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[Holunder9]

Hi folks, been a lurker on this and the German forum and since Nocturne came out I worked on some cards, done with herw's great template.
There are Night cards, Heirlooms, new States and new junk, cards based on offical outtakes (lame!) and cards based on ideas by other fan card designers: Gazbag's freeze mechanic, ThetaSigma12's Landforms and Asper's Edicts:



Blackmail is a new junk card that should feature a different card back to prevent cheating. Racketeer and City Guard are probably gonna be part of either a split pile or a double pile with none covered up by the other and both being in the Supply all the time.
City Guard might be too good as it could easily net a lot of Coin tokens but I expect it to mostly shine in the late part of the game and in alt-VP.




Assassin also features 20 (I don't often play 4P so 20 suffice) unique junk cards. They are supposed to be shuffled together (with the top card of the pile being visible like with Ruins) which might be too random, e.g. in a game without trashers Heretic is very nasty. In general the junk is on the weaker side, they are all cantrips and you can e.g. discard a Turncoat with a Turncoat.
Bribe is based on an outtake and perhaps it works here. The junk is not that bad such that to pass or not to pass the Bribe sometimes (hopefully!) becomes a real decision.




These are just "vanilla" states which, like Lost in the Woods, are singular and wander between player. The more interesting part of Conjuration should be that kind of bidding game. The mechanic is directly taken from Runewars.




Royal Guard is pretty straightforward and actually came before Conjuration (see above for Protected).




Glacier is a variation of Gazbag's card, taking into account Cookielord's suggestion to make this pure green which could lead to more interesting alt-VP play.




Ordinary Night cards cannot feature vanilla stuff, hence all the Night-Durations. Tokens are another way and Nightmare and Spectre are shots at that. Nightmare's attack is based on an outtake by DXV. Note that you can only be hit once during your turns which might partially compensate for the non-terminality of the attack. It could of course still be too strong.
Action tokens should function like Coin of the Realm, i.e. you spend them after having played an Action card to get +1 Action.




There are 3 cases with Spectre:
no trashers - this only hexes.
trashers but no other junkers - this is a Copper/Estate junker
trashers and other junkers - universal junker
In my opinion only the last case is potentially problematic but I don't expect the trashing/junking ping-pong that could arise to be worse than multiplayer Ambassador (unlike with Ambassador you gotta play 2 cards).
But of course it has to be tested, increasing the size of the junk pool is a dubious idea.




Like Rats and Magpies those Owls procreate but not that easily. I am not quite happy with the other parts of the card though. It probably has to cost 5 as you can easily make them behave like Bakers with, most likely, 2VPs stacked on top of it. Key is there to make Owl decent in the opening. Putting Victory cards into your hand probably doesn't have many interactions, only Monastery and City Guard comes to mind, so that part could be deleted.




Evocation is another outtake.




Icelands is based on Gazbag's freeze mechanic and ThetaSigma12's Landmarks and might be too boring: you just automatically do it whenever you green and have Coins left. When you thaw the cards the Ice tokens are supposed to return to the Supply, not to Icelands; this rule should be on the card but I felt it was too wordy.




More overpaying with Peace. The Edict mechanic is an invention of Asper and I tried to set the ratio such that there are no 'strictly better' cases but Tunnel-Duchy is the exception.


UPDATE:
Chappy7 pointed out that Spectre is bad if good stuff lands in the trash so I changed Spectre to only junk cards from the trash that cost up to 2.
Owl got nerfed (really?) a different Victory condition (from DXV's Secret History). It is in general a difficult condition to meet but Owl can be used as economy.




Azure Cove is new and might be too similar to Avanto. Avanto is only non-terminal if you draw into Sauna whereas this is always non-terminal but you have to pay for the Action later.


]

Another double pile! Like Racketeer and City Guard Djinn and Efreet are constantly in the Supply with 5 per "half-pile" .
This is obviously a thematically inspired idea. Djinn came pretty natural (might be nearly as good as Artisan but it is trickier to gain) whereas Efreet was a card that I came up with some time ago but never liked as it felt too strong. I put it fairly randomly on Efreet as I thought that getting it later in the game would nerf it enough and only then I realized some interesting stuff: you can gain Efreet via Wishes as long as you have a Djinn in play. Efreet makes alt-VP better so wishing for Duchies might be a strategy.
I am still not sure whether Efreet is balanced (I will also test it with "draw 3 cards instead of 5") or any good though.


All of these are thematically or mechanically inspired by other fan card designers.



EDIT: The old Duration Phoenix was incredibly weak because it stayed out too long. My new attempt is at best roughly as good as Hunting Grounds (you non-terminally draw 5 cards but then have to play Ashes so the net effect is +4 Cards) but in addition to that it does some Island-ing. You can even Island a Curse, leave it on the mat for some turns and take it back when you have a trasher in hand.
I hope this isn't too good, as usual only playtesting will tell.





The lady asked for some Nightwatch cards after we first played with Night cards so here they are.
They are directly inspired by Gazbag's freeze mechanism .  The Season mechanic is by Asper and Cookielord.
White Walker is a variant of Yeti, Builder is the first version of Frost Spirit and Steward is Cold Storage.
There are 3 of each Brother and 6 White Walkers, shuffled together such that 3 Brothers are on top so the entire thing could be too random. I tried to make all cards versatile and fairly strong for their price to avoid that a bad card will prevent that the cards beneath it will see the sunlight.
Dragonglass Dagger is more of an afterthought, it is a Venture variant that can change the opening a bit like Doctor.

About the actual cards, Builder is a temporary pseudo-trasher, Ranger makes all Action cards next turn additional Fugitives and defends against the Walkers, Steward gains 5s that come into your deck a bit later, White Walker is a never-missing pseudo-trashing attack with a Rogue-like gain-from-freeze-limbo option.

I also used pacovf's suggestion for freeze as new keyword:






Nothing fancy, just a one-shot that distributes Blackmail. Getting a boon seems like a natural thing for a one-shot.




I need a village for my set so here it is. Like Extortioners is another way to spread Blackmails this is another way to get Traitors into the game. It is a bit like Blessed Village and Ill-Gotten Gains.
I tried to make the village effect non-standard because $4 for a village that junks when you gain it seemed too strong. Now it is either a Necropolis or a village that can draw from the discard pile and in case the opponents play BM or don't play a Vice Town during their turns you get an auto-Village next turn via Commanding (like when it gets used with Conjuration there is only one Commanding in play).

It looks like this is a way to emulate conditional durations (that can never occur or endure for more than just 1 turn) with the vanilla States. Of course there is also similar stuff you could do, e.g. you could take Beguild, i.e. the +1 Card State, when you gain a card such that the on-gain bonus becomes something like a conditional half Exploration.


Here are some cards that play with with the Conjuration States. They are more conceptual than the other ones and more about finding out whether the basic idea works or not:




A Silver+ for $4 is always a dubious notion. I think it works here though because the price of perhaps getting an extra Buy next turn (and with an even bigger perhaps, in future turns) is to play this as a Copper.




Kind of a reverse Relic. The buying of this will start something like a war of attrition: you don't really want that lousy Silver for $5 but you have to get it lest the other player gets a free Lab every turn.




Here we have something like an on-gain Treasury but this time you don't have to pay "too much" for a Silver but pay "too little" for a mere one-shot Fugitive to stop your opponent's Treasury for $2.
On-gain creates another mini-game though, under normal circumstances (i.e. no gainers and Remodel variants) you don't want to gain the 9th card (or 8th card in a 3P game) of the pile because then another player could empty the pile and get a safe Treasury for $2. No idea whether this is fun though.




This is unrelated to the Conjuration States and, once again, about Gazbag's great freezing mechanic.
The pile only contains 5 cards with Extinction being the 6th card underneath the 5 Mammoths. Like with Philosophers you don't want your opponent to get the last Mammoth.

About the duration effect, my Nightwatch Ranger is to Fugitive what Mammoth is to Asper's Scientist. Scientist  is based on Storyteller's idea of converting coins into cards. With Storyteller you convert existing Coins whereas with Scientist you backload it.
The entire idea could be totally broken, it is a card which needs quite some playtesting.




A simple idea, related to Coin of the Realms, for callable infinite Buys. A nice feature is that you cannot call the card in the turn you played it so in an engine where you need the extra Buys to get components you need at least 2 in your deck.
The purpose of the wording is to prevent the emptying of Curses/Coppers as well as funky stuff with Peddlers and cost reduction.




This is based on an idea by Seprix.
If you give it a fixed price it could be better than Province in some Kingdoms (e.g. if there are Attacks, Durations and Night cards this is better than Province as you can always buy a Curse to make Gate worth 7VPs). The variable/extra cost is a way to make the card a bit more interesting. Now you want to gain it when you have few different types in play yet your deck should have many different types.




Lich is inspiread by Kudasai's Old Witch but will play quite differently. It is a half-Curser, meaning that the first time you play it everybody else gets the negative VP and the second time the junk lands in their decks. In addition to that it is mainly a Copper trasher (you can put Curses on the mat to delay the inevitable or put a Silver there just like you would trash a Silver to make Forager better) and provides some scalable payload.




Wanna sift through or trash some junk? Here is the guy for it. He can also set up a Province for your Tournament or dig for a Night card. Overall a versatile card that is obviously inspired by Settlers. It could be too strong for $2 yet too weak for $3.

   

A quick non-terminal draw idea that is related to Storyteller, Den of Sin and Expedition. The whole thing could be implemented via Card tokens or whatever but I prefer a card-shaped thing.
Slightly buffed via gaining Cursed Abbey to hand and via allowing Invocation to draw cards from the discard pile. The latter might make Invocation less automatic, i.e. don't use them immediately but wait until you have something nice in the discard pile at the start of your turn.




This is a card from one of the contests. I never did anything with positive stuff for the other players so here it is. Obviously the other way around, i.e. you get Coffers and they get Villagers, would be bonkers (not to mention that this design space is already more or less covered by Merchant Guild) and the card, like Monastery, wants to gain several cards per turn to be worthwhile.
As I expect the card to be fairly narrow due to the strength of Coffers I added the hand-gaining.




I tried to make the base version of this work for some time but I was never satisfied with the twists I gave it. This feels OK now.


Here are some nasty sideways cards that slow down play:



Renaissance has an on-shuffle trigger so this is a natural idea that punishes engine play.




Kinda like Tax but you get Ruins instead of Debt and if you cannot or do not want to get rid of them because your Scrying Pools love them so much or because they belong into a Museum you even get some points, set collection style.





First of all, this is in no way intended to be a substitute for Fly-Eagles-Fly's great Winery/Wine design! I first wanted to do something with water, wheat and bread but we already have Mill and Baker.

Winery and Grapes are part of a split pile with Winery above and Grapes below. Both cards are expensive for their vanilla effects but sometimes you might just use them as ordinary engine pieces.
There is a Cornucopia-like theme of variety and while the Coffers and Debt of Grapes are usually a liability you can make an asset out of them. Something like 5 Coffers and 6 Debt can be situationally good.
Wine is a recycling of the main idea of Phoenix (Phoenix was superbad because it is so superslow, taking at least 3 turns to be played again).

Now what about those Night Grapes and Ice Wine? Obviously the source of the idea is thematically, you harvest frozen grapes at night to make sweet wine out of them but your workers are not happy about nearly freezing to death.
My first idea was to make Grapes an Action-Night but that's too wordy to be stuck on one card. So perhaps simply make a double pile of Grapes underneath the Winery, i.e. once the Wineries are gone you can always choose to gain either kind of Grapes? Or maintain the flexibility and implement it as an Action-Night via printing the Action part on one side and the Night part on the other which comes with the problem of having the card being visible in and above all on your deck? I have no idea how to physically implement it well.

I am not totally sure about the downside of the Night Grapes but it does nothing constructive on play and having one or more villages out of your deck for several turns should hurt some.
Ice Wine is controversial as it is something that DXV tested for Intrigue but didn't work: 3 vs 5 Provinces leads to a VP spread of 12 whereas 3 vs 5 Ice Wines leads to a VP spread of 16. Perhaps it can work as on a non-Supply card that is difficult to get?


It's Hobbit time!


The little ones love their Shire so some Victory card interaction it is. Could be that discarding Actions and Treasures is too harsh but Pipe is pretty good (I used something similar on Efreet). Then again Hobbit is just a buffed Scout that might be weaker than Seer.

EDIT: The Pipe trigger is now trashing something good from your hand or discard. Could be situationally even beneficial when you want to get rid of a Silver.


Where there are Hobbits, Wizards are not far:



Wizard is probably a good $4 / weak $5 so without the Artifact it would be an expensive engine piece. Like most Potion cards it has some self-synergy (play 4 Wizards, then take the Staff). If it is too weak I'll merge the card with Settlement.
Staff is pretty crazy and defense strategies are similar to Possession (green earlier). The sifting option is there in case you don't want to gamble or want to exchange your bad hand with your own cards instead of an opponent's card (if he defends e.g. via playing money and greening early)
There are tricks like calling 2 Ratcatchers and then handing the other player a hand of 3 to get a hand of 5 or doing the same via leeching off handsize attacks.

EDIT: Staff only passes up to 3 cards instead of the entire hand.
EDIT2: Got a test game in and Wizard was too weak so I merged it with Settlement which is a slightly weakish $5 so it should be OK for this slot.




This is the Villager version of Asper's Conserve with a fix that LibraryAdventurer suggested.
I hope that this is not as broken as Conserve turned out to be, Villagers should be weaker.


Half in earnest, half in jest:








This idea is thematically inspired by the recent cards with an insanity theme by Kudasai and Fly-Eagles-Fly.
Whenever Bedlam is in the Kingdom Healing is a mandatory Event. Lunatic and Insane are two sides of the same card, like Miserable and Twice Miserable.

The key idea here is to do a harsh permanent Attack that you can defend against relatively easily via Potions which you want anyway to get the card. So while the Kingdom card doesn't directly defend against itself, when you choose to go down the Potion path you get both attack and defense.

Then I settled on the Potion card having to be relatively expensive such that you sometimes cannot afford it and take the Medicine en passant more often than you would if this costed $2P or $3P.
I already had the "Coffers into card draw" idea for some while but it was far too strong for a $5 (there is probably a good reason for why no official card produces more than 2 Coffers) so it was a natural match for the expensive Potion card.




I was a bit sad that overpay did not reappear in Renaissance, it is not a difficult mechanism and there is stuff you could do with it and the tokens.
Marketeer is simply another name for a Buy token (that you can spend at the start of your Buy phase for +1 Buy); overpaying for VP tokens obviously doesn't work (on a Victory card, this card by Theta and AdrianHealey does work).
The anti-Copper clause is there to prevent endgame shenanigans with total Coin transfer; I don't like the enusing overall wordiness though.
Printing Press could be good enough to cost $5 and could be too similar to Academy, Guildhall and Spices.

EDIT: Costed at $5.


I always liked the recent Actions that want Silvers (Sauna, Merchant) or Golds (Encampment, Legionary) in your deck so this is my stab at doing something along these lines:



Both cards are part of a split pile with either 4 of each in a two player game respectively 6 of each in multiplayer.
Timber Raft could be good enough to cost $3. The base price of Riverlands is just a first shot, hard to determine this without playtesting. Riverlands could be in principle too strong. If you manage e.g. to play 3 Timber Rafts and 3 Treasures the first one costs only 1, the second one 2 and so on. Twitching the base price only gets you so far which is why Riverlands is then up for elimination. Its idea is mainly to make Timber Raft better but perhaps this is already good enough on its own.

EDIT: Timber Raft costs $3 now.




This is nothing original but a variation of Gazbag's Artefact. Instead of topdecking green it freezes itself though, so the card is mainly good for buildup. No idea about the best numbers, I wouldn't want to make it cheaper due to quick piling via Workshop variants so if this is too weak/strong the length of freezing are the variables that can be changed.

EDIT: Finally found a decent, albeit wordy, formulation that prevents stacking.




The vanilla stuff is from Tokenmonger aka Wizard. The attack is fairly mild and when  you are hit the second time it is actually beneficial as you get a Fugitive effect, kind of like with Margrave. The entire thing could be too similar to Villain (discard one card, if the guy to your left always discard Copper/Silver you get 2 Coffers).

I first tried to do a discard Attack with Mutineers, the great Militia token concept by Violet CLM, but I didn't come up with something.
Here is the basic idea that is flawed for an obvious reason: nobody wants to ever discard Victory cards to spend Mutineers while somebody else has a Corsair Ship in play. Marketeers (Buy Tokens) are an alternative token that could be coupled to Victory cards but as they are weaker than the other 3 tokens this would lead to the opposite problem: everybody always discards green to spend Mutineers.

$5
Action - Duration - Attack

Each other player gets +1 Mutineer.

Until your next turn, when another player spend a Mutineer, if the discarded card is an...
Action card, +1 Villager
Treasure card, +1 Coffers 
Victory card, +1

At the start of your next turn: +2 Cards.

Here are some quick ideas for an alternative set of Shelters. I guess you could also mix them with the original Shelters and randomly choose one from each of the three sub-categories.

Lodge is a small house so only one dude villager is living there! While the card is superficially similar to Necropolis it will play differently. For example in games without villages it degenerates into a Ruined Village whereas Necropolis can be used as non-drawing village (this being the only situation in which you want to keep Necro). So I guess you will only use Lodge 1-3 times and then try to get rid of it.
Not much to say about Acolyte's Abode, it is my least favourite of the 3. Like Lodge it is also not something you really want to keep around but it can change the opening if somebody opens with 2-5/5-2. This is why it is perhaps too luck-dependent.
Swamp Cabin is remotely inspired by Pasture (a singular non-Supply card changing the worth of basic green). First it had 3VPs per set but got buffed to 4VPs to make it a real alt-VP kick-off card more often.

[Andy7675]

For owl- You could make it cost 5, but topdeck the other revealed cards instead of discarding them. It would provide a functional purpose beyond simply getting Night cards.

[Chappy7]

While spectre would be particularly nasty with junkers and trashers, it becomes particularly friendly with good trash for benefit cards, or knights, or pillage etc...

[loneXolf]

Racketeer split pile- I don't really like how blackmail could be infinite debt without trashing or city guard. Maybe scrap city guard, and change blackmail?

Black Cat- neat idea like you said it is very similar to den of sin. I like the idea of multiple cards having the same Heirloom.

Owl- Interesting card seems like it could be strong but if you're using random with every set having the only hits being owl and key could be weak maybe? I would have to see how good owl is a getting coin tokens. Also what's the point of drawing victory cards, if you discard them anyway?

Spectre- Weird card, seems pretty weak if there are no trashers. Sitting order will matter a lot in any games where decent cards are trashed, Pillages, Remodel clones etc. Also in a two player game you could just remodel a province or anything with value to pin your opponent not to play this. 

[trivialknot]

Racketeer/City Guard/Blackmail - I don't really like Blackmail, it's too strong.  The reaction mechanic slows things down and has accountability issues.  I don't think a $5/$5 split pile works.  City Guard is interesting, but does seem a bit strong.  I dunno, try it by itself.

Conjuration - This seems like it has issues in the opener.  Like say I open 4/3, so I buy Destructive.  Then it turns out the second player has 5/2, so they buy Destructive, and now I just wasted a turn.

