Dominion Strategy Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Pages: [1]

Author Topic: Mixed bag of cards  (Read 4247 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Gazbag

  • Minion
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 735
  • Shuffle iT Username: Gazbag
  • Respect: +1003
    • View Profile
Mixed bag of cards
« on: May 15, 2018, 09:14:02 am »
+5

Here's a small collection of random cards I felt like sharing.


A very old idea, I don't think it has aged very well, especially after Empires in particular. An Event like Annex but not terrible seems like a better way to modify the Duchy pile now, or why not just include an extra pile and keep Duchies around? The top is still cute, although maybe it looks a little sad next to Shepherd these days.


Has anyone tried anything like this before? It seems like a simple classic thing to me, a nice solution to pulling things from the discard being so shuffle dependent. I've never tested it so I wouldn't be surprised if it's just not that interesting to play with.


So this is a more recent idea, kind of inspired by the interaction between Cursed Gold and Monastery where you "downgrade" a Copper into a Curse in exchange for playing the Cursed Gold and buying a better card. So this card downgrades something in exchange for a cheap expand. Again never played with this so wouldn't be surprised if it isn't very fun/interesting.


A Potion card, I think it's quite charming but perhaps the random nature of the cursing just isn't fun. This does skip past Curses though so they aren't quite so bad in games with this.


Urchin and Develop had a baby and it looks a little like Catapult! I'm weary that this is potentially busted if you can set up the targeted discard consistently and it's also totally untested. I would like to try this one out though if I get the chance, I like the idea of it and it's even quite thematic I think.



Big scary spider! It wraps things in web but they can get out after a shuffle or so, unless the spider finds the web wrapped prey first and eats it! (Webbing costs $3 not $0 so the spider can eat it). I've had the idea of a Spider card that webbed things spinning around for ages but never really got it to work nicely, I tried setting cards aside with tokens then realised I'd basically just made Yeti from Ice Age, using a mat and silly things like that was never satisfying. Then I realised I could just use the trash and that seemed good enough. It does mean that people can "steal" their opponent's cards with Webbing if both are playing with Spiders but that seems okay to me. What do people think?
« Last Edit: May 23, 2018, 07:55:36 pm by Gazbag »
Logged

GendoIkari

  • Adventurer
  • ******
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 9701
  • Respect: +10741
    • View Profile
Re: Mixed bag of cards
« Reply #1 on: May 15, 2018, 09:36:31 am »
+1

I feel like Giant Spider is too much like Dame Sylvia. Except for the trashed by other Knights part, it's just a weaker version, as it generally will allow the player to get their card back (or get a different card back if they want).
Logged
Check out my F.DS extension for Chrome! Card links; Dominion icons, and maybe more! http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=13363.0

Thread for Firefox version:
http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=16305.0

Gazbag

  • Minion
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 735
  • Shuffle iT Username: Gazbag
  • Respect: +1003
    • View Profile
Re: Mixed bag of cards
« Reply #2 on: May 15, 2018, 09:51:54 am »
0

I feel like Giant Spider is too much like Dame Sylvia. Except for the trashed by other Knights part, it's just a weaker version, as it generally will allow the player to get their card back (or get a different card back if they want).

Don't forget that Webbing is a stop card, so it's kind of like a -1 card token attack too.
Logged

GendoIkari

  • Adventurer
  • ******
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 9701
  • Respect: +10741
    • View Profile
Re: Mixed bag of cards
« Reply #3 on: May 15, 2018, 09:53:38 am »
+1

I feel like Giant Spider is too much like Dame Sylvia. Except for the trashed by other Knights part, it's just a weaker version, as it generally will allow the player to get their card back (or get a different card back if they want).

Don't forget that Webbing is a stop card, so it's kind of like a -1 card token attack too.

True; but assuming the trashed card is something you want, it's probably better to be able to take your -1 card token to get the card back; vs never being able to get it back.
Logged
Check out my F.DS extension for Chrome! Card links; Dominion icons, and maybe more! http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=13363.0

Thread for Firefox version:
http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=16305.0

Gazbag

  • Minion
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 735
  • Shuffle iT Username: Gazbag
  • Respect: +1003
    • View Profile
Re: Mixed bag of cards
« Reply #4 on: May 15, 2018, 10:09:20 am »
0

I feel like Giant Spider is too much like Dame Sylvia. Except for the trashed by other Knights part, it's just a weaker version, as it generally will allow the player to get their card back (or get a different card back if they want).

