ThetaSigma12

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #3 on: December 04, 2017, 05:17:36 pm »
+1

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.

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.
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pacovf

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #4 on: December 04, 2017, 05:31:00 pm »
+5

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.
« Last Edit: December 04, 2017, 05:41:38 pm by pacovf »
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Jimmmmm

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #5 on: December 04, 2017, 05:49:41 pm »
+1

I also really like the Ice tokens.

I think Venturer is super cheap with any kind of support to help with the Coppers. Especially if you can combo it with Frozen Cache/Cold Storage etc. Maybe not too cheap, I don't know. But really cheap.

Question: when you gain Venturer, do you put 5 tokens on a pile of 3 Coppers, or a total of 15 Coppers, 5 on each? I suspect the latter, since the former seems inconsistent with "remove 1 Ice token from each card". If the latter, Venturer should probably read "5 Ice tokens on each".

Here's an idea:


Ice Mage - $4 - Action

+1 Card
+1 Action
Move an Ice token from one of your cards set aside with Ice tokens to another.
-----
When you gain this, gain a Copper and a Gold and set them aside with 5 Ice tokens on each.


I'm sure you've had similar ideas, but I think it's interesting.
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Accatitippi

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #6 on: December 04, 2017, 06:09:17 pm »
+3

I really like the concept, and some of the cards are really nice at implementing it. :)

Snow Hag seems fairly straightforward, and still very good. I feel like it might not be different enough from Witch, though.

Yeti is a cool concept that might be a bit too oppressive in multiplayer? Also, giving a Curse seems almost always better than the freezing attack, maybe it could become a Militia on misses?

Venturer seems interesting, except maybe for the name  ;D (Speleologist? Spelunker?)
The only problem I see with it is that it's awful without a way to trash the coppers. Coming with 3 stop cards, it actually hurts your deck unless you can trash them.

Rediscover and Mountain Village look good, among the best of the set

Ice Cave seems weak, I agree it could easily freeze 2.

Glacier seems like a good variation on the "convert coins into coin tokens" event idea. Seems ok at 6, but it's hard to say without testing.

Frozen Cache delivers a lot of power in a single buy. It shouldn't have a + before the , and the color seems a bit off?
Maybe a corresponding Event would solve the verbosity problem?
Let it go - Event 6$
Gain a Copper, a Silver, and two Golds from their piles. Set them aside with respectively 1, 2, 3, and 4 Ice tokens on them.

I like that Frost Spirit essentially keeps away 4 cards as long as you have control of your deck. It might be too powerful in letting you hybernate a lot of points. Or maybe not - it's a criticism that comes up every time somebody proposes powerful pseudo-trashers, but it's a concept that I've yet to see it play out badly in a game (except when on broken cards).

Cold storage seems like a reasonable concept.

Citadel doesn't seem all that unique, and I wonder how often he single ice token will be relevant and whether it's worth the space.

All in all, it's a concept that is definitely worth exploring. :)
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Chappy7

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #7 on: December 04, 2017, 07:00:11 pm »
+2

I just read these again and I feel like I have to compliment you again.  Good job you bag of gaz you.  I hope you keep going with this idea. The theme is also super cool (lame pun kinda intended).

I like snow hag a lot, but as mentioned, it might not be unique enough? Although that isn't always bad.  Lots of official cards are pretty similar.  Maybe it could be a duration like swamp hag? At the start of next turn, get a coin and a card, or a card and an action or something like that.


Yeti could make other players freeze an action card from their hand rather than cursing.  That could be fun.

Venturer is isn't very good unless it comes with another freezing card.  And even then, several of the freezing cards freeze coppers, victory cards, or curses, so venturer would be bad then. Maybe it could say "you may" instead of making you remove ice tokens.  Then the coppers might need just 3 or 4 tokens on them.  I don't know, maybe I'm wrong and having a $2 lab that comes with 3 coppers is good even if it doesn't help you thaw out your other good cards.

I like the flexibility of Rediscover.  It's always lame when I end up using my expand as a remodel.

I'm not convinced that glacier is overpriced.  It seems pretty good to get a coin token each turn for a little while, plus a semi self trashing 2 points.  Either way, I love the idea.

Frost Spirit is way cool.  I can't tell if it is OP or not though.

I actually like the simplicity of cold storage.

The idea on citadel is fun.  Kinda like lost city.  It's a super powerful card with a negative on gain affect.  Although with only one ice token on it, lots of the time you'd just buy it and it would get into you discard next turn before you even shuffle.  It might need to be frozen twice.   
« Last Edit: December 05, 2017, 10:49:05 am by Chappy7 »
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Chappy7

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #8 on: December 04, 2017, 07:01:59 pm »
+2

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Jimmmmm

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #9 on: December 04, 2017, 07:04:18 pm »
0

I think Venturer is super cheap with any kind of support to help with the Coppers. Especially if you can combo it with Frozen Cache/Cold Storage etc. Maybe not too cheap, I don't know. But really cheap.

