Contest #80 - ResultsCongratulations to all for so many creative ideas and great designs!
I saw by the posts in this forum that the most of you were already discussing Dominion in high level when I even didn’t know about the game. So, it was a hard task to me to judge your work. I don’t have the expertise you have to look a card and see all possible scenarios for it. The best I could do to have something useful to say about the cards was to playtest them and so it was what I did. Please take the following comments as what they are: just some notes of an average player, far from being the discerning opinion of an expert. And please, don’t be upset if even with the tests I misjudged or undervalued your card. On the other hand, please let me know if I did it, I like to know when I’m wrong.
Another hard task to me is to write in English. So please forgive any misspell and the poor vocabulary. I didn’t have time to revise the text, so there would be some mistypes too.
Thank you very much!PlaytestsI played 41 simulated matches using the submitted cards in which I played for both players (in one of them for 3 players). Early it was clear that so many more tests would be necessary to the conclusions be consistent and statistically relevant. As I said before in the forum, the tests also were biased by my style of play and limitations as player. So, any conclusions should be taken with reservations.
In general, I played the tested cards with a kingdom with the simplest cards of each category of the base set. Village as Village, Workshop as gainer, Smith to draw, Remodel as remodeler, etc. When necessary for test some feature I included other cards. When I say in the comments that I played a card against other, I mean that one player played with one of them and not the other and vice versa, being the rest of the kingdom available to both.
CommentsI will organize my comments in an order that groups cards with some similar features. There are four cards that are draw-to-x, so I’ll start by them:
Scribe by D782802859I like the way it makes use of night phase to save the card if it was not used. However, in the playtests Scribe shows some weakness. The difference from Scholar is that Scholar normally draws you more cards that you have before. With Scribe it only happens if you manage to reduce your hand size before, which is not always easy, you have to play before cards that don’t draw and still have an action available to play Scribe. In general, it’s s sifter not a draw card. Even in the best scenario to it (with non-terminal trashers and villages that don’t draw), in which it sometimes draws, many times it ends up being only a terminal Cellar. I could see how important is that +1 Action in sifters like Cellar or Warehouse. Scribe would be better with that +1 Action too, but maybe this way it could have some resemblance to Hunting Lodge.
To deal with the question of reduce hand size before draw-to-x, three cards came with the same solution. Let’s see them:
Physician by ConManWith it you have two ways to reduce your hand before draw-to-x, playing Treasures and trashing a card from your hand. As a trasher it is slow to get rid of you Coppers and States and the system of “pay to trash”, an opposite version of TFB, discourages you to trash other cards. Play treasures in action phase really reduces hand size, but it’s so effective to play Treasures that you don’t want to buy actions, except for some +Buy source. As said in forum comments, it leads to somewhat monolithic money strategies. Be too strong in only one predefined way is not very fun.
No Name Yet by Jonatan DjurachkovitchA similar card to Physician. It doesn’t trash but discards your hand and draws up to 4. Its hand reducing is guaranteed by discard part. The exile penalty is intended to nerf it a little but if you playing with it you would want to buy other copies and release the ones in exile, so till pile ends the penalty is not much significant. It has the same issues as Physician, leading to money strategy. When played, it discards the Actions you have in hand, so it makes quite random to try to use Actions with it. It ends up that the +1 action it gives is more often used to chain with itself and play with money in a not very creative way.
Alchemist's Guild by spinefluSince it came from a previous version of an old contest, probably Alchemist’s Guild was the first to came with the play-Treasures/draw-to-x idea. It is more balanced than the previous two cards, as it plays only one Treasure each time. The treasures play in action phase is also a condition to get a Prize. The Potion in cost and the fact that you need two in play at the same turn slow down the setup to gain a Prize. In tests I gained the prize around turn 8 or 9. Normally I prefer Followers, but Trusty Steed and Bag of Gold seems to interact better with Alchemist’s Guild. I tried to play with a deck half Action-half Treasures to see if it works with an engine. However, what is needed to it play well is in conflict to what makes an engine speeds up. It anti-synergizes with Actions with strong draw. With them, it many times was only less than a Peddler (as you would play anyway the Treasures it played). So, like previous cards, it was more effective playing with Treasures and chaining with itself, since the ones after the first played are more than a Lab. However, it is slow to start to produce its best results and, even with the help of the Prize, in my tests it lost to faster engines.
