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Author Topic: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards  (Read 59939 times)

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Gazbag

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Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards
« Reply #125 on: June 15, 2018, 02:48:42 pm »
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I like Smelter, I'd make sure trashing things into Copper and getting a million Coffers isn't too good but apart from that seems neat.

I worry that Trade Ship ranges from useless to broken without much middle ground. It's terribly slow to get going and even adds an Estate to your deck unless there's a different $2, so I think you'd really need to be able to play it a lot for it to be worth it. Gaining $5s is strong though and then you can get a Province out of it. It's probably fine, don't really know!

Seawall: not sure about the cost reduction thing, I don't really think it needs it tbh. Seems very strong, I imagine you'd open with it every time unless there's something else broken going on. My worry is unlike Chapel it makes a pretty big difference whether you draw this turn 3 or 4, although I guess it doesn't matter so much what you draw it with, so maybe that balances out. The wording might need work, too tired to think about that much right now though.

Border Guard: Not sure about this playing from the supply thing, can't it just  gain a card costing up to $5? I don't think that's really adding anything to the card. Border Village says less than this so you can't just gain the entire pile after playing 1 Highway, this doesn't face such problems. Seems like a cool spin on Artisan apart from that though! Might have to watch gaining Duchies off the token though.
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Holunder9

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Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards
« Reply #126 on: June 15, 2018, 03:18:27 pm »
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Border Guard: Not sure about this playing from the supply thing, can't it just  gain a card costing up to $5? I don't think that's really adding anything to the card. Border Village says less than this so you can't just gain the entire pile after playing 1 Highway, this doesn't face such problems. Seems like a cool spin on Artisan apart from that though! Might have to watch gaining Duchies off the token though.
I think you miss that when you play the card the second time you can put the Guard token back on the Province pile or in a Colony game the Colony or Platinum pile, thus enabling you to gain expensive cards.
But in the opening that's probably dubious and you might prefer a cheaper pile. Suppose that both player are building a draw engine with a $4 village and a $5 Smithy variant. You'd rather put your token there as it increases the likelihood of you gaining a card and as it makes your opponent not want to get the good card.

This interactive element is the cool thing about Border Guard; without it would just be a bland Artisan variant.
I'd consider enabling every player to choose the initial placement of the Guard token during Setup (hard to do that secretly so I'd make the first player choose first which should slightly compensate for the first player advantage), otherwise the whole minigame only starts after somebody buys a Province or when you buy Border Guard. As Border Guard is most interactive and interesting in an engine, or more precisely while players are building their engine, Province buying occurs too late in the game.
« Last Edit: June 15, 2018, 03:26:25 pm by Holunder9 »
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Gazbag

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Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards
« Reply #127 on: June 15, 2018, 03:19:51 pm »
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Border Guard: Not sure about this playing from the supply thing, can't it just  gain a card costing up to $5? I don't think that's really adding anything to the card. Border Village says less than this so you can't just gain the entire pile after playing 1 Highway, this doesn't face such problems. Seems like a cool spin on Artisan apart from that though! Might have to watch gaining Duchies off the token though.
I think you miss that when you play the card the second time you can put the Guard token back on the Province pile or in a Colony game the Colony or Platinum pile.
But more important, early in the game you might prefer a cheaper pile! Suppose both player are building draw engine with a $4 village and a $5 Smithy variant. You'd rather put your token there as it increases the likelihood of you gaining a card and as it makes your opponent not want to get the good card.

This interactive element is the cool thing about Border Guard; without it would just be a bland Artisan variant.

I mean the token could just spell it out instead of weirdly playing it from the supply.
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Holunder9

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Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards
« Reply #128 on: June 15, 2018, 03:27:50 pm »
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I mean the token could just spell it out instead of weirdly playing it from the supply.
Do you concrectly see how this could be better worded? The only alternative I see is to repeat the play instructions instead of the 'play it from the Supply and leave it there' thing but that includes more words.
I like the current wording as it makes clear that Border Guard works for you even if you don't have it in your deck. Which is by the way a great innovation (not that Kudasai's cards are short of those).
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Gazbag

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Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards
« Reply #129 on: June 15, 2018, 03:46:46 pm »
+2


See, so much better. You're welcome to stick with this re-theme Kudasai!
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Holunder9

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Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards
« Reply #130 on: June 15, 2018, 03:56:19 pm »
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I don't like this castrated version as it lacks the key trade-off of the original version (that applies of course only for "passive" play but the "active" part of the card is fairly boring): do I put the token on an expensive card to be able to gain an expensive card or do I put it on a cheaper engine component to make it more likely that I gain a card at all.

If you use your version passively you can just switch the token between the village and the Smithy variant pile and be able to gain 5s while the opponents are building. Now you can have your cake and eat it too.
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Gazbag

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Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards
« Reply #131 on: June 15, 2018, 03:59:56 pm »
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I don't like this castrated version as it lacks the key trade-off of the original version (that applies of course only for "passive" play but the "active" part of the card is fairly boring): do I put the token on an expensive card to be able to gain an expensive card or do I put it on a cheaper engine component to make it more likely that I gain a card at all.

If you use your version passively you can just switch the token between the village and the Smithy variant pile and be able to gain 5s while the opponents are building. Now you can have your cake and eat it too.