Huh, I somehow didn't realise that Venturer thaws its own Coppers. That makes it a lot weaker than I thought. Probably fine at $2.
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Gazbag

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #10 on: December 04, 2017, 09:23:10 pm »
+1

Oh wow this is much more well received so far than I anticipated!

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.

I agree with this, but first I'm going to have to figure out what the best ones are! I currently only have max 5 games with each of these cards so a lot more testing is needed.

Snow Witch: I like the idea of a frozen curser and I think you can take it 2 ways. The first is to have a cheap curser like this because the first few shuffles go quickly, so the delay on the curse is going to matter the most if you're playing this turn 3/4. The second is to make it more expensive or have some kind of condition so it only triggers late in the game and have the focus be more on a curse that is hard to trash so the attack is more about the - VP. I agree that giving this +2 cards is probably too close to Witch though, it was one of the first Ice token cards I came up with so I was trying to keep it simple. One thought I had was to give this the Venturer fast thaw thing, so it makes the Curses your opponent gives you thaw faster and then increase the tokens to 4 or 5. I also like the idea of a curser that "levels up" like City when a pile runs out, I think the original Young Witch did that? So maybe this could do something with that.

Yeti: The first version of this worked on Coppers, which was obviously silly but yeah this one is a bit similar to Giant. I have a different handsize attack in this expansion (I'll post some more cards in a few days probably) which I'm quite fond of, so I'll try to think of a better trashing attack for this first.

Venturer: Yes this should say "each" thanks for pointing that out Jimmmmm! Also you give me too much credit, moving Ice tokens around like that was not something I had thought of, I might have to steal that idea! Maybe Expedition Party would be a better name? Is Venturer even a word? I've only played this in Ice token heavy kingdoms so far so I need more of an idea how it performs on its own.

Ice Cave: So originally this was a cantrip, that was silly so I made it a Woodcutter but yeah increasing the tokens to 2 is a better starting place now that it's terminal.

Frozen Cache is a dud, but I thought it was cute so I thought I'd post it anyway. I do like Accatitippi's idea of making this an event though, but then I'd have to think up at least 9 other events for this set, so if I decide to do events then this could return in event form. I also blame Disney for making art for this so hard to find!

Frost Spirit: I for some reason totally blanked that this can also "trash" Provinces and the like. Hmm well it's not like broken trashers are a new thing to dominion so I'll leave this as is for now, it can specify non-Province or have a cost limit or something if that's a problem.

Citadel: This is the newest card here, it's just a simple card I had that I stuck the Ice token thing onto as a minor downside so it occasionally misses shuffles. It will probably be cut yeah.

Thanks for all the great feedback so far!
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ThetaSigma12

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #11 on: December 04, 2017, 09:49:51 pm »
+1

but then I'd have to think up at least 9 other events for this set,

Donald has said before that thinks 8 is the minimum for bringing back Landmarks/Events, so if you're going by normal dominion expansion standards you'd only need 7 more. But for a fanspansion, only 2-3 events is perfectly fine.
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Jimmmmm

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #12 on: December 04, 2017, 10:04:08 pm »
0

Also you give me too much credit, moving Ice tokens around like that was not something I had thought of, I might have to steal that idea!

Go ahead! I guess the next step would be giving them to or stealing them from the other players, although the risk with that would be that it would devolve into Ice token tennis or that you'd be able to keep your opponents' cards perpetually frozen.

Also I just realised you are not ashersky (Shanty Town avatar). I was surprised to see him post Dominion-related content.
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Fragasnap

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #13 on: December 05, 2017, 06:59:33 am »
+10

Ideally, Ice Tokens delay when cards are added to your deck. If, however, you don't shuffle between a card being set aside with Ice Tokens and the last Ice Token is removed, the cool Ice effect is moot (which you point out yourself, I realize).  I believe that the fact that Ice Tokens are removed every turn results in a lot of token bloat and ultimately makes the cards' effects less predictable.
Yeti can't even guarantee that a card it Ices even misses the shuffle.  Frost Spirit has to use a million Ice Tokens to have any chance of affecting the game.

I might try removing an Ice Token each shuffle instead of every turn to smooth out the effect. It will make deck size more of a factor, but I think will generally solve more headaches in terms of card power and component count.