Morning Market by majiponiMorning Market in a certain way make Treasures being played out of normal place, but it has some issues relating to the contest conditions. At first I said it was not according to the rule of not create a new phase. On second thought, I accepted the argument that this buy phase inserted into Action phase is not a new phase in the sense of a new type of phase. However, it leads to another issue with contest conditions. If this inserted phase is a Buy phase, there’s no card being played in more than one phase. Actions are still played only in Action phase and Treasures only in buy phase. What this card does is to change phases order not change cards properties, which is the object of the contest. Anyway, I played with it and it seems an interesting card. I like the theme, the anticipated Buy phase being the Morning Market. In many turns, specially the first ones, what happens is that the inserted Buy phase occurs but turn doesn’t progress to regular Buy phase. So it is like playing a game where everything is equal except that you topdeck all cards gained in buy phase. It makes the game to be fast. And even faster when you begin to have cards to resume Action phase after the inserted buy phase. In this case, you can draw the bought cards and will have another Buy phase. This cycle is powerful. I think is too much impact for a $2 cost card, but I really don’t know what price would be better.
Moneychanger by FragasnapMoneychanger is another card that play Treasures in the action phase. I like its cost system, based on the buys you have. If you have many buys it could be very cheap, but each one you buy makes it costs increase again. Use Pouch as Heirloom is a wise idea, to unsure some +Buy. However, it brings a lucky factor to the opening. If you have Pouch in your $4 hand, you can open with Moneychanger. As it plays a Treasure twice, it seemed to me at first to be a good card to unsure payload to an engine, since you can have few Treasures and make better use of them. The tests, however, demonstrate that it is too strong playing only with money. I used Chapel to clean a deck only to Moneychangers, Golds, Pouch and Chapel. Each pair of Moneychanger/Gold is $6 and was easy to align three pairs. Since Moneychanger is a cantrip, there’s no problem in having a lot of them. If the kingdom has a source of non-terminal +buy, it becomes broken.
Replicate by AquilaA similar situation to the one that makes Moneychanger overpowered happens with Replicate. Here what is played twice is a chameleoned Action card in buy phase. Strong terminal draw cards already becomes very powerful and versatile when chameleoned, since they can be used as draw and payload. When Replicate doubles their payload power, they become insane. The Throne function is so powerful that I didn’t even want to use the gaining function. Replicate is expensive, so it seems better to buy others copies of actions than gaining them by trashing Replicate. Anyway, you don’t need so many copies of each action, since you can play each twice. I cleaned a deck to have only Replicates, Council Rooms and Chapel. Just a Council Room play was enough to put in hand with many pairs of Replicate/Council room, each one giving $8 and a buy. Even with the opponent drawing a lot of cards because of these throned Council Rooms, she didn’t have a chance against these somewhat broken strategy.
Overstrain by grepAnother entry about playing a card again is Overstrain. Now the card is played twice when trashed from play. It’s an event that replaces the buy you used to buy it, so you spend only $3 to do it. The nearest comparison is to Bonfire, so I played it against Bonfire to see the results. Bonfire costs a buy but trash two cards each time. It is so much faster than Overstrain to trash your coppers. Most of the time, especially in first turns, that $1 I gained by trashing a Copper with Overstrain were useless. The same for the +Buy it replaces. I included in kingdom some actions like Sea Hag or Cutpurse that you want to trash after some uses. It was cool to throne them when trashing, but this swan song of a weak Action was too occasional to make a strong difference. Near to the end of the game Overstrain allows some more effective tricks like replay gainers or bridges to pile out. Don’t need to spend buys to do it is good. On the long run, it demonstrates to compensate with its own cool possibilities the initial slowness comparing to Bonfire and the results playing with one or the other were close.
