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Author Topic: Dominion: Ice Age  (Read 48815 times)

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Chappy7

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #25 on: December 05, 2017, 05:48:48 pm »
0

Actually, if done in the right type of engine; you can shuffle multiple times per turn, which would make Ice cards even stronger.

Yeah, because of this and because of junky slog decks, I think ice should be once per turn as Gazbag originally suggested. There are still little loopholes like mission, outpost, and possession, but that shouldn't really be a problem.
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GendoIkari

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #26 on: December 05, 2017, 05:52:57 pm »
0

Actually, if done in the right type of engine; you can shuffle multiple times per turn, which would make Ice cards even stronger.

Yeah, because of this and because of junky slog decks, I think ice should be once per turn as Gazbag originally suggested. There are still little loopholes like mission, outpost, and possession, but that shouldn't really be a problem.

Yeah I think it's better that it works with Outpost; etc.. it's just another combo that works to make Outpost different than "+3 cards, +1 buy".
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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #27 on: December 05, 2017, 06:43:47 pm »
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A compromise option would be once per shuffle with a maximum of one per turn. It's less elegant, though. And "at the end of your turn, if you shuffled this turn", which is more or less the same but prevents any gain-and-remove-ice shenanigans - is even less elegant.
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Violet CLM

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #28 on: December 05, 2017, 06:54:32 pm »
+1

a lot of token bloat
I could imagine a mat being used instead, with numbered spaces 1-6, and cards move along the mat toward 0 as they get more thawed.
Quote
Yeti can't even guarantee that a card it Ices even misses the shuffle.
Perhaps if cards were put on top of your deck instead of your discard pile after thawing, that'd be more consistent.
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sprocket science

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #29 on: December 05, 2017, 07:08:20 pm »
0

Actually, if done in the right type of engine; you can shuffle multiple times per turn, which would make Ice cards even stronger.

Yeah, because of this and because of junky slog decks, I think ice should be once per turn as Gazbag originally suggested. There are still little loopholes like mission, outpost, and possession, but that shouldn't really be a problem.

I really don't understand your argument concerning junky slog decks. Until the reshuffle, it makes very little difference whether a card is iced or in my discard pile. In a slog, it takes many turns from one reshuffle to the next, so most ice token effects, maybe apart from Frost Spirit and Frozen Cache itself, are likely to miss it, which makes them completely pointless (except perhaps the coin tokens from Mountain Village). 'Once per shuffle' would power up Ice Cave, Glacier, and Frost Spirit in slog decks! On the gainers, it would be hard, admittedly.

When using 'once per shuffle', Snow Hag should probably only give one token, though, Rediscover would give 0,1, and 2 tokens, and Frost Spirit maybe 2 or 3.


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sprocket science

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #30 on: December 05, 2017, 07:13:03 pm »
0

A compromise option would be once per shuffle with a maximum of one per turn. It's less elegant, though. And "at the end of your turn, if you shuffled this turn", which is more or less the same but prevents any gain-and-remove-ice shenanigans - is even less elegant.

I think '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 shuffle, remove one ice token from each card if you haven't already this turn' are both reasonably elegant.
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sprocket science

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #31 on: December 05, 2017, 07:17:41 pm »
+4

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.

As the freezing is meant as a punishment (to make the card cheaper), instead of limiting the gaining to non-victory cards, you could limit the freezing to non-victory cards.
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GendoIkari

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #32 on: December 05, 2017, 11:21:06 pm »
+1

A compromise option would be once per shuffle with a maximum of one per turn. It's less elegant, though. And "at the end of your turn, if you shuffled this turn", which is more or less the same but prevents any gain-and-remove-ice shenanigans - is even less elegant.

I think '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 shuffle, remove one ice token from each card if you haven't already this turn' are both reasonably elegant.

The first one doesn't work because of various other things that cause you to shuffle other than drawing (Lookout, Navigator, etc).

I think once per turn is much better, both for complexity and for balance. If the cards are too strong due to coming out too fast, you can increase the number of tokens.
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Chappy7

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #33 on: December 06, 2017, 12:30:30 am »
0

Actually, if done in the right type of engine; you can shuffle multiple times per turn, which would make Ice cards even stronger.