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.
I disagree with this. I think that aiming for 11 cards will be easy if the concept is good. Having only the most basic card functions covered by 5 or 6 cards would be kind of a bummer.
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Neirai the Forgiven

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #14 on: December 05, 2017, 10:24:34 am »
+3

I agree with Fragasnap; remove ice on shuffle. You may need to rebalance quantities of ice in order to do this (e.g. Ice Witch, 2 instead of 3.)

Also, what happens to frozen cards when the game ends? Do you gain them or lose them?
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pacovf

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #15 on: December 05, 2017, 10:33:19 am »
0

Well, if it's once per turn, it affects draw-your-deck engines more than it affects slogs, on average. If it's per shuffle, it's basically the same for both. So it depends on what you are going for.

Also, what happens to frozen cards when the game ends? Do you gain them or lose them?

Set aside cards are still considered part of your deck, so you keep them.
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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #16 on: December 05, 2017, 10:39:02 am »
+2

No one commented on the artwork before? It's stunning!
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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #17 on: December 05, 2017, 10:47:22 am »
0

I might try removing an Ice Token each shuffle instead of every turn to smooth out the effect. It will make deck size more of a factor, but I think will generally solve more headaches in terms of card power and component count.

Oh boy, sloggy games would be unbearable. 
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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #18 on: December 05, 2017, 11:57:30 am »
+1

I like the ice token idea, and these are good cards.

Snow Hag - It does seem a bit similar to Witch, but definitely worth trying.  To make it more different from Witch, it might be enough to just increase the number of ice tokens, and think of it as a mid-game curser that you play in the early game.  You could also have it put more ice tokens on opponents' curses, so that you have a choice of either cursing them quickly or cursing them more.

Yeti - I think it would be better if the ice attack were more reliable, maybe even 100% reliable.  For example, you could have it search the top 3 cards, and let you choose which one to freeze.  I'm thinking that if you had a trashing attack that searched the top 3 cards of opponent's decks, that would be abusive.  But with ice tokens, maybe you can do it without it being abusive.

Venturer - I don't like the idea of an action that thaws out cards, or which moves ice tokens around.  That's in the category of abilities that only synergize within the set, and which are mostly pointless when surrounded by other cards.  To me, the bigger idea here is a lab that gains you Copper.  I don't think I would ever get this without Copper trashing.  Although maybe late in the game I'd get some for reliability.

Rediscover - Looks good.  It remodels into province even better than Expand does, but it still doesn't seem broken to me.  If the strength is an issue, you could try excepting victory cards.

Mountain Village - I'm wondering if sometimes the correct strategy is to rush these.  Just buy or gain a whole bunch, and they'll get shuffled into your deck by the time you need them.  And if your opponent chose not to rush Mountain Villages, you just buy more so that your deck is filled with Baker-Bazaars.  This isn't obvious to me, and maybe it's not bad if true.  But I think $2 is too cheap.

Glacier - This looks really strong to me, especially with trash for benefit like remodel.  I'd watch out for stockpile strategies that do nothing but gain lots of coin tokens.

Frost Spirit - This looks good, but I'm thinking there are other ways to pseudotrash that might be interesting to try.  For example, part of the problem with Lookout is that people are afraid of forced trashing, but with Ice tokens you don't care as much.  You could also have something that pseudotrashes on gain.  Or something that freezes itself along with a bunch of other cards, kind of like Crypt.
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LastFootnote

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #19 on: December 05, 2017, 12:33:34 pm »
+4

I might try removing an Ice Token each shuffle instead of every turn to smooth out the effect. It will make deck size more of a factor, but I think will generally solve more headaches in terms of card power and component count.

Define "shuffle". If you have one card in your discard pile and then have to draw/reveal/etc., is that a "shuffle"? What if you have zero cards?
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Gazbag

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #20 on: December 05, 2017, 01:14:09 pm »
+2

I might try removing an Ice Token each shuffle instead of every turn to smooth out the effect. It will make deck size more of a factor, but I think will generally solve more headaches in terms of card power and component count.

Define "shuffle". If you have one card in your discard pile and then have to draw/reveal/etc., is that a "shuffle"? What if you have zero cards?

Yeah I did think of tying them to shuffles but it doesn't really get rid of the problems, it just changes the problems. It isn't obvious in cases like this whether you've shuffled. It can also lead to problems when you draw your deck because you can gain and draw mid-turn and potentially trigger multiple shuffles in one turn which seems a bit against the spirit of the idea. It's also much easier to forget as shuffles can trigger at many different times during your turn and even during your opponents turn. So I'd say it introduces more problems than it fixes.

The idea with Venturer is that it's interesting by itself, with Coppers like a time bomb ticking down and Venturer speeding up the count and even more interesting with other Ice token cards. Kinda like how Butcher is interesting by itself and is even better with other Coin token cards.

