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Author Topic: Weekly Design Contests #1 - #100  (Read 1546291 times)

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anordinaryman

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Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« Reply #2600 on: June 28, 2019, 08:09:12 pm »
+1

No Attack submissions yet! Guess I'll have to make one:

A handsize attack and a curser for $3? What a bargain! Only problem is, you have to also discard something out of your hand to curse others. And it can't be that old moldy Estate that's just sitting around in your deck - it has to be at least a pawn or peasant if someone else discarded a copper. And you don't get any benefits out of playing the action so you better hope your curser activates...



Intimidate
Action - Attack - $3
Each other player with at least four cards in hand discards a card. You may then discard a non-victory card from your hand that costs at least $2 more than one of the discarded cards. If you did, each other player gains a curse.

I might be happy to have an attack card that gave Intimidates to my opponent in the beginning of the game. It's a terminal dead card with a weak attack and in order to curse me they will often have to discard a silver or better card? Often it's a very weak urchin. If there's no trashing on board, then the curse will really come in handy, but if there's no trashing on board, the discard hurts you probably a lot more and might not be worth cursing your opponents. I feel that I would always buy sea hag over this, and I would almost always buy militia over this.

This is a card that only really works if you have an over-drawing engine. Which I think is an interesting space for cards to be in, helping a slow to build engine finally come back in late-mid-game. I appreciate that design-space. I am wondering if there is any way to make this card more useful in the mid-game or even early game. +1 buy is a good way to make sure a card is always useful in mid-game, but doesn't fit the theme of this card, *and* violates the contest rules. I think you could attach a villager to this perhaps -- on gain?. You could probably even experiment this and have it come with a second intimidate (which has synergy because you can discard the second intimidate to give curses out).
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scolapasta

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Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« Reply #2601 on: June 29, 2019, 06:19:22 pm »
0

Maybe it's the mathematician in me being too pedantic, but I think this new wording doesn't work.

I would simply first, i,e if I trashed 6 cards, I would read this as "Gain a non-Victory card costing up to -$1 (but not less than $0)" and think I couldn't gain a card since I can't gain anything that both costs up to -$1 and not less than $0.

Maybe use Poor House's wording: "(You can't go below $0.)"? Still doesn't work exactly, but it's better.

Like I said, probably too pedantic.

I think the wording is fine; even if you want to be pedantic, you could easily read the "not less than $0" part as a modifier on the cost, not a prohibition on gaining cards costing less than $0.  That reading puts mental parentheses around "costing up to ($5 minus $1 per card you trashed (but not less than $0))", which is both an acceptably pedantic way to read it and the normal, non-pedantic way that it was intended.

Mentioning "going below $0" would be more confusing for me, since the card doesn't give you money or take away any money, and that wording would seem to be saying something about your coin total rather than the cost of the gained card.

Ultimately all these would just be clarified in the FAQ, and most people would assume the correct play and not need to check the rulebook.

OK, sure, with the parenthesis I see how it can be read that way. And I agree, you don't actually need them; just explain in FAQ is enough.
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scolapasta

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Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« Reply #2602 on: June 29, 2019, 06:22:57 pm »
+1

I've decided make a minor update to Cabal, making it a little stronger (and with simpler wording):



Now, it is never drawn dead (though you may still be wary of putting more than 1 on top of your deck) and you can still put it on top when you have another Night card you don't want to play.
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King Leon

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Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« Reply #2603 on: June 30, 2019, 06:14:57 pm »
+1

Sanctuary got a wording erratum. It was missing a reveal clause.

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naitchman

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Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« Reply #2604 on: June 30, 2019, 10:26:32 pm »
0

When does the contest end?
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segura

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Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« Reply #2605 on: July 01, 2019, 01:17:48 am »
+2



A buffed version would be without discarding, i.e.: Reveal your hand. For each Victory card revealed, gain a Spoils from its pile.
Probably mainly useful early on, with alt-VP or in an overdrawing engine.
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Fragasnap

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Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« Reply #2606 on: July 01, 2019, 06:11:34 pm »
+7

Emissary
Types: Action
Cost: $5
Draw until you have 8 cards in your hand. Put 2 cards from your hand onto your deck.
I don't feel like this one poses any especially interesting considerations in comparison to most draw-to-X cards. It is likely perfectly serviceable at its cost, but this one is not going to turn heads.

