Valkyrie$4 – Action - Night
If it’s your Action phase,
gain a card costing up to $4.
Otherwise, trash a card you
have in play.
----------------------------
When you trash this, +1VP
per differently named card
in the trash.
Wow this thing is bonkers bananas overpowered.
Without the trashing bit it's already a Workshop+ that could reasonably cost $4, though the Night ability isn't super amazing without the bottom part.
At its very baseline, the trashing bonus is +2 VP (Valkyrie will always be in the trash and pretty certainly you'll at least trash a Copper with this). the card might work with a straight +2 VP on trashing, I'll say that much. But if there's other trashing? then you'll have Estate in the trash, so that's +3 VP. If there are Shelters, this goes up to +5 VP (i.e. better than Distant Lands - okay, Distant Land you don't need to connect, but the self-gaining on this more than makes up for that - for $4). If there's even as much as Necromancer in the game, this gives at least as much VP as a Province, and won't end up a dead card in your deck. Consider a game with Looters - it will be worth 8 VP. And I've not even considered any trashing attacks so far, which easily push this over to being better than Dominate without putting in any effort.
This is broken. It needs at least an upper limit on the VP, and if you don't want to go with a flat +2 VP, you probably also need to stop the self-gaining.
Thank you for the feedback.
When I designed the card, I was unsure whether to give it a cost of $4 or of $5; I decided to go for $4, but immediately after posting I thought
$5 would have been better and I think I’ll go for it.
You are right, when Ruins, Shelters, and/or Zombies are present, trashing Valkyrie gives way too many VP tokens. Giving it a fixed +2VP for trashing solves those problems easily, but makes the card less interesting; so I have thought about how to fix the “
+1VP/something part”.
If I want to stick to the concepts of the card without clumsy wording, the best solution I came up with is: “…
per differently named card in the trash costing $2 or more.”
This eliminates VP scoring through Ruins, Shelters and even Coppers.
What can still produce high VPs are Zombies and trashing attacks, especially Knights, but I can live with just a few official card that makes Valkyrie extraordinary strong. There are enough official cards that shine in situations that are even more likely to happen. The interplay with trashing attacks could even be interesting in a way that Valkyrie can serve as a counter, potentially making those nasty attack cards less desirable.
Valkyrie cannot trash Hovel or Overgrown Estate. The card is definitely too good, but not that crazy. I’d simply get rid of the Night type and make it terminal.
The Monastery thingy is not novel anyway and that brings the power level down on a reasonable level. Of course it would then be a more expensive Workshop in Kingdoms without trashers but Fortress is also a more expensive Village in Kingdoms without trashers as well.
Most Kingdoms would have other trashers and allow trashing those Shelters.
I like the Night type as it separates trashing from gaining and compared to the gaining part, it makes the trashing a bit stronger as it can trash played cards and does not need an Action.
Maybe you could use something like this: "when you trash this, if there are at least 3 differently named cards in the trash, +3 vp."
I have thought about the first part of your suggestion, except it was "2 differently named card". I also thought about "different named cards with at least 2 copies", but I don't think those changes would make the card better in terms of being balanced. I don't like the fixed VP score, as it seems to be less interesting.
The summary of changes I intend to make (for details see above):
Card costs $5; I add “…costing $2 or more” at the end.What do you think about these changes?