Royal Guard - seems fine, except that if there are no attacks you would never buy it.

Glacier - An interesting card.  Could maybe cost $5.  Something you could do with this card is trash it, which makes it kinda like Distant Lands.

Black Cat - I don't think this is that much like Den of Sin.  It's missing the drawback of staying out for 2 turns.  I think if you have extra gains, Black Cat just draws your deck very reliably, and I think that's too strong.

Nightmare & Spectre - My feeling is that attack cards should pair complex attacks with simple benefits, or complex benefits with simple attacks.  There's nothing about the attacks and benefits here that make them pair particularly well.  Spectre might be dominating in some games, if one player manages to thin down, and plays enough Spectres that the other player can never thin down.  I mean, I guess Ambassador is the same way.

Owl/Key - The ability of Owls to find each other is stronger than Minion.  And it's also cheaper, and can gain copies of itself.

Icelands - I like this idea a lot.  Useful in all kinds of decks, and I find myself wondering if you should green earlier because of it, or take a Duchy over Province.

[Gazbag]

I like a lot a lot these ideas, I like States in general so here's a few thoughts...

Conjuration: This is a really cool idea, although I think it might be good to have the States start off with some number of tokens on them, at least $5 for the stronger ones and maybe the weaker ones can get away with $0, this is to avoid the massive first player advantage of some of these States or more first player to have their $4/$5 opening hand advantage. I can see situations with Destructive for example where player one gets a 4/3 start and buys Destructive turn 1 for $4 and then player 2 can't get it until they hit $5 and by then player 1 has trashed like 4 cards and is miles ahead. 

Royal Guard: I feel like this should have a different effect than +$2 because it will almost never be bought over Silver in a game without attacks. Moat draws, Lighthouse and Guardian cost $2 and Guardian has the on-gain trick and Champion is Champion so all the other attack blocking things have some use without attacks.

I guess I should talk about the "freeze" things too.

Glacier: Eh, I still think mine is more interesting. I never really got the whole "alt-VP play" thing.

Icelands: 4 tokens per player isn't very much at all. I tried something like this and it wasn't too interesting, maybe there's something there though if you find the right balance.

[Holunder9]

Thanks for all the feedback. 

I am not sure that Conjuration will start out with a player spending all of his Coins on it. Say you got a 4/3 opening but there is a decent 2 in the Kingdom. Perhaps you would use your first turn to buy 2 States with only one token on them whereas the second player will start 5/2 and buy a 5.
On the other hand you want to spend a lot on the better States to not have them quickly taken away from you.
I am not sure that the suggestion to have an initial amount of tokens on the States fixes the opening problems unless you make it 6 or more which is too much for the weaker States.
Seems tricky to fix.

While spectre would be particularly nasty with junkers and trashers, it becomes particularly friendly with good trash for benefit cards, or knights, or pillage etc...

Thanks for the tip to make Owl not discard the other cards, I changed it accordingly. The new version makes it harder to dig for for several Owls in a row and is more about preparing a better hand for the next turn.

About Blackmail, while I am far from sure that the concept works, Racketeer and City Guard are both constantly available so you can always defend yourself against Racketeer attacks via buying City Guards.
If the attack is strong and the defense is strong as well, partially due to the decent secondary option, the only issue is that the double pile will empty quickly. This is why I should probably add a rule that the double pile counts as one pile.

[Asper]

Hm... I kinda like both the idea of States that only one player can have, and also the idea of States you can buy. I'm just not sure I like the combination, where you take away another player's state. Personally, I'd prefer States that you can get as a reward Tournament-Style, or states where there are enough copies for every player. Like:

Luck, Event, 4$
Once per game: Take Lucky, but not from another player.

Lucky, State
At the end of your cleanup phase, you may put your deck in your discard pile.

I hope I'll get around to posting my take on this soon.

Racketeer and Blackmail remind me a lot of a concept Co0kieL0rd once did.

I kinda like Glacier better than the original one, probably because it's closer to my ideal version that's just VP without any secondary tokens.

Peace looks nice. I like it.

Nightmare, Owl and Spectre lost me while I was reading them due to having too much text on them.

I'm not sure Owl is enough to warrant Key not just being a Treasure that says 0$, take a Coin token.

[Gazbag]

I kinda like Glacier better than the original one, probably because it's closer to my ideal version that's just VP without any secondary tokens.

This is interesting to me, because I can't understand why another bland Victory card seems to be liked more than a unique Coin token stockpile thing. I hesitate to hijack this topic and just talk about my own card but you posted a variant on it so I assume nobody would mind.

Glacier (my version) actually predated Ice tokens and originally just had the Coin tokens on it and then when I got the idea for Ice tokens I kind of went back and saw that this could use them and everything. I can understand wanting just 1 type of token to be used but by all means, if you play with Glacier, just put Coin tokens on it to save effort. Ice tokens just move lots of words from the card into the rulebook.

Onto the difference in effect of Coin vs VP tokens... Would someone be able to explain to me why they prefer the VP tokens? I just don't get it, In money/sloggy games this just seems like it's way better than Duchy and in an engine game I'd only consider it if I really needed to drag out the game and get enough points to overtake a Province-rush player. It just doesn't seem to add anything new to me. Am I missing something?

[Accatitippi]

Luck, Event, 4$
Once per game: Take Lucky, but not from another player.

This makes me think, can I take Miserable from another player?
I think I can.

[Holunder9]

I kinda like Glacier better than the original one, probably because it's closer to my ideal version that's just VP without any secondary tokens.

This is interesting to me, because I can't understand why another bland Victory card seems to be liked more than a unique Coin token stockpile thing. I hesitate to hijack this topic and just talk about my own card but you posted a variant on it so I assume nobody would mind.

Glacier (my version) actually predated Ice tokens and originally just had the Coin tokens on it and then when I got the idea for Ice tokens I kind of went back and saw that this could use them and everything. I can understand wanting just 1 type of token to be used but by all means, if you play with Glacier, just put Coin tokens on it to save effort. Ice tokens just move lots of words from the card into the rulebook.

Onto the difference in effect of Coin vs VP tokens... Would someone be able to explain to me why they prefer the VP tokens? I just don't get it, In money/sloggy games this just seems like it's way better than Duchy and in an engine game I'd only consider it if I really needed to drag out the game and get enough points to overtake a Province-rush player. It just doesn't seem to add anything new to me. Am I missing something?

You won't buy either Glacier if the game is about to end end. Your Glacier is kind of a auto-baker for 4 turns so you can buy the card early and perhaps later remodel it. My Glacier is pure VP so you want it later but not too late lest the game ends before get all the VPs and remodel it.
This conflict between not wanting to get Glaciers too early as it is only VP and not wanting to get it too late as you cannot get the VPs makes the card, at least to me, potentially interesting.
If there is a Remodel (variant) your card plays easier: just get them relatively early, keep your economy afloat due to the Coin tokens and when the card lands in your deck remodel it.
And if there is no Remodel it is at least 2VPs whereas mine hurts more if it remains an unremodeled Estate.

So without wanting to imply that my version is superior, unique, less bland or whatever (I don't think that either card reinvents the wheel, plenty of alt-VP exist and like your card Mill is about Coins and VPs) - whether you prefer the first or second version seems to depend on what you enjoy more: greening earlier or later, smoother or harsher impacts for your economy respectively safer vs. more risky play.

[Asper]

The thing is, I think it's interesting to have a VP card that is a bit expensive for the amount of VP it gives, but with the advantage of staying out of your shuffle. It is also interesting to buy a supply of Coin tokens that you receive over several turns. Mixing two interesting abilities gives you less than the sum of its parts, because now neither ability can really shine. You never get one without the other. It's part of what makes Split Piles and Travellers less appealing to me: You never see Fugitive without Teacher, or Hero without Warrior. Of course some of those cards, like Page, could never exist without their counterparts - but the abilities on Glacier can.

I feel that Holunder9's Glacier is closer to staying with one mechanic, because, after all, it's still VP. I'd still prefer a version that gives you something good now, and something bad (the card itself) later, without having this challenge of hitting a sweet spot that's still somehow not all that sweet.

[Gazbag]

Okay I think it's more of a psychological thing than some kind of strategy or something with the cards that I'm not seeing. It probably would have been better if I'd just made my Glacier be a $6 Copper instead of a Victory, Glacier just wanted to be a weak stop card and I figured a Victory was the most interesting version of that, but apparently it made people think that it being a victory that doesn't enter your deck straight away way the main point of the card.

Thanks for the thoughtful responses!

Anyway about Peace:

I think it probably needs some kind of limit on how many VP's you can get or something. I think it's just going to make games last for ages because there's no incentive to get Victories when you can just keep building and building and turn all the excess money into VP. It's kind of like Groundskeeper in that way.

[trivialknot]

Here's some elaboration on my thoughts on Blackmail.  I say it's too strong because junkers are already on the strong side, and these are clearly worse than curses.  Imagine playing a 3-4 player game, where you end up with ~7 of these, and you can't even afford a City Guard anymore.  There's also the possibility of being pinned, and although I'm not sure how likely it is, it doesn't seem like fun.

And besides that, the reaction upon draw has issues.  Now I need to pay attention every time I draw cards, and players need to be honest about what they're drawing.  As an alternative, you could have a person reveal their hand at the end of their turn, or at the end of the buy phase, and take a debt for each Blackmail.  You could even have it trigger on buy, like Haunted Woods or Swamp Hag, which would eliminate the pinning potential.  Or it could be a cantrip that gives you debt, so it would be junk, but not the kind that takes up space in your deck.

I don't really like the idea of pairing Blackmail with City Guard.  City Guard has its own unrelated ability, which is interesting and strong enough on its own.  If Blackmail needs to always be paired with some defense, then I don't think an unrelated $5-cost is a good choice.  Worth noting that among the canonical cards, most reaction cards are cheap and terminal.

[Holunder9]

Here's some elaboration on my thoughts on Blackmail.  I say it's too strong because junkers are already on the strong side, and these are clearly worse than curses.  Imagine playing a 3-4 player game, where you end up with ~7 of these, and you can't even afford a City Guard anymore.  There's also the possibility of being pinned, and although I'm not sure how likely it is, it doesn't seem like fun.

And besides that, the reaction upon draw has issues.  Now I need to pay attention every time I draw cards, and players need to be honest about what they're drawing.  As an alternative, you could have a person reveal their hand at the end of their turn, or at the end of the buy phase, and take a debt for each Blackmail.  You could even have it trigger on buy, like Haunted Woods or Swamp Hag, which would eliminate the pinning potential.  Or it could be a cantrip that gives you debt, so it would be junk, but not the kind that takes up space in your deck.

I don't really like the idea of pairing Blackmail with City Guard.  City Guard has its own unrelated ability, which is interesting and strong enough on its own.  If Blackmail needs to always be paired with some defense, then I don't think an unrelated $5-cost is a good choice.  Worth noting that among the canonical cards, most reaction cards are cheap and terminal.

You are totally right that Blackmail can become extremly nasty which might break its back in playtesting.
You noted that City Guard is strong if you use it for the non-defensive option and this is an intentional design choice to make people buy City Guard prophylactically in the absence of other trashers respectively buy City Guard before you buy Racketeer. Even if nobody goes for Racketeer the card is decent whereas e.g. Moat only becomes OK with enough village support.
About the cheating, different backs easily prevent that. Plus honest folks in your gaming group.


Some changes and a new card:

Chappy7 pointed out that Spectre is bad if good stuff lands in the trash so I changed Spectre to only junk cards from the trash that cost up to 2.
Owl got nerfed (really?) a different Victory condition (from DXV's Secret History). It is in general a difficult condition to meet but Owl can be used as economy.



Azure Cove is new and might be too similar to Avanto. Avanto is only non-terminal if you draw into Sauna whereas this is always non-terminal but you have to pay for the Action later.

[Asper]

Minor thing: It's this order:
+Cards
+Actions
+Buy
+Coin

Azure Cove reminds me of my Hunter, just less complex - it looks balanced to me.

[popsofctown]

Some of these, I really really like.  The bribe attack and the Duration-smithy the most.

Some of them I dislike for reasons I dislike certain official cards (Fool, Cursed Village) so what can I say

[Gazbag]

Azure Cove seems very strong to me. It's basically a Smithy that you don't have to line up with your Villages, I know that doesn't sound like much, but the flexibility and consistency it gives is immense. In a money deck you can't draw dead actions with it, I guess it's similar to Werewolf in that situation. You can do other things like playing a bunch at once and then letting them back into your deck on off turns - sort of like a Tactician type thing. You can also do lots of tricks with it by playing the same one multiple times in 1 turn, which doesn't seem too hard to pull of with this. I mean there are loads of broken $5 Smithies so it's probably not too good, but it's really good!

I think the discard trigger should be limited to the end of your action phase, or at least to during your turn to avoid weirdness with Caravan Guard (or any other way to get +actions on opponents turns).

[Holunder9]

Thansk guys, I changed Azure Cove.

[loneXolf]

Azure Cove- Being able to use it as a normal smithy before or after a village, and pawning it off for a turn(s) to high roll seems nuts. Probably won't be as strong in a kingdom without a decent muit-action card.

[Asper]

Two Azure Coves give you unbounded amounts of money with the +1$ and +1 Action token on their pile. Also with Certain champion combinations. It's relatively easy to fix by making it "call" or only allowing it in your cleanup phase.

[Holunder9]

Two Azure Coves give you unbounded amounts of money with the +1$ and +1 Action token on their pile. Also with Certain champion combinations. It's relatively easy to fix by making it "call" or only allowing it in your cleanup phase.

Good spot. It is a combo that could easily be fixed via forbidding Azure Cove to be present together with Peasant/Lost Arts, Peasant/Training, Lost Arts/Training, Page/Peasant and Page/Training.
But I worry that even in other Kingdoms the 'play several times per turn' of the card might be too good. Throne Room + Azure Cove nets 4 cards and an Action which you can spend to discard Azure Cove. If I understand the "lose track" rule correctly, which I am never sure of, you are even be able to discard Azure Cove after you played it the first time with Throne Room (as my rule said that you can discard it at any time). This could lead to weird stuff like drawing a just Throned Azure Cove.

The idea to use a card several times per turn was dubious from the start. I fixed the card and used Wine Merchant's wording (discarding it at the end of your Action phase might lead to some issues with Villa).




Another double pile! Like Racketeer and City Guard Djinn and Efreet are constantly in the Supply with 5 per "half-pile" .
This is obviously a thematically inspired idea (yeah, you figured, I played Heroes of Might and Magic 3 back in the days). Djinn came pretty natural (might be nearly as good as Artisan but it is trickier to gain) whereas Efreet was a card that I came up with some time ago but never liked as it felt too strong. I put it fairly randomly on Efreet as I thought that making it harder to get would nerf it enough and only then I realized some interesting, unintended stuff: you can gain Efreet via Wishes as long as you have a Djinn in play. Efreet makes alt-VP better so wishing for Duchies might be a strategy.
I am still not sure whether Efreet is balanced (I will also test it with "draw 3 cards instead of 5") or any good though.

[LibraryAdventurer]

I like Efreet, but Djinn is definitely too strong for $5. Artisan costs $6 and makes you put a card on your deck. Wishes gain cards costing up to $6 (Artisan is up to $5).
Efreet is very strong, but I think it's balanced enough by costing $6 and needing a Djinn. But needing a Magic Lamp is not enough of a drawback for Djinn.

On another note, my favorite card of yours is Owl, although I think it needs tweaking (as-is, it's probably too strong for $4 and too weak for $5). I'd suggesting moving the hex mechanic to Djinn, have Djinn say either "Receieve a hex. Gain a Wish" or "You may receieve a hex to gain a Wish" with some simple alternate effect. Then do something a little different with Owl.

[majiponi]

I like Efreet, but Djinn is definitely too strong for $5. Artisan costs $6 and makes you put a card on your deck. Wishes gain cards costing up to $6 (Artisan is up to $5).
Efreet is very strong, but I think it's balanced enough by costing $6 and needing a Djinn. But needing a Magic Lamp is not enough of a drawback for Djinn.

On another note, my favorite card of yours is Owl, although I think it needs tweaking (as-is, it's probably too strong for $4 and too weak for $5). I'd suggesting moving the hex mechanic to Djinn, have Djinn say either "Receieve a hex. Gain a Wish" or "You may receieve a hex to gain a Wish" with some simple alternate effect. Then do something a little different with Owl.

How about "You may play a Magic Lamp from your hand. If you do, gain a wish." clause?

[Holunder9]

How about "You may play a Magic Lamp from your hand. If you do, gain a wish." clause?

That sounds good but I don't want Djinn to prevent the cashing in Magic Lamp and obviously I don't want the opposite either, Djinn to be dead once Magic Lamp is gone.
I could do something like force-trashing Magic Lamp when you gain Djinn such that you have to decide whether you wanna go for the 3 Wishes one-shot thing or constantly gain Wishes via Djinn. But being able to get a maximum of one Djinn seems to restricted. One idea is after all that you wanna gain "too many" Djinns such that it becomes more likely to gain Efreet.

I like Efreet, but Djinn is definitely too strong for $5. Artisan costs $6 and makes you put a card on your deck. Wishes gain cards costing up to $6 (Artisan is up to $5).
Efreet is very strong, but I think it's balanced enough by costing $6 and needing a Djinn. But needing a Magic Lamp is not enough of a drawback for Djinn.

Artisan gains the card to hand and then forces you to topdeck a card which is stronger than merely gaining a $5. You can either immediately play the gained card or you'll topdeck it and play it next turn.
This is probably stronger than gaining a Wish which is more admittedly more flexible, allows you to gain $6s but can be drawn dead.
But you are probably right that Djinn is nonetheless too strong.

On another note, my favorite card of yours is Owl, although I think it needs tweaking (as-is, it's probably too strong for $4 and too weak for $5).

I tried to nerf it via making the 2 VPs conditional on no Silvers in your deck instead of the more or less automatic 2VPs (1VP per empty pile with Provinces and Owls being empty in most games) of the first version but it still feels, as you said, like something between $4 and $5. Perhaps undoing the Victory card and making it a pure Baker-Scout thing?

[LibraryAdventurer]

On another note, my favorite card of yours is Owl, although I think it needs tweaking (as-is, it's probably too strong for $4 and too weak for $5).

I tried to nerf it via making the 2 VPs conditional on no Silvers in your deck instead of the more or less automatic 2VPs (1VP per empty pile with Provinces and Owls being empty in most games) of the first version but it still feels, as you said, like something between $4 and $5. Perhaps undoing the Victory card and making it a pure Baker-Scout thing?

I like the victory part. There aren't any official night-victory cards. You could easily make it cost $5. Then you can return the VP to how it was originally, and maybe say "You may put any victory and night cards into your hand."
(Having no silvers could occasionally be easier than having more than one empty pile, but the no-silver condition is weird.)
OTOH, I also like that it costs less than $5, so it may be worth dropping the VP to keep it at $4.

[Holunder9]

On another note, my favorite card of yours is Owl, although I think it needs tweaking (as-is, it's probably too strong for $4 and too weak for $5).