Tinker
Types: Night
Cost: $5
Look through your discard pile. Trash a card from it. If you did, trash a card from your hand and gain a card costing exactly the sum of the two trashed cards.
Because Tinker is a Night card, one can (practically) always Tinker up a buy that turn. Discard-playing effects are surprisingly absent from Nocturne. This offers a fairly neat way to combine the $ of Treasures into a tempo-trasher. I do worry a bit about lucky second-shuffle Estate+Estate Tinkers, but that's really the nature of the beast. More disconcerting though is the ability for Tinker to trash the Supply to nothing with Coppers\Curses around. It might want to limit itself to trashing cards with costs associated to then.

Crime Lord
Types: Action
Cost: $5
Play this as if it were a card on the Underlings Mat. This is that card until it leaves play.
Setup: Put 3 random Kingdom Action cards costing $3 or $4 on the Underlings Mat.
Quite a bit more interesting than Band of Misfits: Rather than giving simple flexibility, it gives unique flexibility in access to some $3 and $4 cards that cannot be used otherwise. It will be immensely Kingdom dependent, which is the nature of the beast.  The thing that prevents me from loving it is my inherent leeriness of cards that introduce a great number of additional cards to the game, and there is not even a guarantee of the complexity added by Crime Lord.

Royal Library
Types: Action
Cost: $7
Name a card. Reveal youor hand and discard all copies of the named card. Draw until you have 7 cards in hand, revealing the drawn cards and skipping any copies of the named card; set those aside, discarding them afterwards.
I do like Journeyman. The ability to mill all of your Coppers probably makes this pretty strong. It's even strong in multiples so you can drop all the other cards upon which your deck would otherwise be choking. A worthy $7 card, I'm sure. Would definitely be up there, but it is not quite as exciting as I'd prefer.

Sanctuary
Types: Action, Reaction
Cost: $5
Look at the top 4 cards of your deck. Put up to 3 into your hand. Discard the rest.
When you discard this other than during Clean-up, you may reveal this to gain a Silver to your hand.
While I do think Silver flooding is fairly underrated, Sanctuary looks like a pretty slow Smithy variant. The ability to draw the best 3 of 4 I don't think is quite a strong enough buff to climb up to $5, and that Reaction is specifically triggered by choosing to turn your $5 purchase into a Silver instead. On most boards, that ability will simply not be very valuable for a Smithy-variant, because Smithy-variants usually want to draw your deck. It would probably be more interesting taking a Workshop effect into its Reaction instead of a Silver-gainer.

Consul
Types: Action
Cost: $4
Trash a card from your hand. The player to your left names a more expensive Action card in the Supply. Choose one: Gain and then play the named card; or gain a Silver.
The original Consul offered no choice, one had to gain and play the chosen action. This created a possible loop in which the player to your left could force you to trash cards from your hand until you trashed a card costing at least $4 (so that Consul was no longer a valid target) or the Consul pile was empty. In an earlier portion of the game, a deck with the Consul pile in it is probably in pretty decent shape since it can Consul Consuls into $5+ Actions (and you presumably only acquired Consul because there is a good source of +Action on the board), but in the late game, forcing the player's hand in trashing multiple cards or even forcibly piling out the game would probably not be very much fun, so disarming the Consul-chain is probably the right move. I don't believe I like this particular solution, though. Gaining Silver to a large extent solves the question Consul otherwise faces of the player to your left forcing terminal actions into your deck and makes the consideration less interesting.
Ultimately though, Consul is a very interesting card to think about. I like this kind of board dependence. I imagine Consul will be ridiculous on boards with cheap +Action and possibly risky otherwise. It is able to possibly force less useful Actions into prominence and I admire it for that attempt (which I think the Silver gaining again reduces the possibility for that to occur. Why gain an unwanted Fortune Teller when you can gain a Silver?).

Dragon Egg
Types: Treasure
Cost: $8<4>
When you play this, gain 2 Spoils from the Spoils pile to your hand. If you can't, gain a Wish from the Wish pile.
Setup: Only add 2 Spoils per player to the Spoils pile.
I don't think the rules work this way. The other piles simply "exist" and the fact that a card tells you to gain cards from its pile implies nothing of the setup or inclusion of that card into the game. If a card told you to "exchange this for an Action" you could presumably choose an Action-type card that exists in Dominion to exchange. I'll set that aside for the moment though to talk about Dragon Egg as intended regardless.
I'm frankly uncertain why this puts 2 Spoils per player into the pile. If letting another player have Wishes is a bad idea, it will be significantly harder to get through the Spoils pile in 3-player games than in 2-player, because you have to absorb more stop-card Spoils (or get more Dragon Egg plays in a turn). The only way the limitation makes sense to me is to make it coherent around Bandit Camp, Marauder, and Pillage.
A singular Dragon Egg provides a ridiculous +$6 economy. Any Province game would end long before a player could set up to gain Wishes, and there is no way one could realistically absorb and hold the Spoils to force Dragon Eggs to generate Wishes instead of $. Such a venture would become even more futile in multiplayer games.
I think if you want this card to work, it needs to put only one of the gained Spoils into your hand. You could also use the setup to put Spoils into the Trash and then pull them out with Dragon's Egg, which would make the setup more sensible and the Wish-gaining thing more likely (as the Spoils will eventually run out).