I don't understand what you mean, I think you're misreading the original card? Mine functions the same as the original (aside from cost reduction/Adventures token weirdness). The card that you gain doesn't depend on the cost of the card with the token on.
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Holunder9

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Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards
« Reply #132 on: June 15, 2018, 04:09:30 pm »
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Sorry, looks like I already modded the card in my head: "Gain a card costing less than the card with your Guard token on."



If one just wanted the passive side of this one could implement it as an Asper-ian Edict.
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Gazbag

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Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards
« Reply #133 on: June 15, 2018, 04:40:46 pm »
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Sorry, looks like I already modded the card in my head: "Gain a card costing less than the card with your Guard token on."



If one just wanted the passive side of this one could implement it as an Asper-ian Edict.

You could also try an Adventures style token Event, I actually think I tried one like that once.

But yeah I don't like the wordiness of my wording or the playing cards in my opponent's buy phasiness of Kudasai's version, so I guess you just have to choose what you think is the lesser of two evils.
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Holunder9

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Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards
« Reply #134 on: June 15, 2018, 05:02:33 pm »
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Here is a shot at an Edict version. Hey, at least it achieves one thing: there are no wording issues anymore as the card does not have to relate to itself anymore.  ;D
Not sure about the Coin token. You probably don't mind gifting me a Herald if you buy that first Witch but otherwise the Guard tokens could just shut down buying cards from a pile completely. That Walled Village looks less appealing if it comes with a free Silver for the opponent. Or perhaps I am totally wrong and this would actually work without the Coin token as compensation for the buying player.

Border Protection
Edict

When another player buys a card from the pile with your Guard token on
he takes a Coin token. You gain a card costing less than the bought card
and move your Guard token to a different Supply pile.    Setup: In player
order, each player puts their Guard token on a Supply pile of their choice.
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Commodore Chuckles

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Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards
« Reply #135 on: June 15, 2018, 06:38:15 pm »
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You could make Border Guard a Reaction card and let you play it from your hand when your opponent buys from the pile. That would make it worse, but hey, less wordy and more intuitive, and might be more fun!
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Kudasai

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Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards
« Reply #136 on: June 15, 2018, 07:46:11 pm »
+1

Sea Wall(v0.1) - I agree with removing the on-buy clause. It's nice on paper, but probably doesn't actually do much. Probably best used with another card. I also worry about the discrepancy between getting this turn 3 and getting it turn 5. I do think Sea Wall is less forgiving in this instance than say Chapel, but it is a lot more money. I guess there will always be a certain level of swinginess in Dominion that can't be designed around. Unless I make this a Night-Duration with a gain to hand clause. This would probobably make it too strong as you could trash turn 2 with it. Other than that, I think I already have too many Night - Duration cards and many more already in the pipeline!

Border Guard(v0.1) - Thanks for the praise Holunder9, but sorry Border Guard wasn't as cool as you originally thought! :) I made this one a few years ago and I've never quite felt 100% happy with it. It has played fine, but it always seemed like it could be just a tad better and/or more interesting. So I'm very happy to see these change recommendations. I think gaining a cheaper card than the pile your token is on opens up a lot of game-play potential and fixes some problems at the same time. I will have to think a little on any potential issues with this version, but barring that I think I will change it.

The choice of where to place your token at the start of the game is very interesting, but it needs some careful thought. My first fear is that there will never be a reason to buy Border Guard with this change. I'm sure there's a way to make it work though.

As for how to implement this I have some good options to think on. I'm not in love with playing it from the Supply, but I think I concluded on that not because of word choice, but because the token stops functioning once the Border Guard pile is empty. It's sort of a Band of Misfits/Overlord limiter. I don't see the Border Guard pile being empty most games, but for this reason I'm inclined to keep the playing from the Supply bit in. I will think on it though.

The Reaction suggestion by Commodore Chuckles is interesting, but my main hesitation is you'd have to have the Border Guard in hand to gain the card. But this would be a good fix if Border Guard ever needed a nerf.

Border Gourd -
Where to even begin! Clearly Border Gourd's first issue is it's lack of a proper sword, shield and helmet. How can one guard anything so ill equipped? I've made the necessary changes.

« Last Edit: June 15, 2018, 08:02:01 pm by Kudasai »
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Kudasai

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Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards
« Reply #137 on: June 15, 2018, 08:58:49 pm »
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Border Guard(v0.2) - Well you got me sucked into updating Border Guard. Now that mirror frame for my girlfriend is never going to get built! :P This is just a rough concept going off of Holunder9's idea of having the gained card be less than the top card of the Supply pile your token is on. This is a really cool concept, but as I see it as a nerf in a way, Border Guard's price (initially) is now $5 and now it's price can vary. It now must be able to gain a cheaper card in order to stop players from alternating between the Copper and Curse piles for $0 cost Border Guards. You can still put it on the Estate pile and gain Coppers/Curses, but hopefully that is just plain bad. Also, if you gain too many and deplete the Border Guard pile, your token no longer works (Hey I created a reason to keep the play from Supply bit!).

Well this all came together rather quickly so there might be some issues, but I think it's on the right track. I also like Holunder9's other suggestion of player's choosing the initial pile their token goes on, but I just don't think it will work for this card. There's already a lot going on with this. Maybe it could be worked into an Event or as was suggested an Edict? Would love to see it!