Don't forget that Webbing is a stop card, so it's kind of like a -1 card token attack too.

True; but assuming the trashed card is something you want, it's probably better to be able to take your -1 card token to get the card back; vs never being able to get it back.

But isn't "just weaker" than Dame Sylvia, it has the Webbing aspect and doesn't die if it hits another Spider. Also knights are stupid and being weaker than them is 100% not a bad thing  :P
Logged

LastFootnote

  • Adventurer
  • ******
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 7495
  • Shuffle iT Username: LastFootnote
  • Respect: +10721
    • View Profile
Re: Mixed bag of cards
« Reply #5 on: May 15, 2018, 11:17:58 am »
+2

I like most of these. I think Witch's House is especially cool.
Logged

Thanar

  • Bishop
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 123
  • Respect: +138
    • View Profile
Re: Mixed bag of cards
« Reply #6 on: May 15, 2018, 02:32:43 pm »
+2

Thanks for making and posting these cards.

I've got a few typo corrections, in case you want to make them:

Cottage – Unbold the period after +1 Action.
Scrounger – Unbold the semicolon after +3 Cards. “Look” should be lowercase “look”
Sellsword – “Or” should be lowercase “or”
Webbing – “it’s” should be “its”


Logged

Chappy7

  • Minion
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 542
  • Shuffle iT Username: Chappy7
  • Respect: +660
    • View Profile
Re: Mixed bag of cards
« Reply #7 on: May 15, 2018, 04:07:17 pm »
0

I like these!

I feel like Scrounger is really good.  I mean, Buying a Smithy at $5 is fine in the first place if you need draw.  The second ability can be absolutely massive (or a complete dud, I know.)  I feel like this is better than Catacombs, Patrol, Rabble, Tragic Hero, and many other $5 Smithies by a good margin.  That being said, I've never played with it and I could be way off. Plus I'm not generally great at determining the strength of cards before playing with them.  I do really like the card though.  You say it might not be interesting enough, but it looks like a fun card to me.

If it does end up being too strong, you could do something like this.

"Choose one.  +4 cards then discard 2 cards; or take up to 3 cards from your discard pile into your hand."  That kinda nerfs it a bit while increasing the "Scrounging" effect when chained. And it becomes more interesting.
Logged

Aquila

  • Minion
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 525
  • Respect: +764
    • View Profile
Re: Mixed bag of cards
« Reply #8 on: May 15, 2018, 05:37:28 pm »
0

Cottage - taking Duchy out the game would end up with a useless Annex and a 5-cost Confusion named Duke, but you could easily not play them with Cottage. And what would replace the Duchy will affect how big a swing buying a Province is; you won't catch up if by chance your opponent is one Province ahead and the Duchies are Mills. So yeah, change the Duchies with an event, or an Edict or what Seprix did.
And I guess Shepherd makes the top part look very pale, haven't played with it though. You don't seem rewarded anywhere nearly as well for a very green deck, but with drawing first then discarding it may be better as late game reliability than something to build your deck draw around.

Scrounger - I think Donald did discard to hand on a Militia variant, and took it out after it kept getting platinums. I suppose it's similar to Throning what you get, an extra play during the run through the deck, so 3 cards to hand I can imagine being very swingy.

Reallocate - connecting 2 cards with it, one of which for negative reasons, might be an unfun play experience overall. It could be seen as compelling to get the Curse in hand every time after the first play for a good reward, but that won't always happen.

Sellsword is my favourite here. It'll surely take some doing to get a permanent lock going with it, with your cards changing all the time. I don't see there's much you could do to change it, it either works or it doesn't.

Giant Spider to me looks a lot like Rogue. If you want your cards back you can get your own Rogue. Admittedly $5 may be hard to hit and you'd have to wait for it, so the spider is quite a bit kinder.
Ah, but then it strikes me that spider can lock all the $3-$6s out of opponents' decks permanently. This could be broken then.
Logged

Commodore Chuckles

  • Saboteur
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1284
  • Shuffle iT Username: Commodore Chuckles
  • Respect: +1971
    • View Profile
Re: Mixed bag of cards
« Reply #9 on: May 15, 2018, 07:51:32 pm »
0

Cottage: Eh, it's cute I guess. It does feel a bit too similar to Shepherd and Fugitive, but it's neat that it can't totally dud the way Shepherd can.