Rowdy Library
Types: Action
Cost: $5
Draw until you have 6 cards in your hand, skipping up to 2 Action Cards you choose to; set those aside. Afterwards, play the set aside Action Cards in any order.
The thing that is especially clever about Rowdy Library is the way you absolutely must weave other Actions into it. Much like most Draw-to-X cards, Rowdy Library is awful with itself and needs ways to reduce your handsize to make it work. When it hits (from a standard hand), it is a staggering +4 Cards, +2 Actions with inconsistent Action playing. It seems to me this will be one of those cards that wildly favors random deck-order, because its ideal lets it weave hand-reduction with yet more Rowdy Libraries that will turn immediately awful if Rowdy Libraries hit too many of each other.

Repurpose
Types: Action
Cost: $6
Trash a card from your hand. Gain a card costing up to $3 more than it, that doesn't share a type with it.
Self-criticism that this will play so similarly to Expand is completely warranted. Transmogrify is in fact interesting in the way it often trashes Actions into yet more Actions: Most Remodel variants want to trash Victory->Action and Treasure\Action->Victory, so enforcing that limitation is hardly enough to allow such a large cost increase. Honestly, requiring it to only gain cards that share a type would be a more pressing limitation.

Cabal
Types: Action, Night
Cost: $5
If it's your Night phase, choose one: play a Night card from your hand twice; or put this on top of your deck. Otherwise, you may play an Action card from your hand twice.
While this is a sensible Night card, I can see why the game doesn't have a Throne Room for Night cards: There are simply so few Night cards that have especially interesting considerations introduced by doubling them, especially at a cost of $5 where it is generally competing with other Night cards (except Ghost). The majority of games, this will mostly be a consideration of how it will function without other Night cards, in which case its closest comparison is Royal Carriage in how it offers greater consistency than the average Throne Room. Unfortunately, I don't think that being unable to be drawn dead is enough of an improvement to compete. If you want a Throne Room for Night cards, I think that Action\Night Throne Room variant is a dead end. You need to offer some other benefit so that doubling itself is an option, and then dropping its price so that it can combo better with those Night cards.

Bookstore
Types: Action
Cost: $5
Draw until you have 10 cards in hand. Reveal your hand. Keep one copy of each differently named card and discard the rest.
10 cards is a lot of cards. Losing all the duplicates could be a big cost. Sort of like Menagerie, this one is fairly difficult to visualize. I think it could be really fun if it worked. The numbers might need tweaking, but the base idea is very different than most draw-to-X.

Polymath
Types: Action
Cost: $3
If you don't have Deluded or Envious, take Envious. Do this twice: Choose one: Put your deck into your discard; or look through your discard pile and reveal a card costing up to $6 from it, and put it into your hand.
While this can be compared to Mountain Village, there is often stuff in your discard pile you don't want, while this is guaranteed to get a particular card if you need it. Its limitations have all kind of piled up though in its design: It has Envious to keep you from dully pulling Golds from your discard; it has a cost limitation to keep you from pulling Platinum; and it has a "do this twice" and a "choose one" which looks pretty messy. This all makes the card kind of a trip to read. I like the concept, but I think all the work to get what is frankly a fairly situational draw effect that will often slow the game down in shuffling might not be worth the effort. I'd aim to make the card itself bigger and simpler: A cost of $5 would do a lot to reduce the number of mid-turn shuffles, and a bigger draw would make it read even more differently than Mountain Village. A cost limiter of "less than this" without involving a state would likely be sufficient.