Thanks for all the feedback!

Edit - I can see one issue (albeit probably unlikely). If the Border Guard pile is empty and the last card of a pile your token is on is gained, you cannot move your token, so your Border Guards are now equal to the price of a card that is not there. An easy fix would be to mention in a manual that in this case Border Guard is equal to $0 Coin. This would essentially brick all Border Guards a player has, but I think this is easy enough to avoid.
« Last Edit: June 15, 2018, 09:45:33 pm by Kudasai »
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Holunder9

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Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards
« Reply #138 on: June 17, 2018, 11:02:29 am »
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I like that you did a Traveller line. That's like the hardest thing to do. Also, while Curse-for-benefit is often frowned upon I don't think that it is a big issue. Mountain Hag is good enough without Ambassador-ing Curses and as second card Witch Hunter is supposed to be weak anyway.

But I don't understand some cards.
Orphan's 'give a VP token back' will not do anything unless there are other cards that provide VP tokens or unless you buy one after you have Grand Witch in play which seems extremly unlikely.
Grand Witch is unlikely to get VPs via Curses unless there is a Curser and no trasher in the Kingdom (so players are forced to play the Ambassador game with Mountain Hag).
These two cards are of course fine otherwise but they have elemets that are a bit too Kingdom-dependent for my taste.

My favourite here is Heretic. Normally you want to progress as fast as possible through a Traveller line but this trade-off between having a good engine piece for a turn longer vs. getting the payload of the 4th and 5th cards earlier is really nice and also mechanically well and clear implemented via the State.
Then again the card also punishes you for trying to exploit that strategy (this is probably very necessary, that Lost City looks more attractive to me than the Coin and VP tokens of the following cards) and use several Heretics as Lost Cities as no tokens are added to Haunted while at least one Heretic is on it.
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Kudasai

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Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards
« Reply #139 on: June 17, 2018, 01:31:10 pm »
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I like that you did a Traveller line. That's like the hardest thing to do. Also, while Curse-for-benefit is often frowned upon I don't think that it is a big issue. Mountain Hag is good enough without Ambassador-ing Curses and as second card Witch Hunter is supposed to be weak anyway.

But I don't understand some cards.
Orphan's 'give a VP token back' will not do anything unless there are other cards that provide VP tokens or unless you buy one after you have Grand Witch in play which seems extremly unlikely.
Grand Witch is unlikely to get VPs via Curses unless there is a Curser and no trasher in the Kingdom (so players are forced to play the Ambassador game with Mountain Hag).
These two cards are of course fine otherwise but they have elemets that are a bit too Kingdom-dependent for my taste.

My favourite here is Heretic. Normally you want to progress as fast as possible through a Traveller line but this trade-off between having a good engine piece for a turn longer vs. getting the payload of the 4th and 5th cards earlier is really nice and also mechanically well and clear implemented via the State.
Then again the card also punishes you for trying to exploit that strategy (this is probably very necessary, that Lost City looks more attractive to me than the Coin and VP tokens of the following cards) and use several Heretics as Lost Cities as no tokens are added to Haunted while at least one Heretic is on it.

Thanks for the feedback!

Orphan - In a way I set out to make the worst card in Dominion and still have it have a place in a game. I'll explain this more under Witch Hunter.

Witch Hunter - Glad to hear you're open to Curse-for-benefit cards, as most people are not. You probably know, but the big argument is that they are either too weak or too strong. Well I thought I'd try something that starts out very weak, but becomes quite strong with Grand Witch in play. I think Witch Hunters main late game strength is not it's ability to field Curses into draw/coin (it certainly helps), but it's +Buy that allows for Curse pile outs. In a way, they become like a Princess with Estate piling. Curse piling may not always be the best way to go, but it creates a tremendous amount of pile pressure on your opponent.

So hopefully this Curse/Estate piling addresses both concerns about Orphan and Grand Witch. Orphan's negative VP effect will do nothing early game, but if you wanna pick up late game Witch Hunters (when they shine most) you'll need to go through Orphan and possibly lose some VP. This effect isn't much, but in a tight game it might matter. Concurrently, Grand Witch won't do much to prevent Curse attacks, it's VP gain on Curses is mainly for Curse piling. Other than that, player's should focus on Victory cards.

Heretic - This is also my favorite card in the line so I'm happy to hear someone else both appreciates it and can see the full scope of it's play potential. The previous version of Heretic had all of it's current text and the text of the Hunted state all on one card. You can imagine all that text didn't go over well with people. It was a frustrating experience. I had what I thought was an amazing concept, but I couldn't get anyone to buy into all that reading despite it playing very straightforward. Well, states came out and saved the whole thing for me. On a side note, I'm planning other cards and Events centered around Hunted. I think there is a lot of design potential there. Really glad you like it!

One concern is that the Lost City effect is so good, player's will never exchange these into Mountain Hag's. This could easily break the line for other players going for Grand Witch. One fix would be to make the exchange mandatory for Heretic.
« Last Edit: June 17, 2018, 01:34:18 pm by Kudasai »
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Commodore Chuckles

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Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards
« Reply #140 on: June 17, 2018, 02:01:45 pm »
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Heretic: I'm gonna need some explaining again. How is this a Lost City? The wording for Hunted is ambiguous and confusing;  "play all cards" seems to mean just play them as usual but put them on the mat, but the "at the start of your turn" part seems to mean it's forcing you to play everything, but without using up actions. What are these "tokens" it's talking about? Is it referring to VP chips?