I'm going to try a Yeti that reveals until it finds an action and Freezes that for 3 tokens. The increased cycling of the opponents deck should make them shuffle a bit more often which will hopefully make the attack hurt more.

Mountain Village, or the card that freezes itself when you gain it which is the main concept here (probably won't look like Mountain Village in the end!) wants to cost $2 so you can always open with it I feel. So the thing to tweak would be Ice token numbers or weaken the effect in a different way.  Swapping the Coin token and the +1 Card might make it a bit different to regular villages.
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sprocket science

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #21 on: December 05, 2017, 02:13:36 pm »
0

I really like your idea as well. It's a mechanic with many interesting possibilities. It also works nicely thematically.

My first reaction was also that you should remove an ice token per shuffle, not per turn. When you draw your deck, that may be equivalent. But in sloggy games, the difference is quite significant. Freezing a card (I like the wording proposed by pacovf) only really has an effect at all if you can make it miss a shuffle, i.e. by freezing it right before a shuffle, by putting enough ice tokens on it, or by cycling quickly and shuffling often. So in sloggy games, freezing would hardly ever do anything. As is, the ice tokens mostly reward fast cycling, at the cost of making cards like Ice Cave pointless if that is not possible. Changing the mechanic to 'per shuffle' would definitely change the balance how many ice tokens certain cards should give, though.

I agree there are mechanical problems. I think a shuffle can be defined as 'trying to draw a card when your Deck is empty', which deals with the 'no cards' edge case. But it should be limited to at most one thawing per turn, so the rule would need to be 'Once per turn, when you try to draw a card when your Deck is empty, remove one ice token from each card' or  'When you try to draw a card when your Deck is empty, remove one ice token from each card if you haven't already this turn'. It doesn't go on a card, so can be wordy...

I noticed another point: Is freezing a card good or bad for you? With Glacier, Ice Cave, Frost Spirit, and (unless you have really good trashing) Snow Hag, freezing the cards is good for you, because it delays junk from entering your hand. With Cold Storage, Frozen Cache, and Citadel, it is meant to delay the gaining, and so is bad for you. In itself, that is fine, but if you add a card like Venturer that accelerates the thawing, it becomes an issue. On Venturer, the accelerated thawing out of the coppers is meant as a punishment, but if you combine Venturer with the delayed gainers, it suddenly becomes a reward. You could argue that makes the mechanic more interesting and gives more tactical options, but I think I like it better as a force of nature that cannot be affected directly.

BTW, the concept brought to mind the delay mechanic proposed here http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=16895, which is only about delayed gaining, though. The ice token idea is more flexible, allowing different delays, and also enables 'frost spiriting' away cards you already have. But still, some of the card ideas might carry over.

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GendoIkari

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #22 on: December 05, 2017, 02:50:49 pm »
0

I might try removing an Ice Token each shuffle instead of every turn to smooth out the effect. It will make deck size more of a factor, but I think will generally solve more headaches in terms of card power and component count.

Define "shuffle". If you have one card in your discard pile and then have to draw/reveal/etc., is that a "shuffle"? What if you have zero cards?

Didn't Donald eventually end up answering this question; after several pages of debate? I can't remember what the response was though.
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LastFootnote

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #23 on: December 05, 2017, 03:31:47 pm »
0

I might try removing an Ice Token each shuffle instead of every turn to smooth out the effect. It will make deck size more of a factor, but I think will generally solve more headaches in terms of card power and component count.

Define "shuffle". If you have one card in your discard pile and then have to draw/reveal/etc., is that a "shuffle"? What if you have zero cards?

Didn't Donald eventually end up answering this question; after several pages of debate? I can't remember what the response was though.

Exactly. I can't remember either. And maybe that itself is a problem.
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GendoIkari

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #24 on: December 05, 2017, 05:37:27 pm »
0

I might try removing an Ice Token each shuffle instead of every turn to smooth out the effect. It will make deck size more of a factor, but I think will generally solve more headaches in terms of card power and component count.

Define "shuffle". If you have one card in your discard pile and then have to draw/reveal/etc., is that a "shuffle"? What if you have zero cards?

Didn't Donald eventually end up answering this question; after several pages of debate? I can't remember what the response was though.

Exactly. I can't remember either. And maybe that itself is a problem.

Found it! The rule is tentatively that you can shuffle 1 card. Shuffling 0 cards isn't discussed; I think the assumption is that you can't do that. But I agree that it's a rule people shouldn't have to know.  Plus I don't think we want to gives reasons that draw-your-deck engines should be even stronger. Actually, if done in the right type of engine; you can shuffle multiple times per turn, which would make Ice cards even stronger.
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