I tried to nerf it via making the 2 VPs conditional on no Silvers in your deck instead of the more or less automatic 2VPs (1VP per empty pile with Provinces and Owls being empty in most games) of the first version but it still feels, as you said, like something between $4 and $5. Perhaps undoing the Victory card and making it a pure Baker-Scout thing?

I like the victory part. There aren't any official night-victory cards. You could easily make it cost $5. Then you can return the VP to how it was originally, and maybe say "You may put any victory and night cards into your hand."
(Having no silvers could occasionally be easier than having more than one empty pile, but the no-silver condition is weird.)
OTOH, I also like that it costs less than $5, so it may be worth dropping the VP to keep it at $4.

I am fixated on a price of $4 as the entire thing with the Heirloom exists to make this a more attractive opener. So I probably have to get rid of the VP part if I wanna salvage the idea or start from scratch. Owls scout for Night cards anyway so it being a Victory c ard doesn't feel all that organic.

[Jack Rudd]

"You cannot gain this unless..." has awkward interactions with Swindler.

[popsofctown]

I'm in for trashing a Magic Lamp to get 1 Djinn per player, moving Efreet to outtakes or redesign limbo.

Do what's right for the card.   The other card can't be so cool to make such sacrifices.

I mean not that I understand what is interesting about a 6$ nonterminal with a buy restriction reading "You need to have a specific power 5 terminal in play to buy this", that's pretty close to "Feodum for Gold" on the list of things-you-wanted-to-do-anyway. 

[Holunder9]

"You cannot gain this unless..." has awkward interactions with Swindler.

I doubt that you want to give your opponents Djinn unless you hit a Duchy late in the game.

[popsofctown]

"You cannot gain this unless..." has awkward interactions with Swindler.

I doubt that you want to give your opponents Djinn unless you hit a Duchy late in the game.

Ok.  That happens though.  So it's a valid point.

[Holunder9]

"You cannot gain this unless..." has awkward interactions with Swindler.

I doubt that you want to give your opponents Djinn unless you hit a Duchy late in the game.

Ok.  That happens though.  So it's a valid point.

Sure, but I don't see any actual rule problems. The only seemingly relevant case is hitting a Duchy in the late game in the absence of any other 5s in the Kingdom which leads to the same thing as Swindler hitting a Shelter: the attacked player trashes the card but gains nothing.


About Djinn/Efreet, thanks for all the tips. I will have to test these new versions as well as the old version before I settle on anything (which is probably getting rid of the idea altogether):



The problems are obvious: playing for Magic Lamp and the 3 Wishes might be better than going for Djinn. While gaining Efreets was initially too hard it might be too easy now (not at least because you don't have to go for it via the Djinn path).
About the Efreet wording, I know that it is awkward but I did not find a technically correct way to word it that did not sound convoluted.

[Gazbag]

Hmm Djinn just seems like a more boring Leprechaun to me. You know like a hard to get Wish gainer but it's a bit more luck based whether you get $5 with a Magic Lamp soon enough and it doesn't have any other use.

Efreet is a bit odd, I guess your supposed to store up victories with it and then discard them all for a bunch of vp? The abilities don't really seem connected apart from that. It's basically just a weird unlimited Gear kinda thing that randomly gets destroyed by Militias?

[Asper]

I think Djinn is fine, but it suffers a lot from the fact that Pottery exists (that's the name, right? I'm out of touch). For if I was to suggest a way to improve it, it would be by just making the card cost 6$, at which point it's a Pottery that trades fast access to the gained cards with the ability to gain copies of itself, and one type of flexibility with another. Maybe it could just cost 5$ with some beneficial player interaction instead of the gain restriction? Like setting aside a Boon (that doesn't give $) at the start, which it always gives oto the other players on gain? Or just a random Boon to save on words.

[Holunder9]

Hmm Djinn just seems like a more boring Leprechaun to me. You know like a hard to get Wish gainer but it's a bit more luck based whether you get $5 with a Magic Lamp soon enough and it doesn't have any other use.

Efreet is a bit odd, I guess your supposed to store up victories with it and then discard them all for a bunch of vp? The abilities don't really seem connected apart from that. It's basically just a weird unlimited Gear kinda thing that randomly gets destroyed by Militias?

Yeah, discard Victory cards for VPs and transfering other cards into the next turn is the main purpose and you are totally right that the card is weak in the presence of handsize attacks.
I don't see the oddity or weirdness. There is some self-synergy if you use the second option and in the next turn the first option but you can also ignore the first option and mainly use it for card transfer.

The problem I see though is that the card might be too strong in alt-VP or draw-your-deck engines. Nonterminal VP generation should either be conditional (Groundskeeper) or appear late enough in the game to not become dominant (Plunder). With Efreet you could green a bit but then stop and play your Efreet engine without having any incentive to end the game.
I tried to reign that in via making the card hard to gain but only playtesting will show whether the restriction is severe enough to not make this a game-breaking powerhouse.

I think Djinn is fine, but it suffers a lot from the fact that Pottery exists (that's the name, right? I'm out of touch). For if I was to suggest a way to improve it, it would be by just making the card cost 6$, at which point it's a Pottery that trades fast access to the gained cards with the ability to gain copies of itself, and one type of flexibility with another. Maybe it could just cost 5$ with some beneficial player interaction instead of the gain restriction? Like setting aside a Boon (that doesn't give $) at the start, which it always gives oto the other players on gain? Or just a random Boon to save on words.

Yeah, it is (too?) similar to Artisan. As the origin of the card is thematic I want to connect it with Magic Lamp. Without that thematic weight what you suggest could of course lead to a mechanically sounder card.

[Asper]

To add two more to that pile of my cents, I feel that theme is a great way to start developing a card (giving you a source of inspiration), but it's not a great idea to enforce it at the cost of mechanics (in Dominion and similar games, that is). If you were to think that a fix that ignores the lamp makes for a more sound card, just give it another name. You can still use that name as an inspiration for yet another card (although admittedly I have a hard timme thinking of a Djinn-named card that doesn't use Wishes at all).

[Jack Rudd]

"You cannot gain this unless..." has awkward interactions with Swindler.

I doubt that you want to give your opponents Djinn unless you hit a Duchy late in the game.

That's not the point; the point is what happens if I Swindle your $5 card and ask you to take a Djinn in response? Swindler allows me to do that, because Djinn is a $5 card in the Supply; Djinn tells you you can't do that because you can't gain it without a Magic Lamp in play. So the logical conclusion is probably that I swindle your $5 card into nothing, which is not a wanted interaction.

[Holunder9]

"You cannot gain this unless..." has awkward interactions with Swindler.

I doubt that you want to give your opponents Djinn unless you hit a Duchy late in the game.

That's not the point; the point is what happens if I Swindle your $5 card and ask you to take a Djinn in response? Swindler allows me to do that, because Djinn is a $5 card in the Supply; Djinn tells you you can't do that because you can't gain it without a Magic Lamp in play. So the logical conclusion is probably that I swindle your $5 card into nothing, which is not a wanted interaction.

Now I get your point. But it is still not an issue. Gain restrictions on Supply cards are new so there are no official rules concerning the order.
Naturally you should check Djinn's "gainability" first before you gain it. You should not be able to gain Djinn in any way, check for the gain condition afterwards and then somehow retroactively undo the gain.
So the Swindler player would choose Djinn as target but the card says that it is not gainable and the attacker would have to choose a different card just like he'd have to choose Copper once the Curse pile is empty when he hits a 0.

It works precisely like Grand Market's buy restriction. You cannot spend 6 Coin and a Buy on Grand Market, only then check for whether you can buy GM or not, then undo the buy with your resources being gone (not that anybody would do that). The game rather says that it is not possible to buy GM BEFORE you buy it just like the game would say that Djinn cannot be gained BEFORE the Swindler player chooses Djinn.

Djinn is basically a borderline Supply / non-Supply card as you can only gain it via a specific way. If you want to you can probably rephrase the card as a non-Supply card with the only way to gain it being written on the card instead of on the gainer as it is usually the case with non-Supply cards.
I actually thought about making Djinn and Efreets non-Supply cards when I came up with them but it seemed rule-wise more confusing than clarifying.

[Jack Rudd]

It works precisely like Grand Market's buy restriction.

Well, the key difference between Gaining and Buying - and what allows Grand Market's buy restriction to exist at all - is that buying is always an active choice on the part of the player. You can't be forced into Buying a card by some other effect.

[Holunder9]

It works precisely like Grand Market's buy restriction.

Well, the key difference between Gaining and Buying - and what allows Grand Market's buy restriction to exist at all - is that buying is always an active choice on the part of the player. You can't be forced into Buying a card by some other effect.

Game mechanics care little about whether you "actively" buy a card while you are in your Buy phase or whether you "passively" make a choice about what cards the other players gain while you play Swindler. From a mechanical point of view these adjectives are irrelevant and both situations are identical: the game waits for player input.

In both cases you might want to do something but you cannot do it because Grand Market respectively Djinn forbid it.
This isn't complicated and there is no rule issue unless you are set on creating one. Of course the the wording can be improved and while I did not see how Djinn/Efreet might very well be better implemented as non-Supply cards. But that's the least issue these cards have.

[Gazbag]

It works precisely like Grand Market's buy restriction.

Well, the key difference between Gaining and Buying - and what allows Grand Market's buy restriction to exist at all - is that buying is always an active choice on the part of the player. You can't be forced into Buying a card by some other effect.

Game mechanics care little about whether you "actively" buy a card while you are in your Buy phase or whether you "passively" make a choice about what cards the other players gain while you play Swindler. From a mechanical point of view these adjectives are irrelevant and both situations are identical: the game waits for player input.

In both cases you might want to do something but you cannot do it because Grand Market respectively Djinn forbid it.
This isn't complicated and there is no rule issue unless you are set on creating one. Of course the the wording can be improved and while I did not see how Djinn/Efreet might very well be better implemented as non-Supply cards. But that's the least issue these cards have.

I'm no rules expert but Smugglers with an empty pile leads me to believe that you would be able to choose Djinn with Swindler and have your opponent gain nothing. I'm not sure whether that's actually a problem though.

[popsofctown]

If you can even mount an argument about it, and the card is in the design phase, you should reword it so it is abundantly clear.  That's part of good, quality game design.  It doesn't matter if players can make a correct, unambiguous decision using a full and complete understanding of the official rules (well, you are even worse off if they can't, but that's not "the bar").  Where possible, you should make the card so clear no one asks questions.

"You can't buy this unless you have a Magic Lamp in play.  When you gain this, trash all Magic Lamps from play" is the same number of words and has the same exact play aside from Border Village, Storyteller, Black Market, Horn of Plenty and Haggler, which is a 5 card list but I'm pretty sure is in single digit percentage of boards.

That's another thing, you should make it abundantly clear whether you trash all Magic Lamps from play, or just one.  "Trash Magic Lamp" is like, only one has ever existed or will exist so it doesn't matter.

Ok, I thought of the night cards too, Vampire and Changeling.  The other option has some word cost, "When you gain this, trash it if you don't have a Magic Lamp in play".  But it works with the rules more gracefully.

Or if you want to be super Melvin (is Melvin the name for people that like dovetailed mechanics? Vorthos vs. Melvin I think it's called)  "When you gain this, trash it or a Magic Lamp you have in play."

[Holunder9]

"You can't buy this unless you have a Magic Lamp in play.  When you gain this, trash all Magic Lamps from play" is the same number of words and has the same exact play aside from Border Village, Storyteller, Black Market, Horn of Plenty and Haggler, which is a 5 card list but I'm pretty sure is in single digit percentage of boards.

Not really. You forgot Vampire, Artisan, Altar, all Remodel variants and above all Wishes which implies that Djinn can indirectly gain itself. That's the last thing I want Djinn to be as it would be obviously broken (there is a reason direct gainers like Artisan, Vampire cannot gain themselves).
As I already said, I am open for better wording but not if it completly changes the way the card is supposed to work.

Djinn should come out of the bottle and if this is too thematic and cannot be made to work mechanically (which is my main worry) the idea will land in the trash.

[popsofctown]

Altar + Storyteller + Djinn is a 3 card specified board.  Magic Lamp is hard to get in play before an Action gainer is played since it's a Treasure.

[Asper]

Djinn should come out of the bottle and if this is too thematic and cannot be made to work mechanically (which is my main worry) the idea will land in the trash.

Story time: This is exactly the theme behind my Homunculus trashing a Potion on gain. Just that it didn't have that theme originally. I renamed the card when I thought that the Potion thing would be the best way to solve its issues, which is pretty much what I said about theme being something you should be willing to change if it makes you end up with a better card. Theme is nice, but if theme is the only reason you want to do a card, I'm not sure it's such a great fit for Dominion. It's not a very thematic game.

[Holunder9]

Altar + Storyteller + Djinn is a 3 card specified board.  Magic Lamp is hard to get in play before an Action gainer is played since it's a Treasure.

You seem to be confused. Your suggested Buy restriction would not prevent Djinn from being gained via Altar or Wishes or any other gainer which is why it does not work.

Theme is nice, but if theme is the only reason you want to do a card, I'm not sure it's such a great fit for Dominion. It's not a very thematic game.

That's why I will get rid of the idea if it doesn't work. Having slightly ambiguous rules (I really don't see the unclear cases and neither did my playing group in the two games in whcih I tried it so far but then again I am no rules expert) is not the issue of the card though.

[popsofctown]

Oh, derp.  True.

[Holunder9]

If the card is salvageable, which I seriously doubt after the two games, I am going to try to word it as non-Supply card. Because as you all said, there is definitely something fishy about the current wording.

[faust]

"You can't buy this unless you have a Magic Lamp in play.  When you gain this, trash all Magic Lamps from play" is the same number of words and has the same exact play aside from Border Village, Storyteller, Black Market, Horn of Plenty and Haggler, which is a 5 card list but I'm pretty sure is in single digit percentage of boards.

Not really. You forgot Vampire, Artisan, Altar, all Remodel variants and above all Wishes which implies that Djinn can indirectly gain itself. That's the last thing I want Djinn to be as it would be obviously broken (there is a reason direct gainers like Artisan, Vampire cannot gain themselves).
As I already said, I am open for better wording but not if it completly changes the way the card is supposed to work.

Djinn should come out of the bottle and if this is too thematic and cannot be made to work mechanically (which is my main worry) the idea will land in the trash.

How about: "When you gain this during your turn, if you have no Magic Lamp in play, return it to the supply." Fixes Swindler issues while keeping with the desired mechanic. The only issue that it might still have is some lose-track stuff that would prevent it from being returned to the supply.

[Holunder9]

Time for some new cards.  All of them thematically or mechanically inspired by other fan card designers.



The general idea for Phoenix/Ashes is by volfied. Phoenix is a strong card with the downside that it is weak in the opening and that you can only play it infrequently. This could also be implemented via the Journey token but it makes no thematic sense as opposed to the Phoenix dying and being reborn thing. Phoenix could be too similar to Den of Sins.





The lady asked for some Nightwatch cards after we first played with Night cards so here they are.
They are directly inspired by Gazbag's freeze mechanism . The Season mechanic is by Asper and Cookielord.
White Walker is a variant of Yeti, Builder is the first version of Frost Spirit and Steward is Cold Storage.
There are 3 of each Brother and 6 White Walkers, shuffled together such that 3 Brothers are on top so the entire thing could be too random. I tried to make all cards versatile and fairly strong for their price to avoid that a bad card will prevent that the cards beneath it will see the sunlight.
Dragonglass Dagger is more of an afterthought, it is a Venture variant that can change the opening a bit like Doctor.

About the actual cards, Builder is a temporary pseudo-trasher, Ranger makes all Action cards next turn additional Fugitives and defends against the Walkers, Steward gains 5s that come into your deck a bit later, White Walker is a never-missing pseudo-trashing attack with a Rogue-like gain-from-freeze-limbo option.

I also used pacovf's suggestion for freeze as new keyword:

[majiponi]

Does Phoenix need draw and set aside?

For each 2 different named cards in play, set aside the top card of your deck.

How about this phrase?

[loneXolf]

Phoenix- So if you have phoenix, copper and two different cards it just turns into a pretty bad den of sins. You would need at least 8+ different cards cards in play to get some good value with the ashes downside in my book, while anything 5 or below seems pretty bad. Seems like a hard card to use well in a deck, and it doesn't look to work well in most kingdoms, but maybe I am underestimating the average amount of different cards in play.

The Night's Watch- No comment, just since the huge amount of different mechanics and I am not even sure how the night's watch card itself works. Might comment later on it, if you keep updating it.

[Holunder9]

The Night's Watch is just the randomizer card. Phoenix is intentionally not good in the opening and the obvious Action card benchmark that'd compensate for the exchanging would be:

Phoenix: +2 Action +3 Cards | When you discard this from play, exchange this for an Ashes.
Ashes: Exchange this for Phoenix.

So the critical number of differently named cards is 6 or 7. That doesn't seem to be too tricky too achieve unless it is a money Kingdom but the line still doesn't provide the Action you have to waste on Ashes. So back to the drawing board.

[Holunder9]

Here is a new version of Phoenix that is based on a card tested by DXV for Cornucopia (Nocturne does feel a bit like Cornucopia 2.0 with Conclave, Imp and Magic Lamp):



I guess this will draw around 3-4 cards on average so a bit of extra draw compared to the first version which should compensate for Ashes being terminal.

[loneXolf]

Here is a new version of Phoenix that is based on a card tested by DXV for Cornucopia (Nocturne does feel a bit like Cornucopia 2.0 with Conclave, Imp and Magic Lamp):



I guess this will draw around 3-4 cards on average so a bit of extra draw compared to the first version which should compensate for Ashes being terminal.

Phoenix- This version might be a bit stronger but it's still looks weakish early game, but I guess it would help cycling your deck. Also, this version might be too similar to den of sins. The current Phoenix/ashes design might make it to comparable/similar to den of sins and might not be strong enough for the ashes downside. What if you lower the strength level of Phoenix and higher the strength level of ashes? Then again keeping the burst of power in the phoenix half is not a bad idea just not a huge fan of the current effect.

Random bad card idea-
Name - Phoenix
Type - Action/Night
Cost- 6
Effect- If it's your night phase, take three Coin Tokens. Otherwise, discard and exchange this for an ashes. If you do, discard your hand and Take 1 VP for each card discarded.

Name - Ashes
Type - Action
Cost - 0
Cost - +1 Card +1 Action _________ When you discard this from play, you may exchange it for a Phoenix. If you do, gain two Copper.

[Holunder9]

Also, this version might be too similar to den of sins.

Coming to think of it, Phoenix is actually more like terminal draw as you have to spend an Action for Ashes later. So probably more similar to Tactician than Den of Sins or Lab variants in general.

Name - Phoenix
Type - Action/Night
Cost- 6
Effect- If it's your night phase, take three Coin Tokens. Otherwise, discard and exchange this for an ashes. If you do, discard your hand and Take 1 VP for each card discarded.

Name - Ashes
Type - Action
Cost - 0
Cost - +1 Card +1 Action _________ When you discard this from play, you may exchange it for a Phoenix. If you do, gain two Copper.