Orphan: Why not just have it gain you a Curse? Less confusing, and makes the abilities of Witch Hunter and Mountain Witch useful more of the time.

Grand Witch: The cool thing about this is that you avoided the problem a lot of dual-type fan Curses have. This remains in play, so you can't just milk the benefit and then trash it at the end. Well, you can still do it with Bonfire, but that might be a neat little loophole that makes it more interesting. The actual ability of the card I'm not so hot on. From looking at it it seems very weak. VP-when-you-X cards like Goons and Groundskeeper are best when you have a whole bunch of them in play at once, but this is hard to get and each one is a freaking negative Province. I also feel that getting -VP when you get this and then slowly gaining +VP to make up for it just isn't all that interesting. I think it would be more interesting if it gave you some sort of a big engine boost, so that you can make up for the -VP at the very end with a megaturn.
« Last Edit: June 17, 2018, 02:16:09 pm by Commodore Chuckles »
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Holunder9

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Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards
« Reply #141 on: June 17, 2018, 02:22:25 pm »
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I like that you did a Traveller line. That's like the hardest thing to do. Also, while Curse-for-benefit is often frowned upon I don't think that it is a big issue. Mountain Hag is good enough without Ambassador-ing Curses and as second card Witch Hunter is supposed to be weak anyway.

But I don't understand some cards.
Orphan's 'give a VP token back' will not do anything unless there are other cards that provide VP tokens or unless you buy one after you have Grand Witch in play which seems extremly unlikely.
Grand Witch is unlikely to get VPs via Curses unless there is a Curser and no trasher in the Kingdom (so players are forced to play the Ambassador game with Mountain Hag).
These two cards are of course fine otherwise but they have elemets that are a bit too Kingdom-dependent for my taste.

My favourite here is Heretic. Normally you want to progress as fast as possible through a Traveller line but this trade-off between having a good engine piece for a turn longer vs. getting the payload of the 4th and 5th cards earlier is really nice and also mechanically well and clear implemented via the State.
Then again the card also punishes you for trying to exploit that strategy (this is probably very necessary, that Lost City looks more attractive to me than the Coin and VP tokens of the following cards) and use several Heretics as Lost Cities as no tokens are added to Haunted while at least one Heretic is on it.

Thanks for the feedback!

Orphan - In a way I set out to make the worst card in Dominion and still have it have a place in a game. I'll explain this more under Witch Hunter.

Witch Hunter - Glad to hear you're open to Curse-for-benefit cards, as most people are not. You probably know, but the big argument is that they are either too weak or too strong. Well I thought I'd try something that starts out very weak, but becomes quite strong with Grand Witch in play. I think Witch Hunters main late game strength is not it's ability to field Curses into draw/coin (it certainly helps), but it's +Buy that allows for Curse pile outs. In a way, they become like a Princess with Estate piling. Curse piling may not always be the best way to go, but it creates a tremendous amount of pile pressure on your opponent.

So hopefully this Curse/Estate piling addresses both concerns about Orphan and Grand Witch. Orphan's negative VP effect will do nothing early game, but if you wanna pick up late game Witch Hunters (when they shine most) you'll need to go through Orphan and possibly lose some VP. This effect isn't much, but in a tight game it might matter. Concurrently, Grand Witch won't do much to prevent Curse attacks, it's VP gain on Curses is mainly for Curse piling. Other than that, player's should focus on Victory cards.

Heretic - This is also my favorite card in the line so I'm happy to hear someone else both appreciates it and can see the full scope of it's play potential. The previous version of Heretic had all of it's current text and the text of the Hunted state all on one card. You can imagine all that text didn't go over well with people. It was a frustrating experience. I had what I thought was an amazing concept, but I couldn't get anyone to buy into all that reading despite it playing very straightforward. Well, states came out and saved the whole thing for me. On a side note, I'm planning other cards and Events centered around Hunted. I think there is a lot of design potential there. Really glad you like it!

One concern is that the Lost City effect is so good, player's will never exchange these into Mountain Hag's. This could easily break the line for other players going for Grand Witch. One fix would be to make the exchange mandatory for Heretic.
I have my doubts about Grand Witch making your want to buy Curses but that's just because I am not used to the "good Curses" idea, with 2 Grand Witches and Mountain Hag / Witch Hunter as support this could work.
Really great conceptually overall and far more complex than the official Travellers (which I cannot stand because they are so overpowered and strategically mandatory).


Heretic: I'm gonna need some explaining again. How is this a Lost City? The wording for Hunted is ambiguous and confusing;  "play all cards" seems to mean just play them as usual but put them on the mat, but the "at the start of your turn" part seems to mean it's forcing you to play everything, but without using up actions. What are these "tokens" it's talking about? Is it referring to VP chips?
You might want to read Hunted and Heretic together; Heretic puts the tokens on Hunted as a kind of (it is more complex with several Heretic) emulation of a Duration card with a timer.
What is confusing about something saying that you should play X? It is more or less the same wording as Imp so of course you don't have to spend an Action.
The rest is fairly basic: Heretic is a (delayed) Lost City just like Caravan is a delayed Laboratory.
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Kudasai

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Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards
« Reply #142 on: June 17, 2018, 03:00:56 pm »
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I have my doubts about Grand Witch making your want to buy Curses but that's just because I am not used to the "good Curses" idea, with 2 Grand Witches and Mountain Hag / Witch Hunter as support this could work.
Really great conceptually overall and far more complex than the official Travellers (which I cannot stand because they are so overpowered and strategically mandatory).