Yeah, because of this and because of junky slog decks, I think ice should be once per turn as Gazbag originally suggested. There are still little loopholes like mission, outpost, and possession, but that shouldn't really be a problem.

I really don't understand your argument concerning junky slog decks. Until the reshuffle, it makes very little difference whether a card is iced or in my discard pile. In a slog, it takes many turns from one reshuffle to the next, so most ice token effects, maybe apart from Frost Spirit and Frozen Cache itself, are likely to miss it, which makes them completely pointless (except perhaps the coin tokens from Mountain Village). 'Once per shuffle' would power up Ice Cave, Glacier, and Frost Spirit in slog decks! On the gainers, it would be hard, admittedly.

When using 'once per shuffle', Snow Hag should probably only give one token, though, Rediscover would give 0,1, and 2 tokens, and Frost Spirit maybe 2 or 3.

I guess you're mostly right.  Although in the case of citadel, I would never buy it in a slog.  I won't ever get to see it.
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Co0kieL0rd

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #34 on: December 06, 2017, 04:28:04 am »
+1

Gazbag, I really, really like your Ice token mechanic, and I think you succeeded in implementing it in simple yet compelling cards. Design-wise, I like them all; they mostly require some balancing. And they look great!
I'm not decided whether I prefer Ice tokens to be removed each turn or after shuffling, so I'm going to evaluate your cards with the mechanic as-is, for now. My general stance is that few Ice tokens on gained cards will rarely make a considerable difference so I'll often advocate more tokens.

Snow Hag: I don't think the similarity to Witch is a problem, as many official cards are redundant as well. But the Curse needs to come with at least 4 Ice tokens so it's guaranteed to miss the opponent's shuffle even if SH is played in turn 3. Otherwise it's just too strong for $4. Even then, looking at Young Witch, SH would probably require an additional nerf to justify the cheap cost.
She doesn't look like a hag at all but in case you named her this way to account for Asper's and my fan card Snow Witch, that's appreciated ;)

Yeti: Ice tokens seem like the perfect solution to make a vicious trashing attack acceptable. I suggest you make Yeti a pure freezing attack (using Pacovf's terminology) to make the card more reliable and because you already have a curser in the set.

Venturer: Good idea in general but in it's current form I find Venturer too polarized (it's only good with strong trashing) so I would raise the cost and only make it give one or two Coppers. Also removing Ice tokens from other cards, with regards to some other Ice token cards as well as negative self-synergy, doesn't really seem like an upside on Venturer. That on top of an on-gain effect similar to Frozen Cache's (which I like more), makes me inclined to say, scratch Venturer (in its current form) from the set.

Rediscover: This combination of effects absolutely has to be in the set. But I fear rediscovering Provinces might be broken. Maybe not though, as one or two Ice tokens on a card often won't matter, unless you're drawing your deck each turn. I'm curious what you find in playtesting.

Mounain Village: Delayed gaining is not a huge enough downside to a card that self-synergizes to become a card better-than-Bazaar to justify a cost of $2. The concept by itself is great, it's just a matter of finding the right cost for this card.

Ice Cave: Again, cool idea but suboptimally implemented. In this case, it's terribly weak. Compare with Sacred Grove, and Ice Cave's benefit is even more marginal, so you can easily make it give +$3. Putting more Ice tokens on the Victory cards would be more interesting. Consider even 3 Ice tokens per card bought per Ice Cave in play, since you won't usually play more than two per turn.

Glacier: This looks ridiculous compared to Harem, but Harem sucks so who cares. It's a good concept but I would like it even more if it gave VP instead of coin tokens. That would incentivize you to green earlier than you normally would which is generally a good premise for strategically challenging cards. (The coin tokens incentivize it too but they make it much easier to continue greening in the late game which makes it too automatic in my opinion.)

Frozen Cache: The idea is cute so I don't care if it's actually weak or redundant. If it seems too weak and nobody buys it, try it at $5. That should be more appropriate.
The color pattern makes it look more like a Reserve.

Frost Spirit: I'm the minority here saying this card isn't actually that strong. My first impression was this should cost only $2! I realize it's quite good in a deck-drawing engine but it's pretty hard to build such a deck with this as the only support in the first place. How about this:
Quote
Frost Spirit, $4, Action: +2 Cards. +1 Action. Set aside a card from your hand with 4 Ice tokens on it.
This would be more akin to Secret Pasage; better at delaying junk but less flexible and synergistic with other cards.