Captains's Quarters by mail-miCaptain’s Quarters is other card that plays a card again, in this case in the start of next turn. It has some similarity with Cargo Vessel, a card I presented some contests ago that is a strong $5. Mail-mi tried to keep Captain’s Quarters at $4 by weakening from previous version, but the question is if the present version is still strong for a $4. What a Village it is! As pointed in forum comments, the global result is +2 actions after replace spent action and card. The nearest comparison is to Bustling Village without the Settlers part. But it is better than Bustling Village. With +3 actions in the same turn theirs is not uncommon to don’t use all of them. Using two this turn and one in the next tends to be more reliable in the long run. Other advantage of Captain’s Quarters is that the +Card it gives to replace the played village card is not a random card, it is a chosen card. You simply play now and in the next turn your best target for Captain’s Quarters you have in hand (It’s quite insane when it’s a Throne Room and you have good cards to throne). And you do it with the same copy of that card. This control over what is played and the speed in which you replay your best actions are features strong enough to compensate the delayed draw. I would say, enough to make Captain’s Quarters too strong for a $4. But besides it there’s still the on gain ability. In tests it was useful many times when Captain’s Quarters was gained by a Workshop, it already starts to act as a Village when gained. The few tricks you may do playing a Treasure or a Night card is only a small bonus to a lot of strong features. Conclusion: Captain’s Quarters is a nice card, comparable to the best Villages. Definitively it’s too much strong to be a $4. It would be cool as a $5 and still in the strong side. Though it would maybe disfigure the design in the on gain part, it seems to be necessary to raise its price.
Mummy by LibraryAdventurerAnother card that play cards at the start of next turn is Mummy. I agree with the comments that it has also to be a Duration. It would make it a five type card, which despite has nothing wrong, seems a bit inelegant to my taste. The design of this card seems to be too much oriented to try to make good things with ruins. It gives ruins to other players and finds a way to use those Ruins that are clogging your hand. It makes good use of phases structure, making different but interconnected things in action and buy phases. However, both abilities that it adds to a Silver seemed to be a little weak. The attack is slow. The ability of buy phase needs the set aside cards you play to be dead cards this turn. It happens with Ruins, but more often you have one or two in hand. The best scenario for the ability effect (but worst for the present turn) is when you have three, but even in this case what you get is three vanilla bonuses next turn (in best cases, something like the next turn part of a Wharf effect). It was not very effective. I tried to play it in a kingdom with many $2 cost good cards to see if the buy phase ability is better with them. However, most of times there’s no good reason to postpone their play to next turn neither much gain in doing so. I did with Mummy the only simulation of a three player game of my tests and it was better for the player that doesn’t play with it. If you attack with Mummy but your opponent has other way to get rid of the Ruins or to deal with them and don’t mirror you, you probably would have no use to buy phase ability and end up only with a terminal Silver with a weak attack.
Tenant by [TP] InfernoTwo other cards are also intended to produce results in future turns, using for that in their case the reserve mechanic. One is Tenant. It is very similar to Coin of the Realm, only changing one of the vanilla bonus from +Action to +Card and modifying the condition to call it to be in any moment of Action phase instead of after playing an action. These changes, however, make it so much better than Coin of the Realm when played. That +1 card is often better than an additional action. Call it at any moment helps a lot and many times ignites again what would be a weak turn. When I tried to buy many of them, however, my hand was often full of the Coppers they are before being reserved. The secret to play with it seems to be have only a few and call them in right moments. Playing this way, it’s an effective card, but, I don’t know, it still seems to me to occupy the same niche of Coin of the Realm.