Yeah, this probably only works if you're building for it (i.e. getting a lot of the Traveler cards). The Curse thing is usually going to be niche, but if you could build a reliable engine around 3-5 Curses, you can do a lot of cool things at that point like: (1) Gain Curses and get 2VP and then dish them out to other players with Mountain Hag resulting in a 3VP swing for each Curse. (2) Give Grand Witches to players with Mountain Hag for -6VP, but this has to be timed well with the end of the game.

I just ask that people don't focus too much on this aspect alone as it is only one side of this Traveller. Managing these scenarios is difficult and can be slow, so it will depend highly on the other Kingdom cards. Other than that, I think there is still enough going on to justify the purchases. And as with all well balanced Dominion cards, there should certainly be scenarios where Grand Witch is not the way to go.
« Last Edit: June 17, 2018, 03:02:22 pm by Kudasai »
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Kudasai

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Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards
« Reply #143 on: June 17, 2018, 03:58:36 pm »
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Heretic: I'm gonna need some explaining again. How is this a Lost City? The wording for Hunted is ambiguous and confusing;  "play all cards" seems to mean just play them as usual but put them on the mat, but the "at the start of your turn" part seems to mean it's forcing you to play everything, but without using up actions. What are these "tokens" it's talking about? Is it referring to VP chips?

Orphan: Why not just have it gain you a Curse? Less confusing, and makes the abilities of Witch Hunter and Mountain Witch useful more of the time.

Grand Witch: The cool thing about this is that you avoided the problem a lot of dual-type fan Curses have. This remains in play, so you can't just milk the benefit and then trash it at the end. Well, you can still do it with Bonfire, but that might be a neat little loophole that makes it more interesting. The actual ability of the card I'm not so hot on. From looking at it it seems very weak. VP-when-you-X cards like Goons and Groundskeeper are best when you have a whole bunch of them in play at once, but this is hard to get and each one is a freaking negative Province. I also feel that getting -VP when you get this and then slowly gaining +VP to make up for it just isn't all that interesting. I think it would be more interesting if it gave you some sort of a big engine boost, so that you can make up for the -VP at the very end with a megaturn.

Hunted - I think Holunder9 summed this one up nicely. It's basically Prince, but for a set amount of turns (how many tokens you have) and requires a Wine Merchant condition to get your cards back, otherwise you lose them. There is a lot of text to read through, but I think once a player understands the core concept, it's very easy to play/execute.

Orphan - Gaining a curse is an interesting idea that would be useful late game, but I think it would hurt too much early game. Making the Curse gain conditional kind of goes against my design for the card: Orphan shouldn't hurt early game, but should mid-late game if you're trying to pick up late Traveler components. I'll certainly keep it in mind though. Thanks for the suggestion!

Grand Witch - I'd argue this is pretty strong, but only with the other Traveler cards to support it. On it's own versus Champion and Teacher it is the weakest for sure. It doesn't give a big engine boast (Teacher and Champion do that well enough), but there is still room for big, end-game point swings using the Cursing mechanics in various ways. I talked about this to some length with Holunder9 in the above comments.

Bonfire - I'm glad someone caught this! I certainly didn't when designing these. Very thematic, but in a terrible way. A friend mentioned it though and I think it would be interesting. Perhaps too swingy, but some combos in Dominion will always be that way.

« Last Edit: June 17, 2018, 04:00:27 pm by Kudasai »
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Commodore Chuckles

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Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards
« Reply #144 on: June 17, 2018, 04:27:37 pm »
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...Ohhhhh, I get it now.

I thought "play all cards on this" meant "play all cards onto this." You might want to rephrase this as "play all cards that are on this" or something else less ambiguous. Maybe nobody else would get confused by this, but considering how long it took me to figure it out, I'm not so sure. The one thing that still bugs me is just saying "token" instead of "Hunted Token" or something like that, considering how many "tokens" there are in this game. Are there any official cards that just say "token" and expect you to know which "token"?
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Kudasai

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Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards
« Reply #145 on: June 17, 2018, 05:31:05 pm »
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I thought "play all cards on this" meant "play all cards onto this." You might want to rephrase this as "play all cards that are on this" or something else less ambiguous. Maybe nobody else would get confused by this, but considering how long it took me to figure it out, I'm not so sure. The one thing that still bugs me is just saying "token" instead of "Hunted Token" or something like that, considering how many "tokens" there are in this game. Are there any official cards that just say "token" and expect you to know which "token"?

It always seems to be a balance between clarity and text space. :) Hunted is even more complicated given you don't get the whole picture by just looking at it alone; you have to look at cards that put themselves on Hunted. I'll have to see what I can do to fix that.