Smelter
Types: Action
Cost: $5
Choose one: Trash a card from your hand and gain a Copper to your hand per $1 it cost; or trash any number of Coppers from your hand and gain a card costing exactly $1 per Copper your trashed.
The dream is drawing a bunch of Coppers and trashing them with Smelter before later trashing a high cost card for a bunch of $ to end the game. It makes it look at lot like Forge canoodling with Salvager. I think a cost of $3 or $4 would make Smelter intensely frustrating, because a Smelter\CCCE turn will be significantly worse than a Smelter\CCCC turn. Even a cost of $5 might be bad just because of how good opening with Smelter is.
I think a cost of $6 is likely ideal, but it does start looking an awful lot like Forge as we increase its price, so I'm not sure. I worry how many of those games will be lost by one player getting a $5\$2 split in comparison to the others with Smelter around. You don't just get 4 fewer junk cards with a good turn 3 draw, you get 4 fewer junk cards and a $4-card into your deck.

Djinn
Types: Action
Cost: <5>
Discard your hand. Reveal cards from your deck until you reveal 3 Action cards costing $5 or less. Discard the other cards and any of the 3 Action cards, then play the rest in any order.
Sort of similarly to Golem, I'm having a hard time imagining exactly what kind of deck wants Djinn in it. Losing 4 cards of a typical hand for 3 random Action plays seems like it will only ever be "not worth it" or "game-breaking." Anything that reads +$3 immediately breaks the game. Draw-to-X is probably pretty silly. It doesn't play nice with pretty much anything else because having nothing but 3 random Actions won't leave you with enough to manage much. I think this needs a more lenient expense than losing your hand (and a matching greater cost than a mere <5>).

Returned Adventurer
Types: Action
Cost: $5
Name a type. Reveal 5 cards from your deck. Put 2 cards with that type into your hand. Discard the rest.
This draw looks pretty weak. The idea is mostly that you can target draw better Actions than you would get grabbing the first two and mill 5 cards regardless, which makes it pretty useful in the early game while you try to get your deck in order. Its similarities to Embassy are not to be missed. It draws at most 2 cards and discards at least 3 from 5 random cards instead of giving you your choice of 7 of 10 (the on-gain which can be helpful or harmful aside). That is such a huge loss, that I'd guess a cost of $4 would be more than reasonable for the bonus milling this gives.

Sanctuary
Types: Action
Cost: $6
Trash any number of cards from your hand. Gain a non-Victory card costing up to $5 minus $1 per card you trashed (but not less than $0).
Sanctuary is Forge in reverse: Rather than gaining a card based on the total cost of cards you do trash, it gains a card based on the number of cards you don't.  Your gut reaction to prevent Sanctuary from falling into range of gaining itself is good, but I'm not sure that's sufficient: A mass trasher like this one is likely set to swing a lot of games at a cost of $6 (other the other mass-trasher Smelter at least can only trash Coppers).

Broker
Types: Action
Cost: $4
Reveal cards from the Black Market deck until you reveal two action cards. Play one of the revealed action cards. Put the rest on the bottom of the Black Market deck in any order. When that card leaves play, put it on the bottom of the Black Market deck.
Setup: Make a Black Market deck out of different unused Kingdom cards.
Broker takes Band of Misfits to another level, adopting all the problems of Black Market. I find cards like this that are randomly terminal are immensely frustrating. I don't think Broker would be inherently broken, because a single random play of a $5+ card is not going to decide the game (though hitting a strong trasher with an opening Broker would be game-deciding), but this appeals much less than the similar Crime Lord.

Intimidate
Types: Action, Attack
Cost: $3
Each other player with at least four cards in hand discards a card. You may then discard a non-victory card from your hand that costs at least $2 more than one of the discarded cards. If you did, each other player gains a curse.
I do love Attacks. Unfortunately, I think you underestimate the sheer cost of the Attack you've built here. Each other player discards cards asynchronously, and then you can discard something with greater value to possibly junk other players, but you're necessarily discarding something useful if you are able to Curse players. At a minimum, you're down a $3-purchase, a $2-purchase maybe, 2 cards, and 1 +action. That is super expensive, especially because you need to choose to play Intimidate in a hand with another $2+ purchase that you still haven't played (which might often be an Action with which you're simply hoping to be able to hit players). That is ignoring the political implications of the card due to that asynchronous discard.

Loot
Types: Treasure
Cost: $1
Any number of times: You may discard a Victory card to gain a Spoils from its pile.
This seems like a very swingy opener and not all too desireable otherwise. The chance of getting multiple one-shot Golds versus 1 is a huge difference in players' economies. It might balance out with Spoils going on to prevent Loot from finding Estates again. I don't think this would be good enough to skip Estate trashing, but it is probably quite good in Kingdoms without trashing--and then I worry if the early Estate\Looter collisions will be too swingy to balance out.