Quiet Alleyway by X-traThe other Reserve card is Quiet Alleyway. The reward when called is better, besides those +1 Card and +1 Action you also gain +$1. However, there’s a condition to send it to Tavern mat, not playing more than three cards before play it. I’m not a big fan of cards which do nothing in some situations and in this case this factor seems really to be an issue. In first turns the condition is easy to be achieved and early calls of this really boosts some of them. But as game advances more and more you have to face the decision between to sacrifice a turn or try to boost it. Many times I had one or two Quiet Alleways in Tavern mat and one in hand with some other medium cards and had to decide if I play one more mediocre turn or accept that this time this Quiet Alleyway in my hand will be a dead card. The sensation was that in both cases I was losing something. This conflict seems to be inherent to the card, in your good turns you often end up with one or more copies of it dead in hand. This possibility increases when you have good draws, so it anti-synergizes with strong drawers. The best scenarios for Quiet Alleway are the worst for the players: games with a lot of junk, no trashing or hand size reducers attacks. In these cases, it helps, but not at the point to be decisive by itself. Stack them to do a megaturn is slow and needs a lot of weak turns before. And, differently of a Tactician for example, it in fact doesn’t draw: for each additional card you have in your megaturn you had to play a card before in a previous turn.
Fae Market by LordBaphometAnother card which has a special condition to be achieved is Fae Market. In this case the condition is to align unique cards in a similar way to Magic Lamp. I like very much its mechanic of a challenge that rewards you more the earlier you complete it. It makes very good use of the phases structure in its progression. And I love the fact of it being three-phase, having different behaviors in Action, Buy and Night phases. The idea is very cool, but playing with it shows that the condition of 5 uniques is hard to achieve. If you want to try, each duplicate you have in hand is an almost dead card that you can play only after react with Fae Market. If there’s no way to trash your Coppers and Estates, it is very difficult. In many plays it only distribute the hexes, which harm a little but are two random and often weak. With cheap cantrips and villages in kingdom plus a Silver, sometimes you reach the uniques in Buy phase, but what you get quite anti-synergizes with the condition. As you can only play one Copper, often you let one or two more in hand without playing to gain that Coffers. Coffers are better if you can stock them to use when you need, but, since you don’t have much money this turn ($3 from Copper and Silver and maybe a little more from actions), if you want to use the extra buy you gained you probably have to use the Coffers. In general, I preferred to save the Coffers, so most of the times I lost the extra buy. With good trashers to clean your deck and good actions in kingdom is easier to align 5 uniques and sometimes I did it in Action phase. Howewer, as pointed in the forum, with this kind of cards you probably can draw your deck anyway, so the bonus of Action phase is not very effective. I think Fae Market would be better if the condition would be to align different named cards played like Horn of Plenty, with no need to have only copy of each in play. With Magic Lamp it works because you have to do it only once in a game and the reward is very good. Needing to do it many times limits playing possibilities. I love the idea, though it needs improvements in its implementation.
Seigniorage by NoMoreFunTalking about Coffers leads to Seigniorage. Maybe one of the cards ever with less wording, it’s cool and elegant. I like very much the way it uses the very same instruction in two phases and it has different results in each phase. Since, as I said, Coffers are best if can stock them rather than to be forced to play them in the same turn you gained them, it’s better to play Seigniorage in the Night, when it’s non-terminal. It’s what I did most in the tests. Early this tests confirmed what was told in the forum, gaining two Coffers non-terminally is too strong for a $4 cost card. It is better than Baker, even with Baker being a cantrip. I played with it against Baker and rapidly the player playing Seigniorage had a lot of Coffers more than the one playing with Baker.
Note: Before NoMoreFun changed his entry, I playtested Watchdog. It has the inconstancy of the cards that deals with discard pile, but had good results playing against Lookout, which has some similarities with it. It also has a cool interaction with Artificer.