Scrounger: I dunno, I think this seems really bad. It has the same empty-discard problem as Harbinger, but it's exacerbated by the fact that +3 cards makes it easy to draw your deck (though still a weak ability for the price.)

Reallocate: I like it! An easier-to-use Develop, sort of. I imagine the downgrade part allows all sorts of tricks.

Witch's House: This one is so cool I actually wish it were real. I don't think the cursing part will be too luck-based because you won't likely reveal your Potion much more than once per turn unless you buy more than one. And the art is also awesome.

Sellsword: I had a similar idea, based more around Ambassador and Bureaucrat:

Ambassacrat
Action - Attack - $3
Reveal a card from your hand and trash from your hand up to 2 copies of the revealed card. Each other player with 5 or more cards in hand reveals a copy of the card from their hand and top decks it or reveals a hand with no copies of the card.

With this card, it's more likely to hurt if you trash a junk card. This card also lets you try to guess what's in your opponent's hand and reveal a card without trashing anything. Though with your version it's cool that the attack is so well-integrated with the trashing.

Giant Spider: So, if I'm understanding this correctly, you won't be able to actually steal any cards you trash unless the other guy also Spiders you. Webbing isn't in the supply, right? The Webbings are only given to the other guy, so the trashing and gaining will both be one-sided unless the other guy reciprocates. I don't know, this seems very similar to Rogue, but harder to use.
Logged

ClouduHieh

  • Minion
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 527
  • Shuffle iT Username: ClouduHieh
  • Respect: +121
    • View Profile
Re: Mixed bag of cards
« Reply #10 on: May 15, 2018, 08:46:03 pm »
0

Sellsword reminds me most of taxman. Except it’s any card and it only goes up half as much as remodel. As a player who loves attack cards. Taxman is not my favorite because there was no benefit right Off the bat for playing it. A lot times I would play it to gain a silver or gold. But then I wouldn’t have any money to buy anything. I would have to say I would like taxman more than sellsword because a lot of times your not going to want to change your good cards for slightly better cards. However if it was 2 instead of 1 and costed 4 or 5 you could turn your gold into a province. And make everyone else discard a gold too. Now that would be more useful attack especially if you beat them to it. Cause they had the same idea as you.
Logged

ClouduHieh

  • Minion
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 527
  • Shuffle iT Username: ClouduHieh
  • Respect: +121
    • View Profile
Re: Mixed bag of cards
« Reply #11 on: May 15, 2018, 09:02:33 pm »
0

Witches house is cool. It makes potion a little more useful.  Scrounger is really cool too. Cottage,is beautiful but I don’t like removing duchies from the game. I’d rather just add another victory pile to the setup. I don’t like reallocate at all. If you trash a copper you get a curse every time. Just to trash another card and gain a card costing up to 3 more than it. Expand for 7 is still better. And I’m not a big fan of expand. And rebuild which costs the same amount is twice as good and is one of my favorites. And mine is still more useful too. Taxman is probably better than reallocate too. Uhh I don’t like spiders. So I’m not even going to comment on that one. And it’s not just cause I don’t like spiders.
Logged

Jack Rudd

  • Saboteur
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1323
  • Shuffle iT Username: Jack Rudd
  • Respect: +1379
    • View Profile
Re: Mixed bag of cards
« Reply #12 on: May 19, 2018, 06:06:47 pm »
0

If I'm reading Reallocate correctly, you can trash a 0-cost card and get nothing back. (You choose the "gain a cheaper card" option and there is no cheaper card.) Was this intended behaviour?

(You can also trash the same Fortress twice to get a 3-cost and a 7-cost. I assume this was intended behaviour.)
Logged
Centuries later, archaeologists discover the remains of your ancient civilization.

Evidence of thriving towns, Pottery, roads, and a centralized government amaze the startled scientists.

Finally, they come upon a stone tablet, which contains but one mysterious phrase!

'ISOTROPIC WILL RETURN!'

Holunder9

  • Jester
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 837
  • Respect: +380
    • View Profile
Re: Mixed bag of cards
« Reply #13 on: May 20, 2018, 03:37:44 pm »
+2

I like Giant Spider and think that it will play quite differently from Knights and Rogue.

After a Knight battle is over winning the split by 1 or 2 can be game deciding.
Rogue on the other hand is often relatively weak because you often prefer attacking over gaining semi-junk like Silver from the trash. But that's just a necessary nerf as unmitigiated Knight style trashing attacks are too strong.