I guess you wanted to imply a choice between Coin and VP tokens with Phoenix, i.e. "... you may take 3 Coin tokens. Otherwise ...". The simple problem is that a non-terminal 6 that takes 3 Coin tokens might be good enough on its own (compare with Merchant Guild) such that the second option will rarely be taken. So choice and exchange are not the best mechanics to mix.
Furthermore I'd be very careful with non-terminal discarding for VPs. I have a similar card in my set, Efreet, but at least it is tied to having some green in your deck. Copper self-junking might of course be enough of a nerf; hard to tell.

[loneXolf]

Also, this version might be too similar to den of sins.

Coming to think of it, Phoenix is actually more like terminal draw as you have to spend an Action for Ashes later. So probably more similar to Tactician than Den of Sins or Lab variants in general.

Name - Phoenix
Type - Action/Night
Cost- 6
Effect- If it's your night phase, take three Coin Tokens. Otherwise, discard and exchange this for an ashes. If you do, discard your hand and Take 1 VP for each card discarded.

Name - Ashes
Type - Action
Cost - 0
Cost - +1 Card +1 Action _________ When you discard this from play, you may exchange it for a Phoenix. If you do, gain two Copper.

I guess you wanted to imply a choice between Coin and VP tokens with Phoenix, i.e. "... you may take 3 Coin tokens. Otherwise ...". The simple problem is that a non-terminal 6 that takes 3 Coin tokens might be good enough on its own (compare with Merchant Guild) such that the second option will rarely be taken. So choice and exchange are not the best mechanics to mix.
Furthermore I'd be very careful with non-terminal discarding for VPs. I have a similar card in my set, Efreet, but at least it is tied to having some green in your deck. Copper self-junking might of course be enough of a nerf; hard to tell.

I see your Phoenix has being a more powerful "Den of sins" clone with ashes as a downside. Having to play ashes and wait another cycle to play Phoenix again seems like such a huge downside to me.

In contrast to a normal gold I don't think 3 delayed coin tokens would be that powerful for 6. But the versatile nature of coin tokens could make it extremely strong, I guess. Honestly, I think the VP gain effect on this Phoenix is bonkers which is why I called it a bad card idea.

Edit: Not sure if you noticed, to use the VP part of this Phoenix you need to play it as a Terminal action (I copied werewolf's wording).

Name- ?
Type- Night
Cost - 6
Effect- Take 3 coin tokens. This is gained to your hand (instead of your discard pile).

Would ^that be too strong? I don't know...

[Holunder9]

Name- ?
Type- Night
Cost - 6
Effect- Take 3 coin tokens. This is gained to your hand (instead of your discard pile).

Would ^that be too strong? I don't know...

Pretty sure it is. It is like Summoning (of course this is not technically possible) something which is better than a Gold.

[Gazbag]

Name- ?
Type- Night
Cost - 6
Effect- Take 3 coin tokens. This is gained to your hand (instead of your discard pile).

Would ^that be too strong? I don't know...

Pretty sure it is. It is like Summoning (of course this is not technically possible) something which is better than a Gold.

I think it'd be fine if it didn't gain to hand. The drawback over Gold is that you don't get to spend the Coin tokens straight away because you get them in night, but gaining to hand kind of negates that downside.

[loneXolf]

Name- ?
Type- Night
Cost - 6
Effect- Take 3 coin tokens. This is gained to your hand (instead of your discard pile).

Would ^that be too strong? I don't know...

Pretty sure it is. It is like Summoning (of course this is not technically possible) something which is better than a Gold.

I think it'd be fine if it didn't gain to hand. The drawback over Gold is that you don't get to spend the Coin tokens straight away because you get them in night, but gaining to hand kind of negates that downside.

Yeah making the first Phoenix play much quicker than a first gold player seems nuts. But, Den of sins and ghost town sorta do the same thing, but it seems more ridiculous with coin tokens. Maybe it could work as a swamp hag (without the attack of course), but I think it a slight nerf won't fix the problem.

[Holunder9]

Raider with hand-gain but without the attack would probably be too strong as well but perhaps it'd be OK.
Coin tokens is totally crazy though.

[LostPhoenix]

I can't comment much about balance, but these cards are very creative and flavourful. Nice work.

[Holunder9]

Some changes and new cards:



I settled on the Cornucopia-esque version and added an extra Buy to Phoenix.




Nothing fancy, just a one-shot that distributes Blackmails. Getting a Boon seems like a natural thing for a one-shot.




I need a village for my set so here it is. Like Extortioners is another way to spread Blackmails this is another way to get Traitors into the game. It is a bit like Blessed Village and Ill-Gotten Gains.
I tried to make the village effect non-standard because $4 for a village that junks when you gain it seemed too strong. Now it is either a Necropolis or a village that can draw from the discard pile and in case the opponents play BM or don't play a Vice Town during their turns you get an auto-Village next turn via Commanding (like when it gets used with Conjuration there is only one Commanding in play).

It looks like this is a way to emulate conditional durations (that can never occur or endure for more than just 1 turn) with the vanilla States. Of course there is also similar stuff you could do, e.g. you could take Beguild, i.e. the +1 Card State, when you gain a card such that the on-gain bonus becomes something like a conditional half Exploration.

[somekindoftony]

Re: Vicetown Just wondering where Traitors are listed.  I'm not a fan of attack like effects which cant be avoided as it can just lead to a race for that effect.
On a four cost card this also is worsened by Workshop variants. Could you change gain to buy?

The other aspects of the card I really like. Choosing the card from your discard pile is different enough to drawing a card and rewards playing smarter.

I'd love it if this was a card that cost 3 debt and lost the traitor aspect. It might be weaker than average but would still be situationally stronger than village.

[Holunder9]

Re: Vicetown Just wondering where Traitors are listed.  I'm not a fan of attack like effects which cant be avoided as it can just lead to a race for that effect.
On a four cost card this also is worsened by Workshop variants. Could you change gain to buy?

Traitors are listed in the first post.
IGG is also on gain and alleviated by its high cost. Unlike IGG Vice Town is, as you rightly pointed out, also gainable via Workshop variants and not just by Remodel variants, Artisan and Vampire. But the junk is also not as nasty as Curses; all Traitors are cantrips with something bad on top of that (topdecking, discarding, taking Debt, negative VPs.)

Obviously I want a card with a similar power level as IGG, i.e. not a card which will always be bought. As Vice Town is quite often a Necropolis I doubt that it is too strong. Also, no pile-driving like with IGG as Traitors are non-Supply cards.

[somekindoftony]

Tah for the link. While not as bad as curses I would rate these worse than ruins at first glance. In many kingdoms this will be the sinkhole players chase each other down IMO. Also not a fan of cards with same names and different abilities. My eyes ainst so good

Vicetown will only usually be a necropolis if players play it like a village - to draw their entire deck. It has the potential to deflect a discard attack by rescuing that crucial card or find that essential piece and all this isn't even measuring Command ( which you admittedly might lose by your next turn but also might ot).
Its very much your card but there's enough complexity t drop Traitors and make a cheaper still interesting card IMO.

[Holunder9]

Tah for the link. While not as bad as curses I would rate these worse than ruins at first glance. In many kingdoms this will be the sinkhole players chase each other down IMO.

I fail to see how any Traitor (except for Heretic due to its negative VPs) can be worse than a Ruins. It is not like you are forced to play them and a cantrip that topdecks or discards is usually better than a dead card.

[somekindoftony]

Some either gain you a poor card when trashed or have a negative effect when gained (including in one case gaining a ruins). That seems clearly worse.

[somekindoftony]

Note that due to the different effects for cards of the same name its hard to indicate which ones I mean but a number of all the differently named cards are worse than ruins IMO. A ruins is just a lame action. They dont come with a need to put your hand on your deck when trashed or 2 debt when gained. Or a copper when trashed. Or so on.

[Holunder9]

True that, I forgot about the on-gain and on-trash effects. I won't make them weaker though, on average they are less severe than Curses and Ruins because all of them are cantrips.

[WQB]

Holunder9, great cards! I´d love to play with them! 

[Holunder9]

Holunder9, great cards! I´d love to play with them! 

Thanks man.

Here are some cards that play with with the Conjuration States. They are more conceptual than the other ones and more about finding out whether the basic idea works or not:




A Silver+ for $4 is always a dubious notion. I think it works here though because the price of perhaps getting an extra Buy next turn (and with an even bigger perhaps, in future turns) is to play this as a Copper.




Kind of a reverse Relic. The buying of this will start something like a war of attrition: you don't really want that lousy Silver for $5 but you have to get it lest the other player gets a free Lab every turn.




Here we have something like an on-gain Treasury but this time you don't have to pay "too much" for a Silver but pay "too little" for a mere one-shot Fugitive to stop your opponent's Treasury for $2.
On-gain creates another mini-game though, under normal circumstances (i.e. no gainers and Remodel variants) you don't want to gain the 9th card (or 8th card in a 3P game) of the pile because then another player could empty the pile and get a safe Treasury for $2. No idea whether this is fun though.




This is unrelated to the Conjuration States and, once again, about Gazbag's great freezing mechanic.
The pile only contains 5 cards with Extinction being the 6th card underneath the 5 Mammoths. Like with Philosophers you don't want your opponent to get the last Mammoth.

About the duration effect, my Nightwatch Ranger is to Fugitive what Mammoth is to Asper's Scientist. Scientist  is based on Storyteller's idea of converting coins into cards. With Storyteller you convert existing Coins whereas with Scientist you backload  the payment.
The entire idea could be totally broken, it is a card which needs quite some playtesting.

[Holunder9]

A simple idea, related to Coin of the Realms, for callable infinite Buys. Coppers and Curses have to be excluded to prevent the emptying of two piles (which would be even more broken with Gardens or Goons).
A nice feature is that you cannot call the card in the turn you played it so in an engine where you need the extra Buys to get components you need at least 2 in your deck.
Infinite Buys sound crazy at first but the card is dead when you play it and you rarely want more than 2 or 3 Buys anyway. There is some funky stuff with Peddlers and cost reduction might also make it possible to pile drive. So one alternative to phrase the card that totally prevents easy pile driving via Coppers, Curses and cost reduction would be:
While this is in play, when  you a card that costs more than +1 Buy.

[Chappy7]

I like that second wording much better.  Otherwise highway would make it too easy to pile drive. Once you have a lead and get 2 or 3 highways in play you could pile out the cheap cards.  Actually, you don't need a lead seeing as you can pile out the estates.  Maybe you should even make it say "While this is in play, when you buy a card that costs more than $1, +1 Buy.

[Holunder9]

Yeah, that makes much more sense.

[Thanar]

Thanks for making this set!

While downloading everything from the (updated) first post, I noticed that your imgur folder only contains 19 unique Traitor cards (5 Backstabbers, 5 Defectors, 5 Heretics, but just 4 Turncoats), instead of the advertised 20. Can you add the missing Turncoat?

[Holunder9]

Thanks for your kind words and pointing out the missing Traitori, I fixed it.

[Holunder9]

This is based on an idea by Seprix.
If you give it a fixed price it could be better than Province in some Kingdoms (e.g. if there are Attacks, Durations and Night cards this is better than Province as you can always buy a Curse to make Gate worth 7VPs). The variable/extra cost is a way to make the card a bit more interesting. Now you want to gain it when you have few different types in play yet your deck should have many different types.
Not sure on the numbers yet. To make the "gain at the right moment" aspect more relevant it could e.g. be 3-2 instead of 5-1 (implying a "base" price of 5 Coin and 2 Debt; you will rarely have only Actions or only Treasures in play).
A Peddler-like wording, e.g. "This costs 1 more per different type on the cards you have in play." is an alternative but it seems needlessly complicated with trash for benefit around.

[Holunder9]

I am not too happy with the current version. Not so much because the debt is not elegant but because it doesn't punish multiple types harsh enough. The debt version with 3-2 could just be too easy with gainers so I am going to try a straightforward cost increase. It shouldn't run into any issues except for trashing attacks. Unless you have an Action-Duration in play Knight (at a price of 7 it is safe) and Swindler (unless there are others 7s you get another Gate) could kill this.

[GendoIkari]

Although I really like the idea of Gate, I'm not sure how it will work given that it seems to be too literally dependent upon the Kingdom. As in; while all card's are better or worse in different Kingdoms, Gate has an easy-to-see hard cap which can vary wildly from game to game.

The max could be as little as 4 in some Kingdoms, and up to 22 in others.

While other victory cards may have some Kingdoms that make their caps easier to reach; the only example I can think of with a changing hard cap like this is Fairgrounds; and other than Black Market, it has a pretty small range of value. *Edit* Technically Vineyard and Silk Road have a kingdom-dependent cap; but only if you consider the situations of buying out the Kingdom pretty much.

For fun, a Kingdom that lets you get all 22 different types in your deck (without needing Black Market). It was actually pretty hard to figure out.

[Gazbag]

Although I really like the idea of Gate, I'm not sure how it will work given that it seems to be too literally dependent upon the Kingdom. As in; while all card's are better or worse in different Kingdoms, Gate has an easy-to-see hard cap which can vary wildly from game to game.

The max could be as little as 4 in some Kingdoms, and up to 22 in others.

While other victory cards may have some Kingdoms that make their caps easier to reach; the only example I can think of with a changing hard cap like this is Fairgrounds; and other than Black Market, it has a pretty small range of value. *Edit* Technically Vineyard and Silk Road have a kingdom-dependent cap; but only if you consider the situations of buying out the Kingdom pretty much.

For fun, a Kingdom that lets you get all 22 different types in your deck (without needing Black Market). It was actually pretty hard to figure out.

You have Necromancer, but no way to get a Zombie into your deck!

[Holunder9]

Although I really like the idea of Gate, I'm not sure how it will work given that it seems to be too literally dependent upon the Kingdom. As in; while all card's are better or worse in different Kingdoms, Gate has an easy-to-see hard cap which can vary wildly from game to game.

I agree. It is fairly easy to get most types present in a Kingdom into your deck (if you have half the pile of Gates in a game without junkers it can even make sense to buy a Curse in the endgame as it is the equivalent of a Duchy) whereas other Alt-VP depends more sensitively on your deck. So even without cost scaling the card could be too bland.

[GendoIkari]

Although I really like the idea of Gate, I'm not sure how it will work given that it seems to be too literally dependent upon the Kingdom. As in; while all card's are better or worse in different Kingdoms, Gate has an easy-to-see hard cap which can vary wildly from game to game.

The max could be as little as 4 in some Kingdoms, and up to 22 in others.

While other victory cards may have some Kingdoms that make their caps easier to reach; the only example I can think of with a changing hard cap like this is Fairgrounds; and other than Black Market, it has a pretty small range of value. *Edit* Technically Vineyard and Silk Road have a kingdom-dependent cap; but only if you consider the situations of buying out the Kingdom pretty much.

For fun, a Kingdom that lets you get all 22 different types in your deck (without needing Black Market). It was actually pretty hard to figure out.

You have Necromancer, but no way to get a Zombie into your deck!

Dang it! It might be impossible then. Any of the very few ways to get a card from the trash don’t provide any extra types.  So 21 might be the limit.

[Holunder9]

After some playtesting Djinn got changed as the on-gain restriction made the card too swingy.

Given the abundance of $4 villages I have a weakness for $2 villages so here is a quick, random idea:

+1 Card
+1 Action
You may discard an Action card for +1 Card and +1 Action.

or slight weaker:

You may discard an Action card for +2 Cards and +2 Actions.

[Kudasai]

After some playtesting Djinn got changed as the on-gain restriction made the card too swingy.

Given the abundance of $4 villages I have a weakness for $2 villages so here is a quick, random idea:

+1 Card
+1 Action
You may discard an Action card for +1 Card and +1 Action.

or slight weaker:

You may discard an Action card for +2 Cards and +2 Actions.

I too love $2 cost Villages, but man do they seem hard to get right. You want them to be worthwhile, but not overpowered at cost $2. I admire you for tackling this tricky nut.

Thoughts: In both versions you are buying a conditional village that may do nothing when played, all to save 1 coin on the buy. Since the difference between $2 and $3 isn't much, it seems to come down to +Buys. Without those on the board it might be hard to find a good time to pick these up. So my suggestion would be to go for the second version and have it add an unconditional +1 Buy. Of course this is now very similar to Hamlet.

I always thought it would be cool to have a card that has the following: "In games using this, you may overpay for Estates (or maybe Duchies?). For each 1 Coin you overpay, gain a <card>." Maybe this is that card!? :I

[Holunder9]

Without those on the board it might be hard to find a good time to pick these up. So my suggestion would be to go for the second version and have it add an unconditional +1 Buy. Of course this is now very similar to Hamlet.

I guess it would be totally OK to have this with an extra Buy and a cost of $3. After all it is just a basic idea for a weaker village and any kind of extra can be added to it.

About Hamlet, note that Hamlet reduces handsize whereas this village does not. So although it seems to be similar to Hamlet I don't think that it is. Hamlet is good in junking-intense games or with draw-to-X.
This village is good in any draw engine and as good as Village in a deck that draws itself (of course you should discard payload first and maintain terminal draw Actions in your hand).

[Holunder9]

Lich is inspiread by Kudasai's Old Witch but will play quite differently. It is a half-Curser, meaning that the first time you play it everybody else gets the negative VP and the second time the junk lands in their decks. In addition to that it is mainly a Copper trasher (you can put Curses on the mat to delay the inevitable or put a Silver there just like you would trash a Silver to make Forager better) and provides some scalable payload.

I am not sure about whether the card is good enough and shouldn't rather be buffed into a Night card or whether the whole mixture sucks, meaning that the half-cursing should be tacked onto something else.

[GendoIkari]

Lich is inspiread by Kudasai's Old Witch but will play quite differently. It is a half-Curser, meaning that the first time you play it everybody else gets the negative VP and the second time the junk lands in their decks. In addition to that it is mainly a Copper junker (you can put Curses on the mat to delay the inevitable or put a Silver there just like you would trash a Silver to make Forager better) and provides some scalable payload.

I am not sure about whether the card is good enough and shouldn't rather be buffed into a Night card or whether the whole mixture sucks, meaning that the half-cursing should be tacked onto something else.

Did you mean Copper trasher instead of Copper junker?

You should probably update "coin tokens" to the coffers wording.

The half curser idea is cool. No idea how strong the rest is; limiting it to non-victory is a big nerf.

[Holunder9]

Did you mean Copper trasher instead of Copper junker?

You should probably update "coin tokens" to the coffers wording.

The half curser idea is cool. No idea how strong the rest is; limiting it to non-victory is a big nerf.

- Good catch, of course it should read Copper trasher.
- I don't like the Coffers thingy and don't have a new Guilds copy anyway so I stick with the old Coin tokens wording.
- If the card could set aside Victory cards it would be far too good (even taking into account that then you'd then have to get rid of the overpowered Coin token thing).

[Commodore Chuckles]

Hmmmm... This seems like it will be very weak usually.

The cursing is slow, obviously. But the benefit it gives you will also typically just be a much worse Miser. Getting some stuff for the Liches to mat seems like a serious waste of resources, so mostly you'll just be trashing Coppers one at a time.

It will get much better with Shelters of course. And it's probably bonkers with Ruins.

One thing I don't like on first glance is how, especially if there's no trashing, it seems likely to turn into a tug-of-war with the Curses bouncing on and off your Tavern mat. That seems not particularly fun.