Vespers by stechafleAnother Action-Night card is Vespers. The comparison to Chapel is immediate, so the questions about it is how they are different it and if Vespers is stronger than Chapel or not. The downside of Vespers is not being able to select the cards to trash. Comparing to Chapel, it has the advantages of doesn’t use an action to trash, being able to trash more than four cards and has other function, as a Necropolis. So, I played it against Chapel. Most of times they both played very equal. You normally use Chapel in the first turns and trash all your hand. The situations in which Vespers would be worse practically don’t happen. To they happen you should have two terminals and Vespers in hand plus some cards you want to trash (probably two). To trash that cards you have to trash one of the terminals. However, it’s not also a good situation if is Chapel in your hand instead of Vespers, if you play Chapel you are not playing both terminals. The Vespers solution to this situation ends up to being better: you play it this turn as a Necropolis and play both terminals. The advantages of Vespers over Chapel were most significant, specially being able to use it without spend an Action and becomes a Necropolis and not a dead card after conclude trashing. In a game without Villages it is worth even buy one more to use as Necropolis. Conclusion: Vespers is stronger than Chapel. Being Chapel already one of the strongest cards in the game, I think it doesn’t need a stronger version.
Night Hag by MarpharosAnother Action-Night is Night Hag, which is also a curser Attack. LordBaphomet alerted in the forum that it’s strictly better than Witch, so I was waiting to Marpharos change his entry to playtest the card. It was not changed, so I didn’t playtest it. It’s strictly better than Witch. Not being strictly better than an existent card is a basic principle of a card design. Anyway, there’s room for a night curser and you can persist in this good idea.
Way of the Wolf by grrgrrgrrIn the night also comes the Wolf. In this case in the form of a Way by which you postpone an Action play to Night phase to gain a +$1 bonus. It’s cool to play some actions in the Night, but the playtests early revealed that Way of the Wolf leads to some automatic decisions. If an Action card is the type of Action you can play in Night phase with the same results, there’s no reason to not play it using the Way of the Wolf and gain that free +$1. The overall result is like some piles begin the game with the +$1 token of all players put on them. It makes the game faster to all players, but not in a very interesting way. Some decisions could take place when you have to choose the order you play the postponed actions in the Night phase start, but it often doesn’t make much difference.
Way of the Magpie by scolapastaAnother entry to use the way mechanism is Way of the Magpie. It’s a kind of local Capitalism that applies only to targeted cards. You need to play an Action card in order to the others with the same name become treasures this turn. Why would you do it? In some cases, because there could be some cards in the kingdom which interacts with Treasure type cards and allow cool tricks, like Treasurer or Mandarin. In many situations, however, there’s nothing intrinsically better for an Action in being also a Treasure, except for the fact that you can play Treasures without spend an action. So, Way of the Magpie applies better to the situations you want to play many copies of the same action and don’t have good sources of +Action. That action also has to be of the kind that is good to play in buy phase, like a source of +Buy or payload. In playtests it revealed to be hard to setup. You need to have at least two copies of the same action this turn to it be useful. If you didn’t overbuy that action yet, so having few copies of it in your deck, and could count only with your initial hand of five cards to align two of them, it’s a kind of Treasure Map challenge, very random (and you have the additional penalty of discarding a Treasure if you want to play the first one). It conduces to a kind of paradox. If you want to increase your chances to align many copies of the same action in the same turn, you have to draw cards. It’s hard to draw many cards non-terminally, so if you want strong draw you have to play a terminal. The cards you want to Magpie don’t give actions (if they do, you don’t need to play them in Buy phase). So, to play both, the terminal drawer and the card you want to Magpie, you need a Village. But if you have Villages, you don’t need to play your actions in Buy phase. Capitalism works because you buy it once and it has a global effect for the rest of the game. Way of the Magpie needs to setup every turn to produce a more limited effect. In the tests it didn’t help so much the player who used it.
Guinea by mandioca15Many of the submitted cards play Actions in Buy phase. The simplest of them is Guinea, a Copper that allows to play an Action. Playtests confirmed the initial impression that it is weak. It is not good to open with it, as you still don’t have many Actions. Even with a lot of Actions in deck, there aren’t so many situations in which it was useful. Sometimes it played a dead drawn Smith, but most of time it was only a Copper. As pointed in forum, Squire and many others $2 cost are better than it. It can make a strong combo with double Tactician, but all the cards of this contest that play Actions in Buy phase or Night phase do the same trick, so it’s not a differential.