Giant Spider keeps the nastiness of the Knight attacks and does the Rogue-ish mitigation right: now the attacked player can get the good stuff back.
I also think that it will lead to more interesting strategic play. If Knights are good everybody has to get them whereas Giant Spider is a card you could massively go for but don't have to and asymmetric play will probably emerge more often.
Logged

Gazbag

  • Minion
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 735
  • Shuffle iT Username: Gazbag
  • Respect: +1003
    • View Profile
Re: Mixed bag of cards
« Reply #14 on: May 23, 2018, 07:53:45 pm »
+1

Thanks for all the comments! Sellsword was my favourite of the bunch so it was nice to see that one be popular! It's funny to see such varying opinions on things, like with Scrounger some saying it's too good, others too weak.

Thanks to Thanar for pointing out formatting/grammatical errors, unfortunately some of the bolding things can't be fixed because it's just how the card image generator works.

Thanks to Jack Rudd for pointing out the bad wording on Reallocate, you're supposed to gain the Curse if you trash a Copper/Curse with it yeah. I updated with new wording, but I'm sure there's much nicer/corrector wording that it should have.

I seem to have messed up Spider because it isn't supposed to give out a Web if it trashes a Web, but I think I'll just change Web to costing $0 to avoid the potential to trash entire decks with Kings Court or something. I also changed Web to gain a card when it's discarded from play so it hurts deck drawing engines more. Oh and it isn't in the supply, I missed that out too, oops!

Here is new Webbing, I also updated the OP:


I feel like explaining the idea behind Giant Spider more, I can see how it looks like Rouge what with the trashing attack and Webbing gaining from the trash, but really it's more like a Rabble type thing that's essentially removing a card from a shuffle and replacing it with a Webbing temporarily, using the trash is just kind of a mechanism for that and opens up certain interactions which could be cool. It could totally use a Spider mat instead of the trash to avoid those interactions but personally I prefer the trashing version. Does that make any sense? I think Holunder gets what I was trying to go for with it.
« Last Edit: May 23, 2018, 07:57:27 pm by Gazbag »
Logged

Holunder9

  • Jester
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 837
  • Respect: +380
    • View Profile
Re: Mixed bag of cards
« Reply #15 on: May 25, 2018, 02:07:46 am »
0

I think that the rationale behind the first version was sound (and quite thematic): price Webbing such that it mitigates against the trashing attacks.
The only issue is that Webbings can land "dead", meaning ungainable, in the trash which is impractical as the size of the Webbing pile then has to bigger. This can be avoided though if you add a clause like "When you trash this, return it to its pile." to Webbing.
Logged

Asper

  • Governor
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 4995
  • Respect: +5345
    • View Profile
Re: Mixed bag of cards
« Reply #16 on: May 25, 2018, 10:01:47 am »
0

I do like the idea of Spider, but from a thematic perspective, I feel that Spider itself should be able to gain what it put into a web. Especially as it feels like being able to gain another player's webbed card might actually benefit some opponents, and Spider not being able to seize that benefit just feels weird. So if it manages to trash a Web, instead of just removing it, it could also gain the card inside the web. Like this:

Webbing, Action, 3
+1Action
Trash this.
----
When this is trashed during your turn (by you or another player), return it to its pile and gain a card costing from 3 to 6 from the trash.
« Last Edit: May 25, 2018, 10:09:51 am by Asper »
Logged

Gazbag

  • Minion
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 735
  • Shuffle iT Username: Gazbag
  • Respect: +1003
    • View Profile
Re: Mixed bag of cards
« Reply #17 on: May 26, 2018, 10:30:48 am »
0

I do like the idea of Spider, but from a thematic perspective, I feel that Spider itself should be able to gain what it put into a web. Especially as it feels like being able to gain another player's webbed card might actually benefit some opponents, and Spider not being able to seize that benefit just feels weird. So if it manages to trash a Web, instead of just removing it, it could also gain the card inside the web. Like this:

Webbing, Action, 3
+1Action
Trash this.
----
When this is trashed during your turn (by you or another player), return it to its pile and gain a card costing from 3 to 6 from the trash.

I don't know... are fantasy spiders known to capture things in web and then convert them to their side? Seems like they'd just eat them right? I think on reflection it's best to not let spider eat the web so Spiders doesn't have the potential to trash the entire deck though. Trashing things and then stealing them is also Rogue's thing so I'd want to avoid that.