Cold Storage: Another obvious concept that's just a matter of balancing. As usual, I think 2 Ice tokens are too few. Gaining $5-cost cards with a card cheaper than $5 is really powerful! Don't like the name in particular (perhaps something more Workshop-esque?).

Citadel: This seems like something Donald would do, just without the Ice token on it. Unlike many other commenters, I don't think you should get rid of it. But it definitely needs to come with more Ice tokens. Or consider setting it aside with an Ice token each time you discard it from play.
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spiralstaircase

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #35 on: December 06, 2017, 05:40:32 am »
+1

Great idea!  I'm another person who thinks that cards should thaw once per shuffle, and that the number of tokens should be scaled down a bit to compensate.  Perhaps "after you form a deck from your discard pile" might be a better wording?  I'd also say that frozen cards shouldn't come into your deck at the end of the game, since it makes for more interesting decisions about when you think the game might end and it makes it less broken if you're Rediscovering Provinces.

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sprocket science

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #36 on: December 06, 2017, 11:51:50 am »
0

A compromise option would be once per shuffle with a maximum of one per turn. It's less elegant, though. And "at the end of your turn, if you shuffled this turn", which is more or less the same but prevents any gain-and-remove-ice shenanigans - is even less elegant.

I think '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 shuffle, remove one ice token from each card if you haven't already this turn' are both reasonably elegant.

The first one doesn't work because of various other things that cause you to shuffle other than drawing (Lookout, Navigator, etc).

You are right, it would have to be 'Once per turn, when you try to draw, reveal, or look at the top card of your Deck but your Deck is empty, remove one ice token from each card'. That was what I intended, but I got the terminology wrong... Or by avoiding terminology: 'Once per turn, when you try to pick up the top card of your Deck but your Deck is empty, remove one ice token from each card', but the former is probably better...

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LastFootnote

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #37 on: December 06, 2017, 12:20:08 pm »
+2

Yeah, just keep it at once per turn, and make sure the effects give an appropriate number of tokens so that it usually matters. Trying to trigger on shuffles is trouble.
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Chappy7

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #38 on: December 06, 2017, 05:48:32 pm »
0

I just want this idea to be in a real dominion expansion now
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Gazbag

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #39 on: December 06, 2017, 06:23:22 pm »
+1

Okay so I was thinking Frozen Cache can be easily turned into an Event and no current Events use Coin tokens or Ice tokens, so there should be enough design space for this expansion to have some Events. So here's an untested first draft idea I had of a new typoe of Event.

Escalating Events

So an idea I've seen pop up a few times is Traveller cards with some kind of condition that has to be reached in order to exchange. This is a cool idea, but I'm not a huge fan of it because Travellers are super high variance anyway - a Traveller missing the shuffle or Champion/Teacher being at the bottom of a shuffle can often decide a game and adding more stipulations to them compounds this problem. Events don't have this problem so much because you don't have to line up a specific card in your deck with whatever condition. Here is a quick example set of Events I cobbled together in about 20 minutes while watching TV - I'm not particularly thrilled with them but what do you think of the idea?







So the idea here is that at first you can only buy Fishing and meeting the condition "escalates" and lets you buy Tracking and then once you've tracked you can go Big Game Hunting - this would have to be tracked either with player tokens on the Event cards or by giving each player their own Event cards and you take the next step when you escalate.
On the Events themselves I like Tracking and it might work as the $2, Fishing is probably too easy to trigger with coppers and doesn't do enough and Big Game Hunting probably wants to be more generous because you have to unlock it.
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ThetaSigma12

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #40 on: December 06, 2017, 06:29:54 pm »
0

Couldn't the last one just be "Hunting" to allow a better font size?
« Last Edit: December 06, 2017, 06:30:59 pm by ThetaSigma12 »
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Asper

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #41 on: December 07, 2017, 01:05:16 pm »
+1

I agree with the others that Ice Tokens are a very cool idea, and practically all of the ideas in the OP are very simple and clever designs. You can be proud of this mechanic. However, as others already pointed out, the tokens are moot whenever they don't make a card miss a shuffle, and should therefore rather be removed on reshuffling (also it would be kind of annoying to miss a shuffle only by one token in a slog).