[Jack Rudd]

Lich has synergy with Reserve cards. How much this is worth, I do not know.

[Kudasai]

Lich - The concept is really cool and exciting! In a glass box, the card alone seems to offer a lot of diverse play. I really like how the Curse cycling on your Tavern mat effects the Coin output on play. Throw in Reserve cards and this should make for interesting and fun choices. Hard to tell if the price and power level are correct as this is a tough one the theorize. If adjustments are needed, you have a lot to work with:
-The non-Victory clause could be dropped.
-You could remove the bottom half choice and get both the ability to place a card and get the Coin tokens. If you went this route, you could make the choice be to Curse or to Place/Take Coins. In this version you want to win the Curse split, but you also don't want to give your opponent an extra Coin token early.

Either way I think the core mechanics are very sound and this seems playtestable. I don't play so much in real life, but the next time I do I'll try and squeeze this one into a game. Also, thanks for the shout-out!



 

[LastFootnote]

I am not too happy with the current version. Not so much because the debt is not elegant but because it doesn't punish multiple types harsh enough. The debt version with 3-2 could just be too easy with gainers so I am going to try a straightforward cost increase. It shouldn't run into any issues except for trashing attacks. Unless you have an Action-Duration in play Knight (at a price of 7 it is safe) and Swindler (unless there are others 7s you get another Gate) could kill this.

In Adventures, we tested a Treasure that was worth $1 per different type on cards you had in play. It varied too wildly in value, so it turned into a card that cared about having specific types in play, and then finally vastly simplified into Relic.

My suggested fix to the original concept was to also vary the cost, much like Gate; $1 per different type on cards in the Supply. Donald X. never tried it, but in theory it seems like it should work pretty well. I also slapped +1 Buy on it so that it was worth getting over Silver in games with just Action, Victory, Treasure, and Curse in the Supply.

Curio: Treasure, $?
+1 Buy
When you play this, it's worth $1 per type on cards you have in play.
--------------------------
This costs $1 per type on cards in the Supply.

So if you had, say, Caravan (Action-Duration) and Militia (Action-Attack) in the Supply, Curio would start out costing $6 and you could get it up to being worth +$4. The cost would go down to $5 if the Caravans ran out, though. Just as an example.

Anyway, it seemed like it might be fun to try in a game, though I don't know if would actually have lasting appeal. Courtier has already used this concept a bit, and in an arguably more interesting way.

Sorry that this post didn't have anything to do with Gate. It just reminded me of this story.

[Holunder9]

Lich - The concept is really cool and exciting! In a glass box, the card alone seems to offer a lot of diverse play. I really like how the Curse cycling on your Tavern mat effects the Coin output on play. Throw in Reserve cards and this should make for interesting and fun choices. Hard to tell if the price and power level are correct as this is a tough one the theorize. If adjustments are needed, you have a lot to work with:
-The non-Victory clause could be dropped.
-You could remove the bottom half choice and get both the ability to place a card and get the Coin tokens. If you went this route, you could make the choice be to Curse or to Place/Take Coins. In this version you want to win the Curse split, but you also don't want to give your opponent an extra Coin token early.

Either way I think the core mechanics are very sound and this seems playtestable. I don't play so much in real life, but the next time I do I'll try and squeeze this one into a game. Also, thanks for the shout-out!

I think that is a cool idea as it makes the card attractive in the presence of other Cursers. My version is unlikely to be bought if Mountebank is around but your version would then just be used like e.g. Forager, trashing and some payload.

Due to the Coin tokens, and for thematic reasons, I think though that a natural buff would to make this into a Night card.

I also fear that trashing and yielding Coin tokens could be too good.
In a normal game, after the first play of Lich you will have between 1 and 2 cards on your Tavern mat but as has been pointed out, if there are Shelters, Heirlooms, Ruins, Reserve cards or if you later set aside a Silver, Lich can provide more. As I guess that a vanilla card that provides 3 Coin tokens would be roughly a $5 I fear that Lich could be situationally too good.

[Kudasai]

I also fear that trashing and yielding Coin tokens could be too good.
In a normal game, after the first play of Lich you will have between 1 and 2 cards on your Tavern mat but as has been pointed out, if there are Shelters, Heirlooms, Ruins, Reserve cards or if you later set aside a Silver, Lich can provide more. As I guess that a vanilla card that provides 3 Coin tokens would be roughly a $5 I fear that Lich could be situationally too good.

I agree with what Gazbag once said, "Dominion is a situational game", or something to that effect. I don't think these situations will come up often and maybe don't merit planning for, but if you wanna reign in the max power level of Lich you have options:
(1) Cap the amount of Coin tokens Lich can produce. Not very exciting though.
(2) Only count cards on your Tavern mat with one type. This removes Shelters, Ruins, Heirlooms, and Reserve cards in one fell swoop. This should play more or less the same, but if a player really wants to churn out Coin tokens they need to start removing more valuable cards like Silver and Action cards.

[Holunder9]

OK, here is a quick, wonky idea for an $5 or $6 Action:

Put your hand on top of your deck. Trash this. If you did, gain a Province.

It is like Tactician as it wants virtual Coins, it is like Distant Lands as you do not want to get it too late in the game and it is a Haunted Woods attack against yourself.

[Kudasai]

OK, here is a quick, wonky idea for an $5 or $6 Action:

Put your hand on top of your deck. Trash this. If you did, gain a Province.

It is like Tactician as it wants virtual Coins, it is like Distant Lands as you do not want to get it too late in the game and it is a Haunted Woods attack against yourself.

Interesting! Cards that lower the Province gaining threshold are always cool. I'm also a fan of top decking cards to setup the next hand. Being restricted to only Province gaining is a bummer though. It seems you'd have to go through a lot of hoops to make this work and then you're only able to gain a single Province per turn. I'd prefer something with more strategic wiggle room. Something that didn't top-deck my whole hand and could gain other non-Province cards.

Not sure if you were looking for feedback or suggestions, but I came up with this:



It can do the same thing as your version, but adds some flexibility in play. If this proved too strong, you could make it check the top-decked cards for different card types, names, or something else completely.

[Gazbag]

OK, here is a quick, wonky idea for an $5 or $6 Action:

Put your hand on top of your deck. Trash this. If you did, gain a Province.

It is like Tactician as it wants virtual Coins, it is like Distant Lands as you do not want to get it too late in the game and it is a Haunted Woods attack against yourself.

Interesting! Cards that lower the Province gaining threshold are always cool. I'm also a fan of top decking cards to setup the next hand. Being restricted to only Province gaining is a bummer though. It seems you'd have to go through a lot of hoops to make this work and then you're only able to gain a single Province per turn. I'd prefer something with more strategic wiggle room. Something that didn't top-deck my whole hand and could gain other non-Province cards.

Not sure if you were looking for feedback or suggestions, but I came up with this:



It can do the same thing as your version, but adds some flexibility in play. If this proved too strong, you could make it check the top-decked cards for different card types, names, or something else completely.

I think the problem with this is that it costs $6, so because it's a one-shot you kind of need to gain a Province anyway to really get anywhere with it?

[Kudasai]

I think the problem with this is that it costs $6, so because it's a one-shot you kind of need to gain a Province anyway to really get anywhere with it?

Yeah, the core functionality of gaining Provinces is still the same. This is just nice in the off chance there are other $7 plus cards to be gained.

I also think the top decking for an expensive one-shot like this should be more of a reward and not a punishment. In the absence of trashers, top decking your whole hand would be very brutal.

This might be a bit too strong, but the option to top deck the gained card would also be neat. Would go a long way to justify a $5-6 Coin one-shot.

[Asper]

You should call this something with "lands" in the name, because it reminds me of Farmlands and Distand Lands. You pay 6 for a Province later, and you need to play it to get the points.

Personally I think it could just say "Trash this to gain a card costing up to 8". Anything else would just plainly downgrade the card, although of course putting cards onto your deck can be useful sometimes(!) and it can't gain Colonies that way. But it's much better in any other case.

Edit: Although my suggestion makes for a veeeery bland card. My point was mostly, it doesn't need to be as weak.

[Holunder9]

OK, here is a quick, wonky idea for an $5 or $6 Action:

Put your hand on top of your deck. Trash this. If you did, gain a Province.

It is like Tactician as it wants virtual Coins, it is like Distant Lands as you do not want to get it too late in the game and it is a Haunted Woods attack against yourself.

Interesting! Cards that lower the Province gaining threshold are always cool. I'm also a fan of top decking cards to setup the next hand. Being restricted to only Province gaining is a bummer though. It seems you'd have to go through a lot of hoops to make this work and then you're only able to gain a single Province per turn. I'd prefer something with more strategic wiggle room. Something that didn't top-deck my whole hand and could gain other non-Province cards.

Not sure if you were looking for feedback or suggestions, but I came up with this:



It can do the same thing as your version, but adds some flexibility in play. If this proved too strong, you could make it check the top-decked cards for different card types, names, or something else completely.

So this is very good if there is Expand, Forge, Prince or Platinum/Colony in the game. Otherwise, when you use it to gain a Province, you have to topdeck 4 cards. I don't think that this is necessarily better than my version as there are plenty of Kingdoms with Action cards as main Coin source.

In general a card that can directly gain a Province should be a bit weak as it would otherwise dominate too many games. I agree though that topdecking your entire hand is pretty harsh so perhaps your suggestion to topdeck the gained card would suffice. It still keeps the flavour of a Rabble-style self-attack (Relic is so good because it is basically an anti-Lab for the opponents) while not being too harsh. It could also hand-gain the Province and then make you reveal your hand and topdeck all Victory cards (unlike the original version which yearns for virtual coins this version would be bad in a drawing engine).

Trash this. If you did, gain a Province to your hand. Reveal your hand. Put all Victory cards onto your deck.

Another version to buff it would be to include gaining 2 Duchies as a second option. This might be broken in Duke games but otherwise it would probably make the endgame more interesting.

Trash this. If you did, gain a Province or 2 Duchies onto your deck.

[Kudasai]

Another version to buff it would be to include gaining 2 Duchies as a second option. This might be broken in Duke games but otherwise it would probably make the endgame more interesting.

Trash this. If you did, gain a Province or 2 Duchies onto your deck.

I do like the option to gain 2 Duchies. This doesn't do anything Stonemason+Gold can't accomplish, so I don't think it would be an issue in Duke games. You could even take it further in this direction and do something like: "Gain (2-3) Victory cards with a total cost in coin of up to ($10-$14) to your deck." This would open the door to alt-Victory strategies.

You should call this something with "lands" in the name, because it reminds me of Farmlands and Distand Lands. You pay 6 for a Province later, and you need to play it to get the points.

Badlands seems very appropriate given the self-inflicted attack! Riverland might also work.

[Holunder9]

Another version to buff it would be to include gaining 2 Duchies as a second option. This might be broken in Duke games but otherwise it would probably make the endgame more interesting.

Trash this. If you did, gain a Province or 2 Duchies onto your deck.

I do like the option to gain 2 Duchies. This doesn't do anything Stonemason+Gold can't accomplish, so I don't think it would be an issue in Duke games. You could even take it further in this direction and do something like: "Gain (2-3) Victory cards with a total cost in coin of up to ($10-$14) to your deck." This would open the door to alt-Victory strategies.

Yeah, due to the topdecking it is probably not all that brilliant even in Duke games. The cost thing is good idea, with a total cost of $10 you could e.g. gain Duchy+Duchy, Province+Estate, Silk Road + Silk Road + Estates and so on. It also makes Province gaining weaker as you normally don't want the Estate.

[Asper]

I'm not convinced it needs to hurt you as much, but I agree that doing something extre can make it more interesing and Badlands sounds like a cute name.

If the max total amount you could gain was 12, you could even do things like Province/Gardens, Nobles/Harem, Farmlands/Fairgounds... Pay 6 once, get 6 twice actually is not all that strong, but it would add immense flexibility in alt VP games. In the end, all it does for those is still keeping two VP cards "packed" into a single stop card, but with delay and everything.

On the other hand, 12 enables you to gain Colonies, especially if the wording isn't careful about you having to gain a first card that still leaves a second one to gain. Interestingly, this doesn't come up with a total cost of 10 as quickly, but it does. For instance by choosing a Colony after cost reduction, or when Duchies and Estates are out.

So your wording would have to do a "choose two Victory cards in the supply" first. This however still has issues. For example, can I choose the same card twice? If I can choose e.g. Duchy twice and there's only one in the supply, do I gain no second card? I already chose. This wording's going to be tricky. I actually had a lot of that trouble before when working on Assemble...

[Holunder9]

I don't know, being able to gain 3 Gardens, 3 Silk Roads or 2 Distant Lands and an Estate for a mere $6 seems a bit strong. Then again I might be seriously underestimating the Rabble self-attack. Plus of course the Colony issue.

No idea about how to word it well but the intuitive way this should work is: choose a Victory card with cost w, then you are forced to gain another Victory card with cost x while w+x is smaller than z, then you are forced to gain another Victory card with cost y while w+x+y is smaller than z and so on (with z being, in the examples, 10 or 12).
This rule would enable you to get a Colony, afterwards you are forced to gain a Victory card that costs $1 but none is available so you are done gaining green.

The other rule you seem to have in mind is that you simultaneously have to choose all cards whose total sum of cost equals precisely z. But as you pointed out this simultaneous thing runs into issues if a pile runs out. Or differently phrased, as you do gain cards sequently in Dominion anything about simultaneous choosing/gaining naturally runs into rule issues.

[Asper]

I'm totally assuming no self-attack. However, I also assume a fixed number of two cards.

The simple point is, for 6 you can get Altar, which gains Distant Lands without being a one-shot, and even trashes while doing so. If you can buy a Distant Lands for 5, is it really overpowered to spend an additional shuffle and an Action on getting a second one?

I think you gravely underestimate the opportunity cost of a 6-cost one-shot.

[Holunder9]

The only difference between buying a Province and somehow gaining the one-shot is is that you have to draw into the one-shot and spend an Action. So you need a bit more terminal space and you cannot gain the one-shot too late (which is mitigated by allowing to gain other green besides Provinces).
I think Farmlands is a more apt comparison. When you play well with it you trash a Gold and then are able to constantly gain Provinces for $6 instead of $8. So there is some initial investment (ignoring casting where you buy the first Farmlands to Remodel an Estate into a $4 and don't have to get rid of a Gold) to get the whole thing running and sometimes you don't draw into Farmlands.

So with Farmlands there is a cost and that's why I am pretty sure that there has to be something like gaining the green on-top. Otherwise the one-shot would be too bland, simple, automatic and strong.

Action
Cost - 5
Trash this. If you did, gain Victory cards with a total cost in of up to 10 onto your deck (if possible you have to continue gaining further Victory cards until you reached the cost limit).

10 is normally Duchy/Duchy or Province/Estate. I don't think that 12 would be good, it is broken in a Colony game, very good with Alt-VP (mostly costing 4 or 6) and weak without alt-VP (Duchy/Duchy/Estate or Province/Estate/Estate).

[Kudasai]

I can't weigh in much on the power level of either Holunder9 or ASper's versions (you're both far better at that kind of analysis), but I can offer a wording suggestion:



If Colony gaining was the only reason for keeping the total cost below $10 Coin, this would fix that issue and allow for more total coin.

If this is to be sort of a self, topdecking punishment card, I like the idea of letting the player choose up to 3 Victory cards to gain. It makes them weigh the maximum potential of the one-shot to how bad they want their next hand to be. They could gain just the one Province and probably have an intact next hand, but the card potential isn't reached.

[Asper]

12 is broken only if you do a wording that lets you get around choosing two cards that are 12 total. A wording that doesn't would be "Choose two Victory cards in the supply with a total cost of up to 12, to gain them.". But I already remarked on that.

And I really don't think you should consider the ability to do a Remodel effect on gain as "an investment". It's the opposite. You can remodel a Gold if you really wish so, but, uh, that's one of many options, and even then you still just traded one 6 for another and bought a Province for 6.
Edit: To be entirely correct, in your example, of course you could have played the Gold and bought the Province outright. But yeah, Farmlands allowed you to do something else instead.

[Holunder9]

I can't weigh in much on the power level of either Holunder9 or ASper's versions (you're both far better at that kind of analysis), but I can offer a wording suggestion:



If Colony gaining was the only reason for keeping the total cost below $10 Coin, this would fix that issue and allow for more total coin.

If this is to be sort of a self, topdecking punishment card, I like the idea of letting the player choose up to 3 Victory cards to gain. It makes them weigh the maximum potential of the one-shot to how bad they want their next hand to be. They could gain just the one Province and probably have an intact next hand, but the card potential isn't reached.

That's a great, unambiguous wording. The only thing I don't like is that it is inflexible about the number of Victory cards so I'd change it to: Trash this. If you do, do this up to 6 times:
The problem with this is though that you then can just gain one Province and don't have to gain the Estate.

It's really a mess to word this perfectly.

[Asper]

Yeah, wording this kind of thing is a pain. I actually never found a satisfying solution to this with Assemble, now that I think about it.

Also, compare this to Distant Lands. That one costs as much as a Duchy, but gives more points and stops clogging your deck. It also has a lot in common with Feast, in that it's a self-Remodel. If you gain a Province withit, it already gains you an Estate... Yuk. It can be non-terrible for some alt-VP games without being broken, guys.

[GendoIkari]

I can't weigh in much on the power level of either Holunder9 or ASper's versions (you're both far better at that kind of analysis), but I can offer a wording suggestion:



If Colony gaining was the only reason for keeping the total cost below $10 Coin, this would fix that issue and allow for more total coin.

If this is to be sort of a self, topdecking punishment card, I like the idea of letting the player choose up to 3 Victory cards to gain. It makes them weigh the maximum potential of the one-shot to how bad they want their next hand to be. They could gain just the one Province and probably have an intact next hand, but the card potential isn't reached.

This doesn't work due to the lose track rule. Once you've gained both cards, you can't move the first one you gained. Also, just seems super weird to allow you to choose to gain 2 Provinces, but if you do you get nothing. There must be a wording that allows you to only choose what you want the person to be able to choose in the first place.

Finally, seems really weak. Gaining a Province and an Estate is pretty bad unless the game is almost over.

[Holunder9]

Yeah, wording this kind of thing is a pain. I actually never found a satisfying solution to this with Assemble, now that I think about it.

Also, compare this to Distant Lands. That one costs as much as a Duchy, but gives more points and stops clogging your deck. It also has a lot in common with Feast, in that it's a self-Remodel. If you gain a Province withit, it already gains you an Estate... Yuk. It can be non-terrible for some alt-VP games without being broken, guys.

Distant Lands is so good that it can virtually never be ignored but the main difference between Distant Lands and some one-shot that directly gains Victory cards is that the former is an entirely new card.
So the one-shot should not be so good that it is too often the main or only way towards green. I see though that the green topdecking might make the card too weak.