In my mind, adding "that are" might make it a bit more clear, but it adds a lot of text. Changing the top portion is fine, but the bottom would also have to be changed and that is already tight on space.

The Coffers mat uses the generic term "tokens" instead of "Coin tokens" or "Coffer tokens". You could technically use any token on your coffers mat and it would only ever give +1 Coin when called. The token isn't the important part, it's where the token is that matters. But I agree "Hunted token" would go along way towards clarity, it just adds a lot of wording to Hunted and cards that use Hunted.

[EDIT] I think I can skim some text in the following areas:
(1) The "face-up" part of Heretic can probably be removed. Since it is setting itself aside and all players see it when it's put on Hunted, hopefully it is implied that it is common knowledge to all players.
(2) The "Either way" but on Hunted can probably be changed to "Then" or something, but this might be a little more unclear.
« Last Edit: June 17, 2018, 05:39:41 pm by Kudasai »
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Gazbag

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Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards
« Reply #146 on: June 18, 2018, 09:35:15 pm »
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Oh hey some travelling cards! There are things that I can appreciate here but I think there are many problems too.

Grand Witch: I'm starting here because it's the end destination and you kind of have to think about the travellers in the context of the whole line. I think this is very lacklustre, not just compared to Teacher and Champ but seeing all the cards in the line and how weak they are on a whole. With the cards in the line being overall very weak you'd expect some huge payoff at the end and I don't think this cuts it, even without the -6VP which means I have to gain 4 Victory cards before actually making any points off this I don't think this would be particularly exciting.
Another thing that makes no sense to me is that it seems like you made this a Curse type so that it enables the cards in the line that care about having Curses, but then it's a permanent Duration so if you play it you'll never see it again and it also doesn't actually interact with Mountain Hag, and you probably won't want to discard it to Witch Hunter, and it's very difficult to ever gain a copy of it so it doesn't work with itself... so yeah not sure what that's all about. I do like that being a non-supply card answers the question of whether you can gain a copy if an opponent plays a Witch, although I'm not sure if I can block Mountebank with this, or even discard it to Witch Hunter?

Orphan: A thing that comes with being a traveller is that people have to read 5 cards (6 in this case because of the state!) to understand what the card actually does instead of the usual 1. This means that you ideally want the cards to be as simple as possible and cut anything that isn't pulling its weight (this is true for any card imo but travellers especially). So like, why is this removing vp tokens? It only matters if you already have vp, probably from Grand Witch and Grand Witch is already giving -6vp for some reason so why is this doing that too? I don't think the cards need any of this -vp for balance reasons and it's just adding more clutter and confusion to them.

Witch Hunter: As is this doesn't really make Curses pay off or even mitigate Curses much in its current form because it's such a weak card by itself. Playing this and discarding a Curse leaves you at a net -1 card and +$2, +1 Buy up, and I guess you sift the Curse, but if you're adding the Curse yourself to enable this then that's kind of net-neutral. Given that by itself this is just 1 Pawn option and that Curses are Curses though it really isn't much of a payoff at all. I think this could totally just give +1 Card on top of what it already does and still be fine.
Think of the lengths Shepherd goes to to make Estates appealing cards, Pasture making the worth more vp for free and discarding any number of them for +2 Cards each! With this you have to go through the rigmarole of getting a Grand Witch for the extra vp from Curses, you have to go through Orphan to even get one of these and it can only discard 1 Curse. Oh and you don't start the game with 3 Curses in your deck for this to use.

Heretic: This could be a cool card, but I don't think it fits as a traveller. Okay so probably another long tangent, I think with travellers you want to find the sweet spot of a card that's worth doing, but wouldn't just be better as a regular kingdom card. A good example of this in the official travellers is Disciple, it's a really cool card, but it would be completely broken as a kingdom card because Discipling a Disciple would gain another Disciple... that's too many Disciples! Being a traveller fixes this as it can't gain copies of itself and it's also difficult to get many of them. Heretic on the other hand does 2 things that I think are problems for a traveller:
1. It introduces a State to the line, so now we have to parse 6 card-shaped-things to understand the line, on top of this Hunted is also a particularly difficult thing to understand, it took me 3 or 4 reads of Heretic and Hunted to actually get what they were doing, it's really confusing man!
2. Heretic has a completely different mechanism of exchanging than all the other travellers, which frankly I hate.
You also can only ever put tokens on Hunted once per game because you never lose Hunted so you can only take it once per game and you only put tokens on it if you take it, not sure if that's intentional?

Mountain Hag: Should say its pile, not it's pile. Minor grammar fixes aside, reading this I was expecting to see the big payoff for having Curses in your deck, Grand Witch sort of mitigates the -vp, Witch Hunter makes them slightly less bad, but we need a big payoff! And the big payoff for having Curses in your deck was... a Cursing attack? That doesn't make much sense here at all! The whole point of this traveller line was seemingly to make Curses desirable cards to have, so why would you want to send a Curse over to your opponent? Isn't that the opposite of what you want to be doing? Grand Witch is even worded as to give you vp if you gain a Curse, so it kind of counters this attack. I really don't get this, apart from that it would be weird to have a Witch that doesn't give out Curses.