By the way, some of my earlier versions of Homunculus functioned in a way similar to Citadel, Frozen Cache or Mountain Village: Set it aside as you gain it, then put it in your discard pile once you shuffle. Of course tokens didn't make sense for just one card, but here it works out, and is worth the trouble of defining whether you can "shuffle" 1 or 0 cards. In the end, you could say something like "The first time in a turn your deck becomes empty". It excludes things like Inn (which btw. screwed over my wording with the old Homunculus version), but that is for the better, I think. Also, if your deck is already empty when you gain the card (for example because there is no deck), then the point where your deck became empty during your turn would have happened already, and you don't lose a token immediately. If your deck is 0 cards, you never lose tokens (booo), but as long as there's one card to discard and draw again, it would work just fine. It also works on opponents' turns, and I think Donate is the only case where it wouldn't work - but that can be stomached, I trust.
« Last Edit: December 07, 2017, 01:06:43 pm by Asper »
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Violet CLM

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #42 on: December 07, 2017, 01:23:47 pm »
+3

In the end, you could say something like "The first time in a turn your deck becomes empty".
It is my understanding of the Second Edition shuffling rules that this actually happens very rarely.
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Asper

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #43 on: December 07, 2017, 01:48:29 pm »
+6

In the end, you could say something like "The first time in a turn your deck becomes empty".
It is my understanding of the Second Edition shuffling rules that this actually happens very rarely.

Darn. This is why we can't have ice things.
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pacovf

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #44 on: December 07, 2017, 01:57:15 pm »
+2

That’s ok. “Once per turn, if your discard pile is empty, remove an Ice token from all your frozen cards.”
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Asper

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #45 on: December 07, 2017, 02:53:02 pm »
0

That’s ok. “Once per turn, if your discard pile is empty, remove an Ice token from all your frozen cards.”

I like it, except for the fact that when you buy a card with such a token, you can immediately remove one. That's why I wanted that "become" wording. Shouldn't that still work?

"When your discard pile becomes empty for the first time in a turn, remove an Ice token from each of your cards that has one."

Edit: Of course both wordings still allows for tricks with Inn or Watchtower, but I think you can let those slide.

Edit 2: Or just say "shuffle" and clarify in a FAQ whether you do or do not shuffle 1 card. I'd say you can shuffle 1 card (which I think is the official ruling) and can't shuffle 0 cards. I'd still suggest to limit it to once per turn, which should take out part of the relevance of whether you can shuffle 1 or 0 cards, either way.
« Last Edit: December 07, 2017, 02:58:32 pm by Asper »
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pacovf

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #46 on: December 07, 2017, 03:12:19 pm »
+1

Wouldn't you gain the card, then set it aside? That would make the discard pile "become" empty anyway.

Though I guess your wording is better anyway to avoid weirdness with having your deck empty while it's not your turn.
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Chappy7

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #47 on: December 07, 2017, 03:31:21 pm »
+4

I still think having the tokens melt once per turn is better.  I mean, engines don't need the additional advantage over money decks, do they? Plus, the wording would be much easier.
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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #48 on: December 07, 2017, 05:15:18 pm »
0

Love this idea!

I do notice that in a sense, Frozen Cache is inversely proportional to Glacier. The amount of happiness I get from having a newly purchased Victory set aside for 4 turns is going to be roughly equal to the amount of unhappiness I'm going to get from having my newly purchased Treasure set aside for 4 turns.

I personally think Frozen Cache is weak but isn't 100% worthless, because it is gaining you an insane amount of treasures, so there will be niche situations for it. I wonder if it may be fine at $5 (still weak, but fine).

I do think Glacier is a bit too good. A 4 turn delay on a VP entering your deck and a free coin token every* turn feels a bit much. I think it would honestly be good if it were modified to something like "When you gain this, set it aside with 4 Ice Tokens on it. When all of the Ice Tokens have been removed from this, take 2 Coin tokens". That said, Glacier may be my favorite card of the lot. I love alt-VP, and this is a neat concept.
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ConMan

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Re: Dominion: Ice Age
« Reply #49 on: December 07, 2017, 05:40:38 pm »
+2

I think per turn is fine. Slog decks don't really need a system to keep them from bloating because that's the point of them, and I don't like the idea that you could game the thawing with an empty deck and a bunch of Secret Passages.
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