Show: kru5h's Bookstore
Bookstore
Types: Action
Cost: $5
Draw until you have 10 cards in hand. Reveal your hand. Keep one copy of each differently named card and discard the rest.
Place: naitchman's Crime Lord
Crime Lord
Types: Action
Cost: $5
Play this as if it were a card on the Underlings Mat. This is that card until it leaves play.
Setup: Put 3 random Kingdom Action cards costing $3 or $4 on the Underlings Mat.
Win: anordinaryman's Consul
Consul
Types: Action
Cost: $4
Trash a card from your hand. The player to your left names a more expensive Action card in the Supply. Choose one: Gain and then play the named card; or gain a Silver.
While I would prefer a different out for the Consul-chain than this Silver gaining option, Consul has a fascinating and board dependent concept that encourages players to get the most of out some otherwise less valuable Actions.

You may post the next challenge when you would, anordinaryman.
« Last Edit: July 02, 2019, 06:57:07 pm by Fragasnap »
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Commodore Chuckles

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Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« Reply #2607 on: July 01, 2019, 07:58:41 pm »
0

Discard-playing effects are surprisingly absent from Nocturne.

I think Ghost covers this territory pretty well.
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mail-mi

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Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« Reply #2608 on: July 01, 2019, 10:06:20 pm »
0

Hm, I wonder if it would be too strong to make Sanctuary cost $5 and worth 1VP. Then it gets around the “gaining itself” problem without having to say “non-victory and non-Sanctuary.”

Anyway congrats anordinaryman!
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anordinaryman

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Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« Reply #2609 on: July 02, 2019, 10:35:52 am »
+1


Win: anordinaryman's Consul
Consul
Types: Action
Cost: $4
Trash a card from your hand. The player to your left names a more expensive Action card in the Supply. Choose one: Gain and then play the named card; or gain a Silver.
While I would prefer a different out for the Consul-chain than this Silver gaining option, Consul has a fascinating and board dependent concept that encourages players to get the most of out some otherwise less valuable Actions.

You may post the next challenge when you would, anordinaryman.

Wow, I’m honored and humbled to have my card selected! Thank you very much for the EXTREMELY detailed and helpful feedback. I agree with you, the silver is a little bit too much of a freebie. In the original conception of the card, I had attached +2 actions, but then I think it’s balanced at 5 instead, which makes the card much worse since you can no longer trash it for fives. I am now thinking a better solution is a +1 action on play. I may also need to provide a way to gain villagers to deal with the terminals in deck... perhaps gain 1 or 2 villagers on trash (and/or gain). Thoughts? The idea is to make consuls better in consul decks so opponents are less likely to give them all to you.

Also, I have the idea for the context, I will post it tonight (in less than 12 hours). As a preview: the contest will involve inspecting different expansions and fitting a specific type of card-shaped-thing to that expansion’s themes (emphasizing the newer expansions). Full rules and details to follow.
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Fragasnap

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Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« Reply #2610 on: July 02, 2019, 06:57:03 pm »
0

I agree with you, the silver is a little bit too much of a freebie. In the original conception of the card, I had attached +2 actions, but then I think it’s balanced at 5 instead, which makes the card much worse since you can no longer trash it for fives. I am now thinking a better solution is a +1 action on play. I may also need to provide a way to gain villagers to deal with the terminals in deck... perhaps gain 1 or 2 villagers on trash (and/or gain). Thoughts? The idea is to make consuls better in consul decks so opponents are less likely to give them all to you.
I think you are trying too hard to make Consul relevant in every Kingdom. Consul is a situational trash for benefit card, and it is fine if there are Kingdoms where it is useless. The ability to turn Estates and Coppers into the weakest (likely terminal) Action the Kingdom has is inherently a Kingdom-dependent effect, and that's fine. The problem to worry about is Consul being used to gain more Consuls. Right now, you're trying to patch more concepts onto Consul to fix the problem by making Consul a better target for itself, when I think stripping away will be simpler.
The only sensible option here is to explicitly prohibit the left player from choosing Consul. Substituting the gain is too easy an out (or renders the point of the card moot, depending on the gain) or making the trash\gain\play optional will leave Consul typically worst Action on the board (because I don't know that enough Kingdoms can provide enough time for a Consul->Consul->$5-Action step-through).
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Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« Reply #2611 on: July 03, 2019, 01:54:08 am »
+2

Also, I have the idea for the context, I will post it tonight (in less than 12 hours).

