Fruitcake - $4
Treasure
$2
Each other player gets +1 Coffers.
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When you buy this, +2VP and place this in the discard pile of the player to your left or right (you choose).
Ok, I have updated my submission to this version of Fruitcake. I reduced the cost so the VP reward is more in line with what is expected. It is a treasure card so it does not junk your opponents deck as effectively, but it cannot be passed back to you, so you can plan on getting those Coffers on a more regular basis. It is still a terrible investment if there is remodeling in the Kingdom. Still not completely sure if it is balanced or worth even buying.
This seems ultra political and/or game warping. Choose one of your adjacent opponents and heap these Silver-s on them. It will still decimate their strategy like copper junking, only the game could speed up massively; wouldn't a one-shot Baker be worth about the same as a Silver? Then that player can retaliate by throwing cakes back at you, and all the while the other players could enjoy the free coffers coming in and win.
I agree completely that is ultra political. I am kinda embracing the challenge even though I dislike this "neighbors matter" kind of mechanic. Would it be better if you can only drop it in the left hand players deck? Was it better when you passed it on play?
Passed on play then means no one should ever buy it since it doesn't actually junk your opponents deck, and over time everyone gets the same amount of coffers since it goes back to the player who buys it. The 2VP isn't quite worth that. Think about how rarely Baths is "bought."
I like the concept though. I can think of two ways to keep it still an attack and thus a card people want to buy when there are more than 2 players. Both of them are complicated:
1. Have the fruitcakes exchange themselves for a differently named fruitcake when they pass. Have the exchanging mechanism end after n exchanges where n < # of players - 1, or have it change to a final good card after n exchanges where n = # of players -1. This requires a complicated set up that changes based on the number of players, but once it is setup, it's very easy to follow the rules of.
2. keep track of who has bought fruitcakes with tokens. When you buy a fruitcake, take a fruitcake token. When you play a fruitcake, pass it to the next player who does not have more fruitcake tokens than you.
Now that I think about it, option 2 isn't as complicated as I thought and is potentially the best way to do it. You could tweak it to be "does not have more" or "has less" which change the effect if two people have equal tokens. You can play with 12 in the pile so theoretically players can have an equal number of fruitcake tokens.