One way to achieve what you suggested, make the card flexible in terms of being good for Alt-VP but also "ordinary" Province gaining, would be to make the cost variable, i.e. you could e.g. pay 5 to be able to gain Victory cards costing a total 8, pay 6 to be able to gain Victory cards costing a total of 10 and so on (potentially with other values). Then again this nearly impossible to implement in a non-digital form though.
The only way to physically do it which I see is via overpay. As the card cannot memorize that it became better due to overpaying you'd have to exchange the 5-8 Victory card for a 6-10 or 7-12 and afterwards put the gained 5-8 into card nirvana which seems like a total mess of an implementation.

[Asper]

I mean, feel free to not believe me, but I recommend you try it out in playtesting.

If you are worried that direct gaining of Provinces is too strong, how about centering it around engines and alt-VP instead?

Trash this to gain two cards costing up to 6.

is probably a bit too similar to Vampire (although terminal and without the Bat thing), but looks balanced just fine and will go with all sorts of strategies. It could be another starting point.

[Holunder9]

I mean, feel free to not believe me, but I recommend you try it out in playtesting.

If you are worried that direct gaining of Provinces is too strong, how about centering it around engines and alt-VP instead?

Trash this to gain two cards costing up to 6.

is probably a bit too similar to Vampire (although terminal and without the Bat thing), but looks balanced just fine and will go with all sorts of strategies. It could be another starting point.

If I ever try something like this out (so far I mentally categorize it more as crackpot idea than as decent card idea to really try out) I will definitely first test it without the topdecking.
Your idea looks sound (it is definitely simpler, more flexible and less wacky than my ideas) and different enough from Feast to be interesting. I have a hard time judging one-shots though. My first hunch is that this should cost $4 like Feast but it is probably rather a $3.

[Kudasai]

One way to achieve what you suggested, make the card flexible in terms of being good for Alt-VP but also "ordinary" Province gaining, would be to make the cost variable, i.e. you could e.g. pay 5 to be able to gain Victory cards costing a total 8, pay 6 to be able to gain Victory cards costing a total of 10 and so on (potentially with other values). Then again this nearly impossible to implement in a non-digital form though.
The only way to physically do it which I see is via overpay. As the card cannot memorize that it became better due to overpaying you'd have to exchange the 5-8 Victory card for a 6-10 or 7-12 and afterwards put the gained 5-8 into card nirvana which seems like a total mess of an implementation.

This sounds similar to an idea I wanted to try (shameless plug incoming!). No idea if it works, but I'm sharing merely to show that I think keeping track of overpays is possible. It's not card by card, but it can track the last overpay and apply that to all cards.




This is the best I can do to implement this format into your specifications. The values don't quite match, but I think they are close enough.

Yeah, wording this kind of thing is a pain. I actually never found a satisfying solution to this with Assemble, now that I think about it.

I think the Assemble wording looks fine, but if you wanted it to be more in-line with official wording, you could tweak it a bit to be more like Develop.

[Holunder9]

A mat and tokens are a cool way to memorize overpay effects but the problem is that it isn't bound to the single card. This isn't a problem for your Tinkerer but for the one-shot it is unless one doesn't mind that buying a copy of the one-shot, then buying a second copy and overpaying for it makes both copies identical/better.

[Kudasai]

I should also add that I don't think I've been tracking the conversation properly. I may be missing the intent of the card and thus have been offering useless mockups. But hopefully you can still take away the core implementation and put that into whatever mechanics you want.

[Holunder9]

Definitely, as usual you are mechanically the most innovative amongst us and this is easily the best way to implement value changes / Mystic vale style card crafting in Dominion.

About Tinkerer, I like the idea but think that the values are off. You can e.g. buy Tinkerer, not overpay for it, later buy a second Tinkerer, pay 8 for it and now you have 2 direct Province gainers in your deck.

[Kudasai]

A mat and tokens are a cool way to memorize overpay effects but the problem is that it isn't bound to the single card. This isn't a problem for your Tinkerer but for the one-shot it is unless one doesn't mind that buying a copy of the one-shot, then buying a second copy and overpaying for it makes both copies identical/better.

Yeah. There's probably no good way to track individual cards, but I think the overall tracking is still a viable solution. A player may be tempted to buy a bunch at $5 then go for the overpay, but in doing so they are flooding their deck with terminal, block cards. The mechanics of Dominion itself may make buying and holding onto a bunch of these a losing strategy. I of course can't prove this without testing, but I think it's worth considering if you really wanted to go for the overpay route.

[Kudasai]

About Tinkerer, I like the idea but think that the values are off. You can e.g. buy Tinkerer, not overpay for it, later buy a second Tinkerer, pay 8 for it and now you have 2 direct Province gainers in your deck.

This was a concern I never got around to testing. I just got caught up and excited about the overpay-gainer conversation and wanted to share. Testing is needed! I think with the right values, both of our concepts can work.

[Holunder9]

About Tinkerer, I like the idea but think that the values are off. You can e.g. buy Tinkerer, not overpay for it, later buy a second Tinkerer, pay 8 for it and now you have 2 direct Province gainers in your deck.

This was a concern I never got around to testing. I just got caught up and excited about the overpay-gainer conversation and wanted to share. Testing is needed! I think with the right values, both of our concepts can work.

Definitely, as one, pardon the pun, has to tinker with several values it is a testing-intense thing. But I am pretty sure that a Province gainer for $8 is too good. Take Fortune, you are willing to pay 16 for something which often just makes you gain another Province in the turn you play it (of course with good play and in the right Kingdom you can do something more brilliant with Fortune).

On a sidenote, I just wanted to quickly remark that there are two other ways to buff a green-gaining one-shot: make it a Night card or even better, make it a Reaction that triggers on discard.
The former means that you need no terminal space anymore, so you'll always go for it unless the ending is near and fear that you don't shuffle and draw into the one-shot anymore whereas with sifters the latter doesn't even occupy a "real card space" (or however you want to call it) in your deck.

Here is a quick mock-up that uses Kudasai's wording:

[Holunder9]

So while I am doing wacky stuff, here is another crazy idea for a $5/$6 Action-Reserve:

Put this on your Tavern mat.
--------------------------
When another player would gain a non-Victory card, you may call this to gain that card instead.

It is a kind of mixture between Smugglers, Duplicate and a trashing Attack that triggers on-gain (when the opponent gains a card).
Well, it is not literally the same thing as the gained card doesn't get trashed but it is the closest comparison to existing cards that came to mind and that might help judging the card.

My first hunch is that this is either broken or unfun due to the "war of attrition" that will emerge in 2P and due to to "Cold War" / "first to move loses" issue that might emerge in multiplayer (A and B have this Reserve card on their Tavern mat, C gains a card. If A calls first then B can call and hurt C as well as A so nobody will call; having the Reserve set aside just serves as defense against the other players calling theirs.).
The multiplayer issue is fixable via restricting it, like Smugglers, to cards that the player to your right would gain.

[Chappy7]

So while I am doing wacky stuff, here is another crazy idea for a $5/$6 Action-Reserve:

Put this on your Tavern mat.
--------------------------
When another player would gain a non-Victory card, you may call this to gain that card instead.

It is a kind of mixture between Smugglers, Duplicate and a trashing Attack that triggers on-gain (when the opponent gains a card).
Well, it is not literally the same thing as the gained card doesn't get trashed but it is the closest comparison to existing cards that came to mind and that might help judging the card.

I hate to say it, but even if this worked, it sounds really un-fun.

My first hunch is that this is either broken or unfun due to the "war of attrition" that will emerge in 2P and due to to "Cold War" / "first to move loses" issue that might emerge in multiplayer (A and B have this Reserve card on their Tavern mat, C gains a card. If A calls first then B can call and hurt C as well as A so nobody will call; having the Reserve set aside just serves as defense against the other players calling theirs.).
The multiplayer issue is fixable via restricting it, like Smugglers, to cards that the player to your right would gain.

[Asper]

Dead Marshes as shown above can't work. It's got all too much text on it.

Also, if you reduce the cost of cards by e.g. Bridge, you can gain up to all of them...

[Holunder9]

Dead Marshes as shown above can't work. It's got all too much text on it.

Non sequitur, functionality and amount of text are unrelated.
But if you have a better way to implement this than Kudasai (I owe the card to him, it is his great wording) that uses less text I am all ears.

Also, if you reduce the cost of cards by e.g. Bridge, you can gain up to all of them...

True that. But I don't mind that cost reducers allow you to empty the Estate pile, it is just one interaction and as you frequently pointed out, the one-shot is rather weak so it situationally being strong is a plus in my books.

[Asper]

Dead Marshes as shown above can't work. It's got all too much text on it.

Non sequitur, functionality and amount of text are unrelated.
But if you have a better way to implement this than Kudasai (I owe the card to him, it is his great wording) that uses less text I am all ears.

Call it a non sequitur if you will, but the card is broken and overly complex, which in my book is just as good. The wording length just signals it.

Being able to just gain the entire Estate pile and two Duchies after a cost reduction of 2$ is broken. Reduce the cost by 3 and you can get all Estates, a Province and a Duchy. Reduce it by 4 and you can gain all Estates and two Provinces. At 5 you insta-win - or rather, you instantly get more than half the points in the game and now your opponent has to empty another pile to make this awful charade of a game end. Determining the game's winner before its end by being the first player to get 5 Highways in play and drawing this card is simply not a lot of fun. It's a bug, not a feature.

Also, what happened to the concern of buying one cheaper and one expensively later? This doesn't address this at all. It just punishes you for buying an expensive one and a cheaper one later. Here's a suggestion: Expend the tokens on playing the card - it's a one-shot, after all. Sure, you can overpay 2 now and 2 later, and then use up all 4 at once, but where's the problem with that?

Trash this and remove any number of tokens from your Marshes Mat. Choose two Victory cards in the supply that together cost up to 8$ + 1$ per token removed, and gain them.
---
When you buy this, you may overpay for it, to put a token on your Marsh Mat per $ overpaid.

All of this said, there's still the question why anyone would want to overpay for any version of this. When am I so desperate for points that I want to gain an Estate, but also have so much time that I'd rather pay for it now and get it a shuffle later? When do I seriously want to have two Duchies over a Province outside of Duke games? The applications of the overpay are extremely narrow. Any alt-VP costing less than 5 doesn't need the overpay, and any costing more would probably be easier to get by buying the copies individually.

[Holunder9]

Cool, so the card is too weak and too strong at the same time. 
Seriously dude, I already told that I view it as a wacky idea so it being overpowered with Highway is really my last worry.

About your question about why anybody would overpay for this, you don't seem to get the basic idea of the card although it was your suggestion: make it more flexible such that it is decent for Province gaining as well as Alt-VP.
You can e.g. pay 5 to later gain a Province, pay 6 to gain 2 Duchies/Dukes or pay 7 for 3 Gardens. So contrary to your claim it seems to be pretty decent with Alt-VP wherea you normally just get one Duke when you hit 7.

I totally agree that the card is wonky but not because it has a few more words than the average Dominion card. The amount of text isn't correlated with card complexity by the way. If Dominion featured card drafting like Mystic Vale this could be done with virtually no text and would then appear as the simple thing that it is: 5 for 8, 6 for 10, 7 for 12, etc.

Kudasai's wording does indeed have the problem that the info is not stored on individual cards yet applies to the entire pile (we already discussed this previously) which isn't a big thing with Victory cards as you will mostly go for the same values each time you buy Dead Marshes anyway.
Your version has several problems. First of all, it clearly needs a 1:2, not a 1:1 ratio. Second, your version is restricted to gaining 2 cards which fixes the Highway issue but makes the card significantly weaker with Alt-VP. Third, your version is more about accumulating and removing tokens which might totally be a thing but doesn't really have to do anything with what I am aiming for which is using the overpay and token mechanism to make the card flexible without having to print out 36 Victory cards and introducing some weird rules that deals with the pile size of a "Hydra" pile (like, there is only the base 5-8 card in the SuUpply and when you overpay for it you put it into card nirvana and instead gain a 6-10 or which is a non-Supply card) which was my first idea until Kudasai came along with something far better.

[Asper]

...Why do I get the impression I know you already?

[heron]

I feel like 4 provinces for $17 is too good.

[Holunder9]

I feel like 4 provinces for $17 is too good.

Without Duration draw the additional cost is that your next turn will be dead (or in the Estates pile emptying that Asper pointed out, your next two turns) but I agree that that 17 and a dead turn for 4 Provinces might be too good.

[heron]

I feel like 4 provinces for $17 is too good.

Without Duration draw the additional cost is that your next turn will be dead (or in the Estates pile emptying that Asper pointed out, your next two turns) but I agree that that 17 and a dead turn for 4 Provinces might be too good.

It doesn't really matter that your next turn is dead when you just gained the last four provinces.

[Holunder9]

I feel like 4 provinces for $17 is too good.

Without Duration draw the additional cost is that your next turn will be dead (or in the Estates pile emptying that Asper pointed out, your next two turns) but I agree that that 17 and a dead turn for 4 Provinces might be too good.

It doesn't really matter that your next turn is dead when you just gained the last four provinces.

True that but if it is the first 4 Provinces it is a significant cost. In a 2P game in which the other player also has a Dead Marshes with 12 tokens playing Dead Marshes it could even be a severe mistake if your play of Dead Marshes allows the other player to finish the game.
But I totally agree with your general point that the values of this card are off and need further work.

[Asper]

I'd much rather buy Dominate if I have 17 than this.

[Holunder9]

Wanna sift through or trash some junk? Here is the guy for it. He can also set up a Province for your Tournament or dig for a Night card. Overall a versatile card that is obviously inspired by Settlers.
It could be too strong for $2 yet too weak for $3.

[Asper]

Astrologer seems fine for 2$, certainly not too strong. At the end of the day, the card is very situational. It supports trashing, but only non-Treasure trashing, and only if you have a discard pile. And it keeps Victory cards out of the shuffle, but only if you are going to shuffle this turn. Like Pearl Diver, it benefits from being better than nothing for a price point where you often can't pick up anything else, and that's good enough often enough. I wouldn't buy it for 3$,except on boards where I need specific Victory cards in hand, eg. Baron, Tournament or Forge, or where handsize plays a role, eg. Artificer.

[Holunder9]

I doubt that is is Pearl Diver level weak and more similar in strength to Patrician or Vagrant. Being able to feed your sifters or trashers some non-Copper junk can sometimes be a thing.
I mainly worried about Tournament games becoming even more luck-dependent and this being too often a Laboratory in games with Den of Sin (which is the only Night card that you want en masse besides Werewolf, a card that cannot be targeted by Astrologer). But as you said, that is quite situational.

[Holunder9]

   

A quick non-terminal draw idea that is related to Storyteller, Den of Sin and Expedition. The whole thing could be implemented via Card tokens or whatever but I prefer a card-shaped thing.
Slightly buffed via gaining Cursed Abbey to hand and via allowing Invocation to draw cards from the discard pile. The latter might make Invocation less automatic, i.e. don't use them immediately but wait until you have something nice in the discard pile at the start of your turn.

[Gubump]

Shouldn't Invocation say "This is gained to your Tavern mat instead of your discard pile," since that's what the 2nd edition wording is like?

[Holunder9]

While Invocation behaves a bit differently than Experiment I don't think that it is different enough to warrant sticking to it.

[Holunder9]

So Love Letter is on the first glance pretty similar to Flagbearer but plays differently as it triggers on play as opposed to on-gain and on-trash. It is really more of a reverse Relic, a classical Silver 5+ that you want once or twice in your deck whereas Flagbearer is trash that you wanna quickly get rid of (I guess the new term for that is, you want to Recruit him).

[Holunder9]

MY first hunch is that Renaissance Tokemonger feels too weak without spying and too good with the spying.

[ThetaSigma12]

Wording suggestion:

+1 Action
Reveal the top card of your deck, then put it in your hand. If it was an...
Action card, +1 Villager
Treasure card, +1 Coffer
Victory card, +1

[Holunder9]

Wording suggestion:

+1 Action
Reveal the top card of your deck, then put it in your hand. If it was an...
Action card, +1 Villager
Treasure card, +1 Coffer
Victory card, +1

Sure, you can word it like Chariot Race but I noticed in my games that sometimes players internalize that cantrips are cantrips better if they see immediately that the card draws.

[Holunder9]

This is a card from one of the contests. I never did anything with positive stuff for the other players so here it is. Obviously the other way around, i.e. you get Coffers and they get Villagers, would be bonkers (not to mention that this design space is already more or less covered by Merchant Guild) and the card, like Monastery, wants to gain several cards per turn to be worthwhile.
As I expect the card to be fairly narrow due to the strength of Coffers I added the hand-gaining.

[Fly-Eagles-Fly]

I like it better as Black Cat then Monk. Really cool card.

[Asper]

*Asper plays Posession
*Asper buys a Copper
*Asper plays Black Cat
*Holunder9 buys Travelling Fair
...

[Holunder9]

Yeah, it is broken with Possession. Gotta live with that.

[Kudasai]

Yeah, it is broken with Possession. Gotta live with that.

You could add: "If the previous turn wasn't yours, do this any number of times: ..." It's a lot of text to add for just one card interaction, but whole paragraphs have been written in rulebooks to address Possession issues. In that context, maybe this isn't so bad?

I think I'll be adding this to Bivouac to be on the safe side.

[GendoIkari]

*Asper plays Posession
*Asper buys a Copper
*Asper plays Black Cat
*Holunder9 buys Travelling Fair
...

Ha. So while I defended the possibility of going infinite with regards to Road and Champion; I agree that this is a bigger issue. The problem is it's way too easy to set up; and doesn't require any particular building to a particular combo. It's simply "in games using this, the first player to play a Possession immediately wins".

[GendoIkari]

Yeah, it is broken with Possession. Gotta live with that.

You could add: "If the previous turn wasn't yours, do this any number of times: ..." It's a lot of text to add for just one card interaction, but whole paragraphs have been written in rulebooks to address Possession issues. In that context, maybe this isn't so bad?

I think I'll be adding this to Bivouac to be on the safe side.

That text doesn't prevent it. The infinite move is being done on your regular turn, before the Possession turn.

[Holunder9]

It's simply "in games using this, the first player to play a Possession immediately wins".

Nah, as Asper pointed out you also need Travelling Fair. Or 7 Market Squares in the opponents deck which he or she is unlikely to provide. So it is a 3 card combo, like the good old KC-Masquerade(1st)-Goons, with infinitesimal odds of occuring.

I think I'll be adding this to Bivouac to be on the safe side.

Without having thought much about it, I doubt that it is even feasible to fix Possession interactions with token-gaining cards with infinite loops. But even if it possible, you'll have an easier time to live with a card being broken with Possession than to fix interactions with a dubious, way-too-high-complexity card whose token interactions rules have been changed several times. In my opinion this is  more of a problem of Possession than of Bivouac or Black Cat just like Champion+Road is more of a problem of Champion than of Road.

Arguably all three concepts are problematic, otherwise such mess wouldn't arise: playing with the hand and tokens of somebody else, playing a card and getting it back to hand, doing something good for you and them as often as you want to.

[GendoIkari]

It's simply "in games using this, the first player to play a Possession immediately wins".

Nah, as Asper pointed out you also need Travelling Fair. Or 7 Market Squares in the opponents deck which he or she is unlikely to provide. So it is a 3 card combo, like the good old KC-Masquerade(1st)-Goons, with infinitesimal odds of occuring.