Pendant by anordinarymanPendant do all Guinea do plus many other things. It is not only a Treasure that plays Actions, it’s also an Action that plays Treasures and Actions and replaces the Action you spent to do it. In both cases it gives +$1. It also has an additional option of being set aside to replay a card. (In this case, I don’t know for sure if it is returned to deck when scoring, which could make difference in some few cases. Also, I didn’t understand well the FAQ proposed. I don’t know how could it generate infinite money only by playing itself without being moved to hand again). Talking about playing it: play a Treasure card is useful to draw-to-x, as said above, and it may help in these cases. Eventually you would want to play a dead drawn action in Buy phase. The playtests show that the main use is in Action phase playing an Action card. In this use it’s like a one turn Fishing Village. The ability to trash it to replay a card is useful sometimes to save a turn, it’s the kind of trade-off of you do when trash a Mining Village. I played it against Fishing Village to see if this pack of little functions plus not being drawn dead would compensate the double play of Fishing Village. The results were very closed, indicating that pendant is a nice and balanced card.
Note: I liked the crazy idea of a previous version to make it play anything including Curses and Victories. I didn’t think about the implications or even viability of it, but it seems funny.
Port City by seguraOther Action-Treasure card is Port City. Two simple instructions: + 3 cards in Action phase or +$1 and a Villager in Buy phase. It was said in the forum that it could be a one card engine, so I tried to play this way, chaining with itself. It didn’t work this solo way, it’s not so effective as the only Village and its payload is not so much. It is better described as a strong draw card that, despite being terminal in action phase, has another function in other phase which avoids it from being drawn dead. It’s similar to Werewolf in this aspect, but it is better than Werewolf in two things. First in the interaction between the two phases abilities. If you draw Port City dead for Action phase you have an alternative play in Buy phase and what you get in this alternative play is something (a Villager) that helps it to not being drawn dead in other turn. Also this alternative play gives something useful to this moment, a +$1. This Villager plus the coin makes the bonus of this alternative play often better than Werewolf random hex attack. Playing Port City as it is meant to be, a strong draw card with a versatile bonus proves to be very effective and with interesting decisions. A great and well balanced card, showing that there’s room to make good cards combining simple elements. I also like how it interacts thematically with other cards with similar features in the game (in the same semantic field of Port Market, a card I presented some contests ago).
Lunar Ritual by alion8meA simple and elegant instruction and many things happen. It transforms Night phase into a Mission/Champion mini-turn in which you play for free any actions that are good to play in a Mission turn: gainers, trashers, attacks, remodelers, deck spies and organizers and Actions with effects in next turn. In actual stage of Dominion, you can build engines around these kind of actions and win the game without need too many + Buys. Being an event, Lunar Ritual is always available when you want. You only have to spend $3 and a buy to trigger it, so many times you change the day by night. If the kingdom doesn’t have a Village but has good Actions, it’s mandatory. In tests the player who didn’t play with it lost by far. Even with Villages present many times was better to go directly to the most significant actions. Playing free Actions in the Night makes easier to do some cool tricks, like gain gainers, draw and play them to gain more cards. The combo with double Tactician has its best version with it, you can do all your stuff before play second Tactician. Lunar Ritual only is not so good when the kingdom doesn’t have gainers. Even then, it’s always there and you can have the balance between day and night you want and need. It was very fun to play with it. I also love the art, the theme, its interaction with mechanic and analogies it evokes, Night being a time of free actions. Great card!
ResultsHonourable Mentions
- Captains's Quarters by mail-mi
- Fae Market by LordBaphomet
- Overstrain by grep
- Pendant by anordinaryman
Runner Up
- Port City by Segura
Winner
- Lunar Ritual by alion8me