Time elapsed since: 15 hours, 18 minutes. *Nudge, nudge*
« Last Edit: July 03, 2019, 02:34:46 am by Gubump »
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anordinaryman

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Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« Reply #2612 on: July 03, 2019, 08:54:21 am »
+3

CHALLENGE #35 - A Thematic Curser

I'd like to call attention to a particular line in the wiki article on curser wiki article (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Curser):
Quote
It can be argued that the main curser from each early expansion closely represents the expansion's theme
(bold emphasis is mine). One of my favorite parts of the early expansions (up to Hinterlands) was how the curser really tied the themes and motifs of that expansion together. Mountebank is a great example since it follows both of Prosperity’s themes: Treasures, and Big-ness (7-cost cards, Colonies, in Mountebanks's cases a big curser that gives out 2 pieces of junk). I also how players can be protected against it to limit its power. Familiar also fits both themes: action-chains and Potions (which is a brilliant mechanic to prevent easily over-loading on it. Again, this limits its power). Both of these cursers really belong in the expansion they are in, and they both bring the entire expansion together.

For this challenge, I am hoping you to pick an expansion, and design a curser for it that *really* fits that expansion. Ideally, if the expansion has multiple themes/motifs, your curser should involve at least 2 of those themes. You may pick ANY existing expansion, even early ones. You may even pick the “expansion” of promotional cards. I think in promotional cards there are some subtle motifs. For example, swinginess and oddness that doesn’t normally fit in Dominion (black market, stash) and also self-synergy (Sauna/Avanta and Governor both have self-synergy). You are welcome to pick some of the more minor themes of an expansion, for example, Intrigue also has a minor self-synergy motif (Nobles uses both choices to build a +cards/+action draw engine on its own, and Minion uses both choices to have a full-engine of $ and draw and minor attack.)

When you submit your entry, please describe which expansion it belongs in. It would be helpful to me for you to describe why it fits so well in that expansion. You may choose to consider Cornucopia and Guilds as separate expansions or as one expansion. Let me know in the submission what you are doing.

Of course you can use mechanics that were introduced in previous expansions, but pay attention to the expansions themes. It would be un-fitting to use an on-buy mechanic in Renaissance, which strove to be a simple expansion and only uses on-gains. Having both in one set makes the set more complicated and goes against the theme.

Entries will be judged on how well they fit into that expansion, how interesting they are, how fair/fun they are, and how simple they are. Roughly in that order.

A curser does not need to be an attack card. (e.g. Ill Gotten Gains) You may design a card-shaped thing (events, states, artifacts, etc) that acts as a curser.

Please make the submission using a card image, so I can see how the text fits on a card. You don't need to find an image. You can use this to help make the card images: (https://shardofhonor.github.io/dominion-card-generator/index.html)
« Last Edit: July 03, 2019, 11:30:41 am by anordinaryman »
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naitchman

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Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« Reply #2613 on: July 03, 2019, 11:42:14 am »
+2

Interesting Contest. Would cards that allow people to get curses but don't directly give people curses be okay (embargo, swamp hag)?
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anordinaryman

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Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« Reply #2614 on: July 03, 2019, 01:23:26 pm »
0

Interesting Contest. Would cards that allow people to get curses but don't directly give people curses be okay (embargo, swamp hag)?

Yes! But I wouldn’t count something that only involves curses as a penalty to balance a strong card such as cursed gold or something similar to cursed village.
« Last Edit: July 03, 2019, 01:51:35 pm by anordinaryman »
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scolapasta

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Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« Reply #2615 on: July 03, 2019, 01:57:20 pm »
+1

Coven



Change log:
v0.1 - initial
v0.2 - changed to make your cards into Cursers



Theme: Adventures
• Events
• Card-shaped things that put player specific tokens on piles

Secret History:
This started out as a "cursed" token that hurt everyone equally; but to be more in line with the other Adventurers tokens (putting them on a card makes that card better for you than for other players), it is now a "cursing token" that changes your cards from that pile into cursers.



Thematically (and not meaning mechanics, but meaning relating to concept of a "Coven"), having this work on play seemed to fit best, i.e a Witch allows you to Curse a player when you play a card (Witch), but get a gathering of Witches together to place that same power on another card.

[the below applies to v0.1 of Coven]

I started out having it only curse other players and unlimited tokens (1 per player) per pile. But that didn't scale well in a 3-4 player game: if you were the only player following a particular strategy, all your opponents placing curse tokens on a pile would "pile" up on you (hehe). So then I limited to only 1 Cursing token per pile. The problem now, of course, it could be too big advantage to whoever bought it first. So now it curses everyone.