Ok true... but at least to me, "in games using this, when you play a Possession, gain infinite money for your next turn, and infinite actions for the rest of the game" still sounds like too big a change on Possession. And even with KC-Masq-Goons (or any discard attack); it was something you had to build towards. Basically like an alternate win condition that you would race towards... not really different from "first to get a Golden deck going". This simply makes Possession suddenly a very different card than either Possession or Black Cat would expect to be.

[Holunder9]

This simply makes Possession suddenly a very different card than either Possession or Black Cat would expect to be.

You are right, while the two card dombo doesn't instantaneously win the game is also totally broken. But I see no way to fix this except via not doing a card with an infinite loop that gains tokens.

One could do that, Black Cat could e.g. be a simpler Monastery variant:



But I am no fan of this, it is too vanilla for my taste. So I rather play around with the slightly more complex Black Cat but keep my fingers off the real culprit, the hypercomplex Possession (I don't think that I ever explained that card right in the few games I played with it during all those rule changes). I also dare to claim that if a "Renaissance looks too simple" guys likes me considers a Dominion card to be too complex there must be something to it.

[Kudasai]

Yeah, it is broken with Possession. Gotta live with that.

You could add: "If the previous turn wasn't yours, do this any number of times: ..." It's a lot of text to add for just one card interaction, but whole paragraphs have been written in rulebooks to address Possession issues. In that context, maybe this isn't so bad?

I think I'll be adding this to Bivouac to be on the safe side.

That text doesn't prevent it. The infinite move is being done on your regular turn, before the Possession turn.

True! Sorry, I rushed that post without stopping to even look at Possession. This wording should work:

"If this is not an extra turn, you may play this any number of times: ..."

[Holunder9]

Yeah, it is broken with Possession. Gotta live with that.

You could add: "If the previous turn wasn't yours, do this any number of times: ..." It's a lot of text to add for just one card interaction, but whole paragraphs have been written in rulebooks to address Possession issues. In that context, maybe this isn't so bad?

I think I'll be adding this to Bivouac to be on the safe side.

That text doesn't prevent it. The infinite move is being done on your regular turn, before the Possession turn.

True! Sorry, I rushed that post without stopping to even look at Possession. This wording should work:

"If this is not an extra turn, you may play this any number of times: ..."

Yeah, this works for Bivouac as Bivouac is the inverse of Black Cat, i.e. it is only abusive if you play it while possessing somebody whereas Black Cat does the nasty stuff on the turn before the Possession turn. At least if I got the rules about Possession and VP tokens right.

[Kudasai]

Yeah, it is broken with Possession. Gotta live with that.

You could add: "If the previous turn wasn't yours, do this any number of times: ..." It's a lot of text to add for just one card interaction, but whole paragraphs have been written in rulebooks to address Possession issues. In that context, maybe this isn't so bad?

I think I'll be adding this to Bivouac to be on the safe side.

That text doesn't prevent it. The infinite move is being done on your regular turn, before the Possession turn.

True! Sorry, I rushed that post without stopping to even look at Possession. This wording should work:

"If this is not an extra turn, you may play this any number of times: ..."

Yeah, this works for Bivouac as Bivouac is the inverse of Black Cat, i.e. it is only abusive if you play it while possessing somebody whereas Black Cat does the nasty stuff on the turn before the Possession turn. At least if I got the rules about Possession and VP tokens right.

Okay, now I'm seeing the issue with Black Cat. Sorry it took me so long.

Well, getting all three (Black Cat, Possession, and Travelling Fair) seems unlikely, and it would be easy enough to suggest that players not use this combination, but if you wanted Black Cat to be full-proof you could try this wording:

"If you don't have Possession in play, do this any number of times: ..."

A bit awkward and confusing to name a card that may never show up with Black Cat, but you could also change it to:

"If you don't have Action cards in play, do this any number of times: ..."

This last one considerably weakens Black Cat, so it would be fair to buff it in other areas, but this is likely getting too far away from your original design.

[Fly-Eagles-Fly]

Simple solution:
In games using this and Possession, burn all copies of Possession.


Edit: In case the word All is ambiguous, I mean ALL.

[Kudasai]

Simple solution:
In games using this and Possession, burn all copies of Possession.


Edit: In case the word All is ambiguous, I mean ALL.

Even copies a friend down the street might have? Best to be safe I think.

[Fly-Eagles-Fly]

Simple solution:
In games using this and Possession, burn all copies of Possession.


Edit: In case the word All is ambiguous, I mean ALL.

Even copies a friend down the street might have? Best to be safe I think.

[Fly-Eagles-Fly]

Just reread Owl, and I think it's wording needs updated. First of all, +1 Coffers. And do you take a coin token when you don't receive a hex, or when you don't gain an owl?

[Holunder9]

Well, getting all three (Black Cat, Possession, and Travelling Fair) seems unlikely, and it would be easy enough to suggest that players not use this combination, but if you wanted Black Cat to be full-proof you could try this wording:

"If you don't have Possession in play, do this any number of times: ..."

Thanks, this works although it feels kind of weird to exclude one card (with which I don't play anyway).

And do you take a coin token when you don't receive a hex, or when you don't gain an owl?

Technically, when you don't receive a Hex. You can opt to receive a Hex if the Owls pile is empty.
So realistically, when you do neither.

[Fly-Eagles-Fly]

Also, you have a bunch of cards that give a coin token or an action token. I assume that action tokens=Villagers? You could update your cards with coffers and villagers. And Spectre says resolves the next Hex, instead ofrReceives the next hex.

[Holunder9]

Also, you have a bunch of cards that give a coin token or an action token. I assume that action tokens=Villagers? You could update your cards with coffers and villagers. And Spectre says resolves the next Hex, instead ofrReceives the next hex.

Yeah, some folks, especially Aquila, played around with Action tokens before they became official. This is why I am not that excited by Renaissance, Coin tokens and Action tokens is something I am already familiar with. I also did some Lost in the Woods style States here which are equivalent to Artifacts.


Here are some nasty sideways cards that slow down play:



Renaissance has an on-shuffle trigger so this is a natural idea that punishes engine play.




Kinda like Tax but you get Ruins instead of Debt and if you cannot or do not want to get rid of them because your Scrying Pools love them so much or because they belong into a Museum you even get some points, set collection style.

[Kudasai]

Also, you have a bunch of cards that give a coin token or an action token. I assume that action tokens=Villagers? You could update your cards with coffers and villagers. And Spectre says resolves the next Hex, instead ofrReceives the next hex.

Yeah, some folks, especially Aquila, played around with Action tokens before they became official. This is why I am not that excited by Renaissance, Coin tokens and Action tokens is something I am already familiar with. I also did some Lost in the Woods style States here which are equivalent to Artifacts.


Here are some nasty sideways cards that slow down play:



Renaissance has an on-shuffle trigger so this is a natural idea that punishes engine play.




Kinda like Tax but you get Ruins instead of Debt and if you cannot or do not want to get rid of them because your Scrying Pools love them so much or because they belong into a Museum you even get some points, set collection style.

Oh these are nasty indeed! It's nice to have stuff like this around for those who really like a good slog.

Barbarism - Good to see something that hurts engine play more than big money yet doesn't exactly reduce the game to just playing big money itself.

Archaeologist - This is a very cool concept and you've gotten all the nuances of this card onto one very small mockup. I do fear being forced to take the Ruins along with the associated Kingdom card might be too harsh. Have you considered making it a choice? Like, "When a player gains a card with a Ruins on top of it, they may gain it."? This would allow players to build their decks a bit before taking the leap into Ruins fest. Otherwise, I think this becomes a slog too fast.

Also, is the Ruins pile also included in games using Archaeologist? Might be nice to give players who might have fallen behind on certain Ruins to have a chance to catch backup.

You reference both Kingdom Piles and Supply piles, when it should be one or the other. Currently you put Ruins on all Supply piles (Treasures and Victory cards included), but you only take Ruins from Kingdom Card Piles.

Very interesting cards though. Have you gotten any games in with them?

[Holunder9]

Thanks for the catch, I fixed it. Barbarism is untested and I only played one 3P game with Archaeologist and no trashing. It was long but not horrible enough to make me want to reduce the number of Ruins somehow (it might be too slow in a 2P game with no trashing though) and the player who won actually won due to the Ruins.
I did not have the Ruins pile in the Supply during this game (and I wouldn't know how to scale it well given that 17-21 Ruins are already used) but it is a neat idea to make the set collection thing stronger.

[Holunder9]

First of all, this is in no way intended to be a substitute for Fly-Eagles-Fly's great Winery/Wine design! I first wanted to do something with water, wheat and bread but we already have Mill and Baker.

Winery and Grapes are part of a split pile with Winery above and Grapes below. Both cards are expensive for their vanilla effects but sometimes you might just use them as ordinary engine pieces.
There is a Cornucopia-like theme of variety and while the Coffers and Debt of Grapes are usually a liability you can make an asset out of them. Something like 5 Coffers and 6 Debt can be situationally good.
Wine is a recycling of the main idea of Phoenix (Phoenix was superbad because it is so superslow, taking at least 3 turns to be played again).

Now what about those Night Grapes and Ice Wine? Obviously the source of the idea is thematically, you harvest frozen grapes at night to make sweet wine out of them but your workers are not happy about nearly freezing to death.
My first idea was to make Grapes an Action-Night but that's too wordy to be stuck on one card. So perhaps simply make a double pile of Grapes underneath the Winery, i.e. once the Wineries are gone you can always choose to gain either kind of Grapes? Or maintain the flexibility and implement it as an Action-Night via printing the Action part on one side and the Night part on the other which comes with the problem of having the card being visible in and above all on your deck? I have no idea how to physically implement it well.

I am not totally sure about the downside of the Night Grapes but it does nothing constructive on play and having one or more villages out of your deck for several turns should hurt some.
Ice Wine is controversial as it is something that DXV tested for Intrigue but didn't work: 3 vs 5 Provinces leads to a VP spread of 12 whereas 3 vs 5 Ice Wines leads to a VP spread of 16. Perhaps it can work as on a non-Supply card that is difficult to get?

[Fly-Eagles-Fly]

I think Ice Wine should work as a non-supply card, especially if the Night version of Grapes is the card that gives it to you, since you don't really want to play that Grapes. As far as the two types of Grapes, you could do it that when you use Winery, you use either grapes, one or the other. If you used randomizer cards, you would have one for Winery/Grapes One, and one for Winery/Grapes Two. Or, you could use this weird template on Violet CLM's card generator:

https://shemitz.net/static/dominion3/?title=Grapes&title2=Grapes&description=Description%20for%20Action%20Grapes&description2=Description%20for%20Night%20Grapes&type=Action&credit=&price=%244&preview=&type2=Night&picture=&color0=0&color1=11&size=2

[Holunder9]

It's Hobbit time!



The little ones love their Shire so some Victory card interaction it is. Could be that discarding Actions and Treasures is too harsh but Pipe is pretty good (I used something similar on Efreet). Then again Hobbit is just a buffed Scout that might be weaker than Seer.

EDIT: Pipe trigger is now trashing something good from your hand or discard. Could be situationally even beneficial when you want to get rid of a Silver. The wording is too compact though for space reasons. This would be better as it doesn't allow you to just look at your discard without trashing anything:
You may look through your discard pile. If you did, trash a card costing 3 or more from it or your hand to take the Pipe.

[Fly-Eagles-Fly]

Then again Hobbit is just a buffed Scout that might be weaker than Seer.

You have just made it so much harder to take this card seriously. Anyway:
I like this, but I think it should be made a bit stronger somehow. I mean, if you discard all your Actions you have basically nullified the +1 Action.

[Holunder9]

Then again Hobbit is just a buffed Scout that might be weaker than Seer.

You have just made it so much harder to take this card seriously. Anyway:
I like this, but I think it should be made a bit stronger somehow. I mean, if you discard all your Actions you have basically nullified the +1 Action.

The five ways to change it I have in mind are:

1) Hobbit at cost $4 with +1 Action and +1 Coin
Asper suggested this here and it is best Scout buff I know. I opted not to do the Peddler thing because I think that Hobbit in this context wants to draw.

2) Discard all your Actions.
Still harsh.

3) Discard all your Treasures.
Perhaps not harsh enough.

4) Choose to discard either or.
Perhaps not harsh enough.

5) Hobbit as it is at cost $4.
Perhaps too good.

[Fly-Eagles-Fly]

Then again Hobbit is just a buffed Scout that might be weaker than Seer.

You have just made it so much harder to take this card seriously. Anyway:
I like this, but I think it should be made a bit stronger somehow. I mean, if you discard all your Actions you have basically nullified the +1 Action.

The five ways to change it I have in mind are:

1) Hobbit at cost $4 with +1 Action and +1 Coin
Asper suggested this here and it is best Scout buff I know. I opted not to do the Peddler thing because I think that Hobbit in this context wants to draw.

2) Discard all your Actions.
Still harsh.

3) Discard all your Treasures.
Perhaps not harsh enough.

4) Choose to discard either or.
Perhaps not harsh enough.

5) Hobbit as it is at cost $4.
Perhaps too good.

I really like the first option.

[Holunder9]

I really like the first option.

Note that the key differences are that the Lab version is more likely to draw Victory cards so it is better with Pipe whereas the Peddler version is better for general play (if you discard everything to get the Pipe you are unlikely to be able to buy anything in this turn), independent of Pipe. I lean towards a stronger synergy between Kingdom card and Artifact.

[Holunder9]

Where there are Hobbits, Wizards are not far:



Wizard is probably a good $4 / weak $5 so without the Artifact it would be an expensive engine piece. Like most Potion cards it has some self-synergy (play 4 Wizards, then take the Staff). If it is too weak I'll merge the card with Settlement.
Staff is pretty crazy and defense strategies are similar to Possession (green earlier). The sifting option is there in case you don't want to gamble or want to exchange your bad hand with your own cards instead of an opponent's card (if he defends e.g. via playing money and greening early)
There are tricks like calling 2 Ratcatchers and then handing the other player a hand of 3 to get a hand of 5 or doing the same via leeching off handsize attacks.

EDIT: Staff only passes up to 3 cards instead of the entire hand.
EDIT2: Got a test game in and Wizard was too weak so I merged it with Settlement aka Tokenmonger which is a slightly weakish $5 so it should be OK for this slot.

[Asper]

Huh, I think both of these would be more interesting if they didn't take the Artifact in such a similar way. Also, Wizard seems a bit weak for a card costing "more than" 5$. It probably could get away just giving the Villager or Coffers without discarding. Staff seems like it could pretty much destroy the purpose of a deckbuilding game, to be honest. And when are you going to have Pipe and not have at least a few good cards in hand? Psychologically it appears really bad, and at the very least, I'd never sacrifice a hand in hopes of potentially improving a later hand. If that happens, however, I think it would be game-breaking. Did you consider just masquerading a single card? It's not hyper strong, but should be fine if you buff Wizard itself at the same time.

[Holunder9]

Huh, I think both of these would be more interesting if they didn't take the Artifact in such a similar way.

Yeah, that's definitely lame. I came up with a new condition for taking the Pipe.

And when are you going to have Pipe and not have at least a few good cards in hand?

I don't follow you here. Do you mean Staff?. Because once you have Pipe you want to play as many Hobbits as possible and draw as much green as possible. Good cards don't interfere with that.

Did you consider just masquerading a single card? It's not hyper strong, but should be fine if you buff Wizard itself at the same time.

I think that's too weak (relatively to what I am aiming for, I obviously want strong Artifacts that are hard to get and coupled to the not-most-brilliant Kingdom cards to compensate for their strength; not something you get en passant like Key), definitely weaker than the Cellar-ing which Staff does. I also worry about the hand-exchanging being too strong but this is mitigated by Staff being hard to get. Apart from handsize attacks being dubious in the presence of Staff and Ratcatcher or Outpost creating smaller starting hands for you, I don't see anything that is totally bonkers. I hope that the influence that Wizard-Staff could exert on the meta is interesting enough to justify their existence. (E.g., do you only buy Wizard and not thin at all and hope to exchange your crap for their good stuff? Will they do the same or won't they?)
Needless to say, the card is political in multiplayer; you can gamble and exchange your hand with the hand of whomever has more green in their deck. But I don't mind a bit of anti-king-making in Dominion. Mechanisms that mitigate the scissors/Matthew effects is something I appreciate in games.

I opted to go for something in between your suggestion and my original idea: up to 3 cards. Now it is impossible for both players to pass an unequal amount of cards and handsize attacks don't backfire anymore.

[GendoIkari]

I believe the “for” wording is only used for optional effects. Sounds awkward on Wizard. Could either be optional, or just 2 separate instructions.

[Fly-Eagles-Fly]

I like the changes to Hobbit and Staff.

[Asper]

Yes. I meant Staff, not Pipe.

[Holunder9]

Phoenix and Wizard got changed. And here is a new (or rather not so new because it is quite derivative) card:



This is the Villager version of Asper's Conserve with a fix that LibraryAdventurer suggested.
I hope that this is not as broken as Conserve turned out to be, Villagers should be weaker.

[Asper]

Conserve was broken because it allowed you to buy Provinces without building a deck. Villagers don't have that problem.

[Fly-Eagles-Fly]

Phoenix and Wizard got changed. And here is a new (or rather not so new because it is quite derivative) card:



This is the Villager version of Asper's Conserve with a fix that LibraryAdventurer suggested.
I hope that this is not as broken as Conserve turned out to be, Villagers should be weaker.

Seems good, but I don't know if it's good for its name to match a card type.

[Holunder9]

Half in earnest, half in jest:

[Holunder9]

This idea is thematically inspired by the recent cards with an insanity theme by Kudasai and Fly-Eagles-Fly.
Whenever Bedlam is in the Kingdom Healing is a mandatory Event. Lunatic and Insane are two sides of the same card, like Miserable and Twice Miserable.

The key idea here is to do a harsh permanent Attack that you can defend against relatively easily via Potions which you want anyway to get the card. So while the Kingdom card doesn't directly defend against itself, when you choose to go down the Potion path you get both attack and defense.

Then I settled on the Potion card having to be relatively expensive such that you sometimes cannot afford it and take the Medicine en passant more often than you would if this costed $2P or $3P.
I already had the "Coffers into card draw" idea for some while but it was far too strong for a $5 (there is probably a good reason for why no official card produces more than 2 Coffers) so it was a natural match for the expensive Potion card.

[Nflickner]

Great cards   Do you have any plans to make your Conjuration states into Artifacts?  Just curious. 

[Holunder9]

Great cards   Do you have any plans to make your Conjuration states into Artifacts?  Just curious.

It would require a thematic overhaul (e.g. Loveletter-Beguiled) and Thoughtful is the Key anyway so I guess not.

[Kudasai]

This idea is thematically inspired by the recent cards with an insanity theme by Kudasai and Fly-Eagles-Fly.
Whenever Bedlam is in the Kingdom Healing is a mandatory Event. Lunatic and Insane are two sides of the same card, like Miserable and Twice Miserable.

The key idea here is to do a harsh permanent Attack that you can defend against relatively easily via Potions which you want anyway to get the card. So while the Kingdom card doesn't directly defend against itself, when you choose to go down the Potion path you get both attack and defense.