These kinds of thematic things are always quite subjective I guess. And then you have to make concessions for balance's sake, like Vampire not being able to gain more Vampires...
Logged

Asper

  • Governor
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 4995
  • Respect: +5345
    • View Profile
Re: Mixed bag of cards
« Reply #18 on: May 26, 2018, 11:14:26 am »
0

I do like the idea of Spider, but from a thematic perspective, I feel that Spider itself should be able to gain what it put into a web. Especially as it feels like being able to gain another player's webbed card might actually benefit some opponents, and Spider not being able to seize that benefit just feels weird. So if it manages to trash a Web, instead of just removing it, it could also gain the card inside the web. Like this:

Webbing, Action, 3
+1Action
Trash this.
----
When this is trashed during your turn (by you or another player), return it to its pile and gain a card costing from 3 to 6 from the trash.

I don't know... are fantasy spiders known to capture things in web and then convert them to their side? Seems like they'd just eat them right? I think on reflection it's best to not let spider eat the web so Spiders doesn't have the potential to trash the entire deck though. Trashing things and then stealing them is also Rogue's thing so I'd want to avoid that.

These kinds of thematic things are always quite subjective I guess. And then you have to make concessions for balance's sake, like Vampire not being able to gain more Vampires...

I think my issue is the fact that attacking other players may benefit some of them, for example the one who can gain a Lab after losing a Silver, but never ever benefit the Spider player themselves. That just feels so unrewarding.

If every player had their own web mat, it would just be the Spider against its victims, not the victims stealing stuff from each other. The Spider being able to steal stuff by trashing webs was just another route to making Spider feel like it's you who gets the greatest advantage out of playing it.
Logged

Gazbag

  • Minion
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 735
  • Shuffle iT Username: Gazbag
  • Respect: +1003
    • View Profile
Re: Mixed bag of cards
« Reply #19 on: May 26, 2018, 12:55:53 pm »
0

I do like the idea of Spider, but from a thematic perspective, I feel that Spider itself should be able to gain what it put into a web. Especially as it feels like being able to gain another player's webbed card might actually benefit some opponents, and Spider not being able to seize that benefit just feels weird. So if it manages to trash a Web, instead of just removing it, it could also gain the card inside the web. Like this:

Webbing, Action, 3
+1Action
Trash this.
----
When this is trashed during your turn (by you or another player), return it to its pile and gain a card costing from 3 to 6 from the trash.

I don't know... are fantasy spiders known to capture things in web and then convert them to their side? Seems like they'd just eat them right? I think on reflection it's best to not let spider eat the web so Spiders doesn't have the potential to trash the entire deck though. Trashing things and then stealing them is also Rogue's thing so I'd want to avoid that.

These kinds of thematic things are always quite subjective I guess. And then you have to make concessions for balance's sake, like Vampire not being able to gain more Vampires...

I think my issue is the fact that attacking other players may benefit some of them, for example the one who can gain a Lab after losing a Silver, but never ever benefit the Spider player themselves. That just feels so unrewarding.

If every player had their own web mat, it would just be the Spider against its victims, not the victims stealing stuff from each other. The Spider being able to steal stuff by trashing webs was just another route to making Spider feel like it's you who gets the greatest advantage out of playing it.

I see what you're saying. Personally I'm not bothered by this. I think annoying interactions like this are par for the course when playing Dominion with more than 2 players honestly, especially with attacks, e.g. similar things can happen with Rogue where the player to your left ends up trashing a Silver from your Rogue and then "stealing" a Lab that the other player trashed with theirs.

The fix would definitely be to use a mat. I've been back and forth on mat vs trashing, personally for the way I usually play the game I prefer trashing. I think it just opens up more interactions and doesn't need a unique component, but I can see how you might prefer the mat if you don't like this sort of situation.
Logged

Asper

  • Governor
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 4995
  • Respect: +5345
    • View Profile
Re: Mixed bag of cards
« Reply #20 on: May 26, 2018, 04:40:27 pm »
0

Hum, I too see where you're coming from. The thing with Rogue is just, it's another Rogue that steals the card. Or a Lurker, or Graverobber, or whatever. In any case, it's a card that the person benefitting picked up themself. They worked for it, perhaps cleverly used an opponent' s strategy to their advantage. I have no problem with that, in fact it's the type of thing that makes 3P more interesting than 2P in my book.

I certainly see why for a 2P game a mat feels awkward and unnecessary, though.
Logged
Pages: [1]
 

Page created in 0.163 seconds with 20 queries.