I'm not really sure if it works, but I like its simplicity.

I'm thinking it would either make a player buy more of a variety of cards*, so they could skip playing the cards from a cursed pile, or they would need TfB in order to get rid of them. Or Watchtower.

* it definitely hurts engines that expect playing multiples copies of a card

And it may still not work great in a 4 player game, as you could have 4 cursed piles (i.e. it may just slow the game down way too much)

One thing that could make it interesting in a 2 player game, is the sense of (I'm not sure how to express it) give and take. i.e. you don't buy this too early, as you want to wait and see what your opponent is doing, and then you also want to do something different from them, but they may switch gears once they see what you are doing.

Please let me know if you think it could be tweaked to make it better (should it cost different?) or just scrapped completely.

(I also am not sure how much time I'll have this (USA) holiday weekend, so wanted to at least get something in early for feedback)





« Last Edit: July 10, 2019, 03:49:34 pm by scolapasta »
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Gubump

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Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« Reply #2616 on: July 03, 2019, 03:04:18 pm »
0



I would call it a Cursed token rather than Cursing. Cursing makes it sound like it gives other players curses rather than cursing yourself.
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GendoIkari

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Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« Reply #2617 on: July 03, 2019, 03:27:02 pm »
0



I would call it a Cursed token rather than Cursing. Cursing makes it sound like it gives other players curses rather than cursing yourself.

It does give other players curses though... I mean it can curse yourself also, but you'd be putting it on an action that your opponents are playing more than you.
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Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« Reply #2618 on: July 03, 2019, 03:38:48 pm »
0



I would call it a Cursed token rather than Cursing. Cursing makes it sound like it gives other players curses rather than cursing yourself.

It does give other players curses though... I mean it can curse yourself also, but you'd be putting it on an action that your opponents are playing more than you.

But also cursed sounds cooler.
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Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« Reply #2619 on: July 03, 2019, 03:44:45 pm »
0

I'll take a stab at making a promo curser.
Here's Heretic. Super swingy alt-vp that allows you to do an absurd thing like get all the curses and use them instead of money.



Card text is :
Quote
While this card is in play, Curses gain the type "Treasure" and have the ability +$2.
Choose one or both:
• Gain a Curse to your hand.
• Each other player gains a Curse.
-
At the end of the game, if you have the most Curses, 2%

you'd clearly want enough of them to make them actually worth VP to offset the curses you take on.

Alternatively, you can just curse everyone else, and/or yourself!

Also ties into the promo's subtheme of "generally large/strange choices" (Governor, Envoy (for the player on yr left), Prince and Stash also exhibit a similar "large" decision space, Black Market exhibiting "strange" decision space).

Thematically, its named "Heretic" because it involves having a large pile of junk, and "religious"-themed cards are generally de-junking trash cards.

edit: fixed image link, added thematic rationale
« Last Edit: July 04, 2019, 07:28:04 am by spineflu »
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King Leon

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Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« Reply #2620 on: July 03, 2019, 04:22:34 pm »
0



Potemkin Village
Cost: $4

+1 Card
Discard 1 card. If it’s a Victory card: +1 Card and each other player gains a Curse, otherwise: +2 Actions
-
1 VP
-
When you gain this, gain an Estate.

You are very proud about the opulent fortifications surrounding your small kingdom. But in the big world outside there must be great leaders. After a long and burdensome journey, you reach a magnificent village, which must belong to a great leader. At least you think it is a great leader and you think it is a magnificent village. In fact it is just another small village at the border of just another small kingdom and you realize, that this is just the begin of your long and burdensome journey.

This is a Victory card, which comes with a Victory card, in a set which has nice interaction with Victory cards. If you discard a one, this is a Witch and if you don’t, this is a worse Village. Well, this card sounds very desirable at the first glance. A curser for $4 which already comes with 2 VP!? How it this even possible??? I mean, Nobles costs $6, but ... Stop! As the card’s name implies*, it seems to look perfect, but actually this is just a façade threatening to crumble in an extremely fast game, where piles are drained very quickly. In fact this card performs very poorly without the correct assistance.

Fortunately, Hinterlands comes with a lot support for this card. Silk Road and Crossroads love decks with many Victory cards. Trader gives you Silvers instead of Estates and Cartographer sifts through your Estates. Potemkin Village is also a nice Tunnel enabler and unlike Young Witch its cursing effect cannot be stopped by the Bane card. You can also buy a Border Village, which comes with a Potemkin Village, which comes with an Estate. Scheme helps you to hold your Potemkin Villages back when you have no Victory card in your hand. And in a pinch, the Hamlet effect is acceptable in a Margrave or Embassy engine. Potemkin village fulfils the following themes of the Hinterland expansion: on-gain effect, Victory card interaction, discarding cards.