Then I settled on the Potion card having to be relatively expensive such that you sometimes cannot afford it and take the Medicine en passant more often than you would if this costed $2P or $3P.
I already had the "Coffers into card draw" idea for some while but it was far too strong for a $5 (there is probably a good reason for why no official card produces more than 2 Coffers) so it was a natural match for the expensive Potion card.

Asylum was a Village card that rewarded players for buying it on one of their first two turns. I only called it Asylum as a joke, because it's often regarded as crazy to open with a Village when you really don't need it yet. It was really a bad joke and that's why I renamed it rather quickly afterwards, but now I guess it's spawned a bunch of insanity themed cards, which I think is both hilarious and amazing!

Well, I guess the big question with these is does it hurt Engine play enough that players will just avoid it altogether. Lunatic and Insane are brutal States and including a way to remove them was certainly a wise choice! There are a lot of interesting choices a player could make with Healing. Namely, how many Potions do you grab? I'd be inclined to grab two (something I'd normally never do) just to avoid even Lunatic.

But is all this worth it if my opponent just goes Big Money or Draw Big Money? I guess the answer to that lies in the on-play effect of Bedlam. +3 Cards certainly doesn't justify the $4P cost and I'm unsure if +3 Coffers does either. Of course you can mix and match the number of Cards and Coffers you get, which adds a lot of value, but again I'm not sure how much that helps.

Do you think Bedlam in its current form can beat Big Money or Big Money Draw? This is just a hunch, but I think with poor shuffle luck (i.e. getting $3 and a Potion hands) Bedlam would lose. Interested in finding out though!

Here are some minor tweaks you could do to the mockups/wording if you're interested:
(1) Bedlam can just say "tokens" and not "Coin tokens".
(2) For Healing, I think the second sentence should be in parenthesis.

[Commodore Chuckles]

I think Lunatic and Insane would be more thematic if they did something random. Like maybe Hexing you at the beginning of your turn?

[Holunder9]

There are a lot of interesting choices a player could make with Healing. Namely, how many Potions do you grab? I'd be inclined to grab two (something I'd normally never do) just to avoid even Lunatic.

I don't know how it will turn out but one idea behind Healing is to hedge against bad shuffle luck. So if another player got Bedlam earlier you can at least defend once against the Attack.

Do you think Bedlam in its current form can beat Big Money or Big Money Draw? This is just a hunch, but I think with poor shuffle luck (i.e. getting $3 and a Potion hands) Bedlam would lose. Interested in finding out though!

Yeah, that's the problem. Once I test it I will try it at $4P and $3P but this could go nonetheless go down the drains as Bedlam could be one of those cards that is too strong and too weak at the same time.

[Kudasai]

Here's a thought I had on a potential buff for Bedlam/Healing (if needed). Instead of increasing Bedlams Coffer output, add a choice to Healing for Coffers gaining or Medicine Tokens. The Potion cost seems like a good fit to keep a Coffers gaining Event from getting out of control. Would certainly make Bedlam much stronger against Big Money and thus make the whole Bedlam/Healing/Lunatic/Insane train have a reason to start in the first place.

[Holunder9]

This is definitely a good idea to bump Potion/Bedlam in non-mirrors. I only have some slight general reservations about cards that hedge against the "Potion risk" (e.g. something like "Choose one: either +P or +2$"). But this is after all the main idea of Healing, just that it hitherto only provides a resource that defends against an Attack and that is worthless if nobody else goes for that Attack.

[Holunder9]

I was a bit sad that overpay did not reappear in Renaissance, it is not a difficult mechanism and there is stuff you could do with it and the tokens.
Marketeer is simply another name for a Buy token (that you can spend at the start of your Buy phase for +1 Buy); overpaying for VP tokens obviously doesn't work (on a Victory card, this card by Theta and AdrianHealey does work).
The anti-Copper clause is there to prevent endgame shenanigans with total Coin transfer; I don't like the enusing overall wordiness though.
Printing Press could be good enough to cost $5 and could be too similar to Academy, Guildhall and Spices.

EDIT: Costed at $5.


I always liked the recent Actions that want Silvers (Sauna, Merchant) or Golds (Encampment, Legionary) in your deck so this is my stab at doing something along these lines:



Both cards are part of a split pile with either 4 of each in a two player game respectively 6 of each in multiplayer.
Timber Raft could be good enough to cost $3. The base price of Riverlands is just a first shot, hard to determine this without playtesting. Riverlands could be in principle too strong. If you manage e.g. to play 3 Timber Rafts and 3 Treasures the first one costs only 1, the second one 2 and so on. Twitching the base price only gets you so far which is why Riverlands is then up for elimination. Its idea is mainly to make Timber Raft better but perhaps this is already good enough on its own.

EDIT: Timber Raft costs $3 now.

[Tejayes]

I was a bit sad that overpay did not reappear in Renaissance, it is not a difficult mechanism and there is stuff you could do with it and the tokens.
Marketeer is simply another name for a Buy token (that you can spend at the start of your Buy phase for +1 Buy); overpaying for VP tokens obviously doesn't work (on a Victory card, this card by Theta and AdrianHealey does work).
The anti-Copper clause is there to prevent endgame shenanigans with total Coin transfer; I don't like the enusing overall wordiness though.
Printing Press could be good enough to cost $5 and could be too similar to Academy, Guildhall and Spices.

Yeah, I think this is pretty strong, especially considering the Coffers for the non-Copper Treasures. There are many instances where buying a Silver for 4 or even 5 is a good move without the Coffers bonus, and let's not forget $7 or even $8 Golds. In fact, I could see myself going for a Silver for $6 and taking those 3 Coffers over the Gold easily. As you said, this can compare to Spices, to the point where Spices is almost obsolete in Printing Press games apart from the +Buy. I like that you are bringing in Marketeers, though. More token uses!

I always liked the recent Actions that want Silvers (Sauna, Merchant) or Golds (Encampment, Legionary) in your deck so this is my stab at doing something along these lines:



Both cards are part of a split pile with either 4 of each in a two player game respectively 6 of each in multiplayer.
Timber Raft could be good enough to cost $3. The base price of Riverlands is just a first shot, hard to determine this without playtesting. Riverlands could be in principle too strong. If you manage e.g. to play 3 Timber Rafts and 3 Treasures the first one costs only 1, the second one 2 and so on. Twitching the base price only gets you so far which is why Riverlands is then up for elimination. Its idea is mainly to make Timber Raft better but perhaps this is already good enough on its own.

By itself, Timber Raft would probably be okay at $2. Apart from Goons, you rarely need all those Buys. Also, you need to reliable get those non-Coppers in your hand to make it work, so Timber Raft doesn't become all that good until midgame at least.

With Riverlands, though, you are right that this could get shenanigan-y really fast. In your situation with 3 Timber Rafts and, let's say, 3 Silvers, it would take just $10 to wipe out the Riverlands in a 2-player game. You have $6 already, and with a decent engine, the other $4 shouldn't be too hard to get. This then becomes effectively a race to raid the Riverlands... Never mind, I love it! Alt-VP for Life!

In any case, make sure to add a "but not less than $0" clause to Riverlands.

Moreover, the whole idea of a split plot with 4 or 6 of the non-Victory card is just weird, and I usually like weird. Is it truly necessary for Timber Raft to have 4 or 6 cards in the Supply rather than 5?

[Holunder9]

With Riverlands, though, you are right that this could get shenanigan-y really fast. In your situation with 3 Timber Rafts and, let's say, 3 Silvers, it would take just $10 to wipe out the Riverlands in a 2-player game. You have $6 already, and with a decent engine, the other $4 shouldn't be too hard to get. This then becomes effectively a race to raid the Riverlands... Never mind, I love it! Alt-VP for Life!

Note that the price of each subsequent Riverlands increases by 1 as you then have one Buy less.

Moreover, the whole idea of a split plot with 4 or 6 of the non-Victory card is just weird, and I usually like weird. Is it truly necessary for Timber Raft to have 4 or 6 cards in the Supply rather than 5?

There are two reasons. First, to enable even splits in 2P games. Second, to scale the Victory cards normally. It is half a pile so instead of 8/12 Victory cards it contains 4/6.

[Tejayes]

With Riverlands, though, you are right that this could get shenanigan-y really fast. In your situation with 3 Timber Rafts and, let's say, 3 Silvers, it would take just $10 to wipe out the Riverlands in a 2-player game. You have $6 already, and with a decent engine, the other $4 shouldn't be too hard to get. This then becomes effectively a race to raid the Riverlands... Never mind, I love it! Alt-VP for Life!

Note that the price of each subsequent Riverlands increases by 1 as you then have one Buy less.

I already noted that by saying it would take $10 to buy 4 Riverlands, though I admit that my math was wrong here. 3 Timber Rafts and 3 Silvers means each Timber Raft grants 3 Buys for 9 Buys total. Add to the one you normally get (and I forgot to add), and that's 10 total Buys. I had it as 9 Buys total, so the costs per Riverlands would be 1+2+3+4=$10. Correcting my math, it's now 0+1+2+3=$6 for 4 Riverlands, which 3 Silvers provide.

Moreover, the whole idea of a split plot with 4 or 6 of the non-Victory card is just weird, and I usually like weird. Is it truly necessary for Timber Raft to have 4 or 6 cards in the Supply rather than 5?

There are two reasons. First, to enable even splits in 2P games. Second, to scale the Victory cards normally. It is half a pile so instead of 8/12 Victory cards it contains 4/6.

I'm not talking about Riverlands here. I understand the half-split for that. I'm talking about Timber Raft, the non-Victory half of this split pile. Most non-Victory Action cards have piles of 10 or split-piles of 5 (Port and Rats being the lone exceptions). I know that Timber Raft is paired with Riverlands, which should be 4/6. However, is it completely necessary to make the non-Victory Timber Raft 4/6 as well, when this doesn't happen with any other non-Victory Action card?

Perhaps the split-pile quantity issue would be less confusing if Timber Raft was an Action-Victory card itself.

[Holunder9]

Most non-Victory Action cards have piles of 10 or split-piles of 5 (Port and Rats being the lone exceptions). I know that Timber Raft is paired with Riverlands, which should be 4/6. However, is it completely necessary to make the non-Victory Timber Raft 4/6 as well, when this doesn't happen with any other non-Victory Action card?

Perhaps the split-pile quantity issue would be less confusing if Timber Raft was an Action-Victory card itself.

I believe that Dominion would scale much better if all Kingdom piles (or at least the crucial ones which drain most quickly like villages) would contain 8/12 cards in 2/3 player games. It makes engines more viable in multiplayer and it can lead in principle to even splits.
The same arguments, even splits and better scaling, apply here. I wouldn't want there to be a rush in 3P games just because there are relatively few Timber Rafts and I wouldn't want somebody to lose the game because he lost the Timer Raft split due to bad luck.

Just take Sauna as the most radical example. You can totally lose the game in 2P because you lost the split. Wouldn't this behave much better if it were a 4/4 or 6/6 pile?

[Tejayes]

Most non-Victory Action cards have piles of 10 or split-piles of 5 (Port and Rats being the lone exceptions). I know that Timber Raft is paired with Riverlands, which should be 4/6. However, is it completely necessary to make the non-Victory Timber Raft 4/6 as well, when this doesn't happen with any other non-Victory Action card?

Perhaps the split-pile quantity issue would be less confusing if Timber Raft was an Action-Victory card itself.

I believe that Dominion would scale much better if all Kingdom piles (or at least the crucial ones which drain most quickly like villages) would contain 8/12 cards in 2/3 player games. It makes engines more viable in multiplayer and it can lead in principle to even splits.
The same arguments, even splits and better scaling, apply here. I wouldn't want there to be a rush in 3P games just because there are relatively few Timber Rafts and I wouldn't want somebody to lose the game because he lost the Timer Raft split due to bad luck.

Just take Sauna as the most radical example. You can totally lose the game in 2P because you lost the split. Wouldn't this behave much better if it were a 4/4 or 6/6 pile?

That may be true, and I agree that uneven splits on Sauna do stink. I do have to wonder, though, why Donald X. decided to 8/12 the Victory cards but keep the rest at 10 in every game. There has to be a reason for this. I'll check through the Secret Histories for any clues.

Anyway, thanks for answering my questions, Holunder!

[Holunder9]

He mentions here that piles originally had 12 cards.

[Neirai the Forgiven]

I *think* it was a cost thing. Like, for instance, he mentions as well he went from 20 to 25 piles. 20 12-card piles is 240 cards. 25 10-card pile is 250 cards. For a printer that probably means no difference in cost. 25 12-card piles makes 300 card piles and that could be a new, higher price set from the printer.

Of course nowadays we balk not a bit at 500 card expacks but that wasn't always a guarantee.

[Holunder9]

Yeah, I think so too. Let's also keep in mind that Base 1st had a relatively high ratio of terminals so the game was seemingly more centered around the non-Kingdom Supply cards and piles did probably not empty that much. I mean, it is easy to imagine a game with an empty Vassal, Merchant or Harbinger pile but hard to imagine a game with an empty Adventurer or Woodcutter pile.
But if we ignore cost considerations 12 is the better number than 10 as you can divide it by not just by 2, but also by 3 and 4.

[Holunder9]

This is nothing original but a variation of Gazbag's Artefact. Instead of topdecking green it freezes itself though, so the card is mainly good for buildup. No idea about the best numbers, I wouldn't want to make it cheaper due to quick piling via Workshop variants so if this is too weak/strong the length of freezing are the variables that can be changed.

EDIT: Finally found a decent, albeit wordy, formulation that prevents stacking.

[Fly-Eagles-Fly]

This is nothing original but a variation of Gazbag's Artefact. Instead of topdecking green it freezes itself though, so the card is mainly good for buildup. No idea about the best numbers, I wouldn't want to make it cheaper due to quick piling via Workshop variants so if this is too weak/strong the length of freezing are the variables that can be changed.

Do these stack? I like the card, but it seems like it might not be that great if you need to freeze a card 9 times for having 3 of these in play. Also, not sure it needs the phrase in parentheses.

[Holunder9]

Do these stack? I like the card, but it seems like it might not be that great if you need to freeze a card 9 times for having 3 of these in play. Also, not sure it needs the phrase in parentheses.

Good catch, they should not stack so I have to reword it. The reference that this should freeez itself is technically unnecessary but I am not a native speaker and neither are the folks I play with so better to be on the safe side such that everybody understands it.

EDIT: Found a decent wording that prevents stacking.

[Holunder9]

The vanilla stuff is from Tokenmonger aka Wizard. The attack is fairly mild and when you are hit the second time it is actually beneficial as you get a Fugitive effect, kind of like with Margrave. The entire thing could be too similar to Villain (discard one card, if the guy to your left always discards Copper/Silver you get 2 Coffers).

I first tried to do a discard Attack with Mutineers, the great Militia token concept by Violet CLM, but I didn't come up with something.
Here is the basic idea that is flawed for an obvious reason: nobody wants to ever discard Victory cards to spend Mutineers while somebody else has a Corsair Ship in play. Marketeers (Buy Tokens) are an alternative token that could be coupled to Victory cards but as they are weaker than the other 3 tokens this would lead to the opposite problem: everybody always discards green to spend Mutineers.

$5
Action - Duration - Attack

Each other player gets +1 Mutineer.

Until your next turn, when another player spend a Mutineer, if the discarded card is an...
Action card, +1 Villager
Treasure card, +1 Coffers 
Victory card, +1

At the start of your next turn: +2 Cards.

[Holunder9]

Here are some quick ideas for an alternative set of Shelters. I guess you could also mix them with the original Shelters and randomly choose one from each of the three sub-categories.

Lodge is a small house so only one dude villager is living there! While the card is superficially similar to Necropolis it will play differently. For example in games without villages it degenerates into a Ruined Village whereas Necropolis can be used as non-drawing village (this being the only situation in which you want to keep Necro). So I guess you will only use Lodge 1-3 times and then try to get rid of it.
Not much to say about Acolyte's Abode, it is my least favourite of the 3. Like Lodge it is also not something you really want to keep around but it can change the opening if somebody opens with 2-5/5-2. This is why it is perhaps too luck-dependent.
Swamp Cabin is remotely inspired by Pasture (a singular non-Supply card changing the worth of basic green). First it had 3VPs per set but got buffed to 4VPs to make it a real alt-VP kick-off card more often.

[LibraryAdventurer]

I like the idea, but Lodge is the only of these that works well as a shelter IMO. You already said what's wrong with Acolyte's Abode, and Swamp Cabin seems pretty strong for a shelter. I guess it could be an interesting decision whether to keep it or not, but I think it potentially makes too much difference for a shelter.

[Holunder9]

I like the idea, but Lodge is the only of these that works well as a shelter IMO. You already said what's wrong with Acolyte's Abode, and Swamp Cabin seems pretty strong for a shelter. I guess it could be an interesting decision whether to keep it or not, but I think it potentially makes too much difference for a shelter.

Good point, somebody with 4/3 being able to leech off somebody elses's 5/2 isn't a good idea.
Here is an alternative for the Reaction-Shelter which is also more similar to Hovel's self-trashing:



I don't agree though that Swamp Cabin is problematic. Sure, it has nothing to do with the trash theme of Dark Ages but it is hard to come up with some novel on-trash bonus. Like Pasture, Swamp Cabin is something that would be dubious as Kingdom card so why not stick the idea on a starting card? I don't see its craziness given that Pasture is an automatic Duchy, often leads to 8VPs when you won the split (or even more in non-mirrors) and has a Kingdom card that supports the alt-VP strategy.
I also think that you will stick with Pasture more often than with Swamp Cabin.

On a sidenote, I think that in a world in which Pasture did not exist, a Shelter which would be worth 1VP per Estate you have would be good idea. Totally narrow but perhaps a thing in a Gardens or Silk Road Kingdom.

I don't like Heirlooms like Goat which speed up the game too much so I don't want to do anything crazy with Shelters but being an alt-VP enabler isn't something that messes with the opening. Here the seemingly innocent Lodge is the far worse offender as it makes terminal draw a pretty good opening buy due to zero chance of collision after the first shuffle (this is not the case with Necropolis).

[Asper]

Acolyte's Abode could just gain a cheaper card or a Silver. This way it doesn't affect the opening itself.

[Holunder9]

In my opinion a Silver-gaining Shelter would be too similar to Lucky Coin and also arguably too good.

One idea to nerf Acolyte's Abode is topdecking instead of discarding it. If you are extremely lucky you could thus use it twice in a 3P game but it is more likely that you just topdecked a dead card.

Another idea is to use Buy tokens aka Marketeers which are worth far less in the opening than Coffers:



As there is only one copy of this card in your deck there is no accountability problems, except during Masquerade games.

[Commodore Chuckles]

Very minor nitpick: green should be on top of red on a Victory-Shelter.

[Holunder9]

Hovel and Overgrown Estate seem to have switched the arrangement of the colours between 1st and 2nd edition.

[Asper]

Hovel and Overgrown Estate seem to have switched the arrangement of the colours between 1st and 2nd edition.

Wow, that's really odd. The wiki confirms this.

[Commodore Chuckles]

From what I can tell from looking at the other dual-types, the top color is always the first type listed. First edition Hovel and Overgrown Estate didn't follow this pattern though, which I guess is why they were changed.