Some final words on the powerlevel of these...
  • Orphan is Abandoned Mine with a drawback.
  • Witch Hunter is worse than Pawn unless you line it up with Curse.
  • Heretic is Page that you have to pay $3 for if you want to exchange it right away.
  • Mountain Hag's +3 Coffers probably would be fine as a regular $5 and the Cursing makes no sense given the context of the traveller line.
  • Grand Witch represents a fairly modest amount of vp given the -6. I can see that this is trying to be more of a late-game thing than Champ or Teacher so you wouldn't rush out of the gate for Orphan or exchange Heretic as fast as possible but really there are way too many drawbacks here for what the end reward is.

Sorry if this was too harsh, I think these still need a lot of work before they're up to the best standard and I just want to help.
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Kudasai

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Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards
« Reply #147 on: June 19, 2018, 12:53:04 am »
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Oh hey some travelling cards! There are things that I can appreciate here but I think there are many problems too.

Grand Witch: I'm starting here because it's the end destination and you kind of have to think about the travellers in the context of the whole line. I think this is very lacklustre, not just compared to Teacher and Champ but seeing all the cards in the line and how weak they are on a whole. With the cards in the line being overall very weak you'd expect some huge payoff at the end and I don't think this cuts it, even without the -6VP which means I have to gain 4 Victory cards before actually making any points off this I don't think this would be particularly exciting.
Another thing that makes no sense to me is that it seems like you made this a Curse type so that it enables the cards in the line that care about having Curses, but then it's a permanent Duration so if you play it you'll never see it again and it also doesn't actually interact with Mountain Hag, and you probably won't want to discard it to Witch Hunter, and it's very difficult to ever gain a copy of it so it doesn't work with itself... so yeah not sure what that's all about. I do like that being a non-supply card answers the question of whether you can gain a copy if an opponent plays a Witch, although I'm not sure if I can block Mountebank with this, or even discard it to Witch Hunter?

Orphan: A thing that comes with being a traveller is that people have to read 5 cards (6 in this case because of the state!) to understand what the card actually does instead of the usual 1. This means that you ideally want the cards to be as simple as possible and cut anything that isn't pulling its weight (this is true for any card imo but travellers especially). So like, why is this removing vp tokens? It only matters if you already have vp, probably from Grand Witch and Grand Witch is already giving -6vp for some reason so why is this doing that too? I don't think the cards need any of this -vp for balance reasons and it's just adding more clutter and confusion to them.

Witch Hunter: As is this doesn't really make Curses pay off or even mitigate Curses much in its current form because it's such a weak card by itself. Playing this and discarding a Curse leaves you at a net -1 card and +$2, +1 Buy up, and I guess you sift the Curse, but if you're adding the Curse yourself to enable this then that's kind of net-neutral. Given that by itself this is just 1 Pawn option and that Curses are Curses though it really isn't much of a payoff at all. I think this could totally just give +1 Card on top of what it already does and still be fine.
Think of the lengths Shepherd goes to to make Estates appealing cards, Pasture making the worth more vp for free and discarding any number of them for +2 Cards each! With this you have to go through the rigmarole of getting a Grand Witch for the extra vp from Curses, you have to go through Orphan to even get one of these and it can only discard 1 Curse. Oh and you don't start the game with 3 Curses in your deck for this to use.

Heretic: This could be a cool card, but I don't think it fits as a traveller. Okay so probably another long tangent, I think with travellers you want to find the sweet spot of a card that's worth doing, but wouldn't just be better as a regular kingdom card. A good example of this in the official travellers is Disciple, it's a really cool card, but it would be completely broken as a kingdom card because Discipling a Disciple would gain another Disciple... that's too many Disciples! Being a traveller fixes this as it can't gain copies of itself and it's also difficult to get many of them. Heretic on the other hand does 2 things that I think are problems for a traveller:
1. It introduces a State to the line, so now we have to parse 6 card-shaped-things to understand the line, on top of this Hunted is also a particularly difficult thing to understand, it took me 3 or 4 reads of Heretic and Hunted to actually get what they were doing, it's really confusing man!
2. Heretic has a completely different mechanism of exchanging than all the other travellers, which frankly I hate.
You also can only ever put tokens on Hunted once per game because you never lose Hunted so you can only take it once per game and you only put tokens on it if you take it, not sure if that's intentional?

Mountain Hag: Should say its pile, not it's pile. Minor grammar fixes aside, reading this I was expecting to see the big payoff for having Curses in your deck, Grand Witch sort of mitigates the -vp, Witch Hunter makes them slightly less bad, but we need a big payoff! And the big payoff for having Curses in your deck was... a Cursing attack? That doesn't make much sense here at all! The whole point of this traveller line was seemingly to make Curses desirable cards to have, so why would you want to send a Curse over to your opponent? Isn't that the opposite of what you want to be doing? Grand Witch is even worded as to give you vp if you gain a Curse, so it kind of counters this attack. I really don't get this, apart from that it would be weird to have a Witch that doesn't give out Curses.

Some final words on the powerlevel of these...
  • Orphan is Abandoned Mine with a drawback.
  • Witch Hunter is worse than Pawn unless you line it up with Curse.
  • Heretic is Page that you have to pay $3 for if you want to exchange it right away.
  • Mountain Hag's +3 Coffers probably would be fine as a regular $5 and the Cursing makes no sense given the context of the traveller line.
  • Grand Witch represents a fairly modest amount of vp given the -6. I can see that this is trying to be more of a late-game thing than Champ or Teacher so you wouldn't rush out of the gate for Orphan or exchange Heretic as fast as possible but really there are way too many drawbacks here for what the end reward is.