*) A Potemkin village is the illusion of a wealthy village with impressive buildings. Those buildings often only have a renovated front or are shells without interior. The card’s image shows Pyongyang for obvious reasons.
« Last Edit: July 05, 2019, 10:25:44 pm by King Leon »
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spineflu

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Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« Reply #2621 on: July 03, 2019, 04:28:30 pm »
0



Potemkin Village
Cost: $4

+1 Card
Discard 1 card. If it’s a Victory card: +1 Card and each other player gains a Curse, otherwise: +2 Actions
-
1 VP
-
When you gain this, gain an Estate.

You are very proud about the opulent fortifications surrounding your small kingdom. But in the big world outside there must be great leaders. After a long and burdensome journey, you reach a magnificent village, which must belong to a great leader. At least you think it is a great leader and you think it is a magnificent village. In fact it is just another small village at the border of just another small kingdom and you realize, that this is just the begin of your long and burdensome journey.

This is a Victory card, which comes with a Victory card, in a set which has nice interaction with Victory cards. If you discard a Victory card, this is a Witch, if you don’t this is a worse Village. Well, this card sounds very desirable at the first glance. A curser for $4 which already comes with 2 VP!? How it this even possible??? I mean, nobles costs $6, but ... Stop! As the card’s name implies*, it seems to look perfect, but actually this is just a façade threatening to crumble in an extremely fast game, where piles are drained very quickly. In fact this card performs very poorly without the correct assistance.

Fortunately, Hinterlands comes with a lot support for this card. Silk Road and Crossroads love decks with many Victory cards. Trader gives you Silvers instead of Estates and Cartographer sifts through your Estates. Potemkin Village is also a nice Tunnel enabler and unlike Young Witch its cursing effect cannot be stopped by the bane card. You can also buy a Border Village, which comes with a Potemkin Village, which comes with an Estate. And in a pinch, the Hamlet effect is acceptable Margrave or Embassy engine.

*) A Potemkin village is the illusion of a wealthy village with impressive buildings. Those buildings often only have a renovated front or are shells without interior. The card’s image shows Pyongyang for obvious reasons.

doesn't the name of your card itself kinda break theme/canon tho? these are named after some russian guy from the late 18th century iirc
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King Leon

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Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« Reply #2622 on: July 03, 2019, 04:37:14 pm »
0

doesn't the name of your card itself kinda break theme/canon tho? these are named after some russian guy from the late 18th century iirc

Why should it break canon? The themes of Hinterlands are trading, roads and foreign cultures. Mandarin is also a direct reference to imperial China and the German names of the cards Walled Village and Church are Carcassonne (only in the Hans im Glück version, it is now Befestigtes Dorf) and Schweriner Dom, which are both references to real world cities.
« Last Edit: July 03, 2019, 04:42:05 pm by King Leon »
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spineflu

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Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« Reply #2623 on: July 03, 2019, 04:48:22 pm »
0

doesn't the name of your card itself kinda break theme/canon tho? these are named after some russian guy from the late 18th century iirc

Why should it break canon? The themes of Hinterlands are trading, roads and foreign cultures. Mandarin is also a direct reference to imperial China and the German names of the cards Walled Village and Church are Carcassonne (only in the Hans im Glück version, it is now Befestigtes Dorf) and Schweriner Dom, which are both references to real world cities.

cos timeline-wise, your card happens like 200 years minimum after literally all the other sets?
« Last Edit: July 03, 2019, 04:49:55 pm by spineflu »
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King Leon

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Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« Reply #2624 on: July 03, 2019, 05:12:27 pm »
0

doesn't the name of your card itself kinda break theme/canon tho? these are named after some russian guy from the late 18th century iirc

Why should it break canon? The themes of Hinterlands are trading, roads and foreign cultures. Mandarin is also a direct reference to imperial China and the German names of the cards Walled Village and Church are Carcassonne (only in the Hans im Glück version, it is now Befestigtes Dorf) and Schweriner Dom, which are both references to real world cities.

cos timeline-wise, your card happens like 200 years minimum after literally all the other sets?

Here is an alternative draft artwork, if you feel this fits more theme-wise. But I like Potemkin Village more and it actually fits into Hinterland’s theme.
« Last Edit: July 03, 2019, 05:24:30 pm by King Leon »
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