Sorry if this was too harsh, I think these still need a lot of work before they're up to the best standard and I just want to help.

No problem. Criticism is always welcome as long as it is thoughtful and constructive. There isn't much more I can add to the conversation regarding the entire line's power level and capabilities. I'm sure you've read what I've had to say. I should add a few things though: (1) In all my games and testing these cards have met or exceeded my set expectations for how they interact, play and produce game winning results; (2) This is not meant to be an all inclusive line (as I believe all the official Traveler lines are meant to be). It has a wide range of inter-Traveler play potential, but it will always shine best with the other Kingdom cards.

A few specific issues you brought up:
-Curses: My intention was for a player to be able to use Grand Witch in any manner (minus acting as a distributed Curse attack with normal Cursers) you could use a normal Curse. Unfortunately this is a bit of a grey area though. What does Curse actually mean? Is it a type or a name? Within the official card domain it does not matter, so I'm choosing to say it's a type and thus supports Grand Witch usage.
-Grand Witch: Gaining VP points from gaining a Curse as an attack was an oversight. It has been changed to only apply to Curse cards gained during a player's turn. Thanks for the catch.
-Mountain Hag: It's a stretch, but there is no rule barring Mountain Hag from giving out a Grand Witch as a curse.
-Heretic: I think this is precisely the definition of a card that could not be balanced outside of a Traveler line. Cantrip on play with free Lost City plays for the next 4 turns is quite strong, despite having to pay $3 to get it back, and that's for all cards on Hunted. If you had 2 Heretics in play you'd only be paying $1.5 Coin. It's a bit more complicated than that though.
-Hunted: This actually does discard itself if you fail to remove a token. It is a bit much too read, but I think the play potential and ease of play once understood far outweighs a few minutes of head scratching.

I appreciate the feedback and have given you credit for the fixes.
« Last Edit: June 19, 2018, 12:54:13 am by Kudasai »
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Kudasai

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Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards
« Reply #148 on: June 19, 2018, 03:11:18 am »
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Messing around with some more cards that use the Hunted state. Charlatan is a kind of Feast reboot that has late game potential. Could be way too powerful though. Just thought I'd share so people can get more of a sense of how Hunted can be used in different ways.

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Holunder9

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Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards
« Reply #149 on: June 19, 2018, 06:42:01 am »
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  • Orphan is Abandoned Mine with a drawback.
  • Witch Hunter is worse than Pawn unless you line it up with Curse.
  • Heretic is Page that you have to pay $3 for if you want to exchange it right away.
  • Mountain Hag's +3 Coffers probably would be fine as a regular $5 and the Cursing makes no sense given the context of the traveller line.
  • Grand Witch represents a fairly modest amount of vp given the -6. I can see that this is trying to be more of a late-game thing than Champ or Teacher so you wouldn't rush out of the gate for Orphan or exchange Heretic as fast as possible but really there are way too many drawbacks here for what the end reward is.
Kudasai pointed out that having Grand Witch(es) in play make you want to buy Curses. Witch Hunter convert those bought Curses into double Peddlers which is, as you rightly pointed out, not as good as Shepherd's double Laboratory but still decent. The other way to deal with the bought Curses is to Ambassador them via Mountain Hag. The first strategy is always viable whereas the second one is to be preferred in a non-mirror, i.e. when no other player has Grand Witch (I prefer the old version of Grand Witch that hedges against those Mountain Hag attacks as it precisely opens up this form strategic variety)

I agree that these cards seem weak at the first glance and that's partly objectively true but also partly due to us missing all those complex interactions.
I don't agree though that fan-made Travellers should be as simple or overpowered as the official Travellers. Kind of nice to have a Traveller line which is not mandatory in 99% of all games.

I also think that Curse interaction is just something which we are not used to. Before Adventures nobody was used to Peasant someday converting those worthless Pearl Divers into shiny Laboratories either.
Of course none of these interactions will occur in a Kingdom with Cursers and trashers. But if there is no trasher Mountain Hag and Witch Hunter can be good.


Messing around with some more cards that use the Hunted state. Charlatan is a kind of Feast reboot that has late game potential. Could be way too powerful though. Just thought I'd share so people can get more of a sense of how Hunted can be used in different ways.


I like it (and gee, you even managed to make it thematically sensible with Hunted!). As you said it is a Feast that can stay around. I'd make another comparison though: if you make at l east 3 Coins in the turn and want the card to remain in your deck this is like a Woodcutter that you have to use to a buy a $5. Perhaps no the greatest thing in the world, it takes some time until you are able to buy two cards with one of them costing $5 so until then it is just a terminal Silver. During the endgame it also sucks that you cannot use it to buy two Provinces.

But in the middlegame it can shine and like with Wine Merchant you only gotta pay the $3 once so if you manage to play 2 per turn (or one in the previous turn with a Gold revealed and one in the current turn) you save some.

What fascinates me most about the card is that while it is superficially similar to 2 cards from Base that no longer exist in the second edition it is also totally new and anything but Woodcutter or Feast level of boring.
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