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Supernova888

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Dominion: Nobility
« on: February 06, 2019, 01:04:46 am »
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Hello! This is my first ever fan expansion for Dominion. Its primary theme is action enabling; many cards in this set synergize with Action cards and give you new ways to set off and set up Actions. Its secondary theme is a new mechanic: payment. Any card that says "you may pay" allows you to use money to improve the card's capabilities. You may play coffers, spend Treasures (in which case you lose any money produced by it you don't use), or use the money already given to you by other Action cards in play. You are permitted to immediately pay multiple times for an effect on a payment card unless otherwise stated.

This expansion is technically "done," purely in the sense that I've printed all of the cards. Nonetheless, I am still 100% receptive to feedback and improvements, because I am going to keep making more cards and still enjoy thinking about these ones. These cards were made over the course of a little over a year, so the quality varies between my earliest cards and most recent. Here are the cards, which I will explain in more detail below:




Almoner: Gives you what you don't have. This was hard to balance and hard to make concise (some of the wording suffers), but it gives a nice mixture of effects, imo.

Assassin: This is the end result of trying to create an Attack card that uses payment. The idea that you have to save money from your buy phase to use it is sort of interesting imo, but it's so wordy, potentially political, and swingy that I think it's one of the worse cards in the set.

Audience: A distant relative of Raze, this card makes up for its lack of power in its choices of how to use it. Get 1 coin, or make it a cantrip, or sift through your deck, or potentially make this a lab (or even more) by paying a lot.

Burgrave: A comparatively simple card that fills a lot of niches. There are two attack-reactions in this expansion because there are quite a few nasty attacks in here, and I personally like attack-reactions best. I tried a lot of under-the-line effects, but I like this version most, and it's a nice bonus that this fills the gainer role in the expansion.

Camarilla: One of a few cards in this expansion that's powerful with a drawback. When I was playtesting it, the player interaction was fun.

Castle Grounds: This was made before Renaissance happened. It is meant to give leave you with 1 Action if you play it when you have 0, but there was no easy way I could find to write that out without cluttering up the card.

City State: The VP for this will vary from board to board, but the nice thing is that if you're on a board with no villages, you'll probably find this more valuable. "+Actions" means count the number of Actions written on the card. Fishing village would be 3, for example.

Dictator: I like the effect of Saboteur, so here's my attempt to implement its mechanic in a less punishing way. While it's situation-dependent, its effects end up balancing out most of the time.

Diviner: Slightly better than a cantrip, but very good if you manage to fulfill the under-the-line text. I think it's very thematically appropriate too.

Endowment: One of the stranger cards that requires you to think about how to time things.

Frankincense: A Villa inside a Treasure. It was tested producing $1 for a while (some iterations with extra effects), but losing all your money while waiting for the cooler effect was enough of a drawback for it to be $2. It can lead to some interesting turns where you have to decide if a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

General: A Farming Village-esque card that gives you a lot of freedom in what you dig for. Having two separate success conditions can create some interesting dynamics when choosing what card to name, given the makeup of your deck.

Guillotine: An attack that is fairly overpowered early on, but gets much worse over the course of the game. Well, worse as long as you're not relying on one card for your engine.

Heir: A very early card, "inheritances" probably should have been renamed after I played Adventures. The player interaction is interesting in this as you decide if the village is worth potentially giving your opponent a chance to steal an inheritance, and the fact that its effects can be different every game keeps it fresh (although some setups are better than others).

High Throne: I still agonize over whether the discard pile clause is necessary to make this worth a $5 or if it makes it too overpowered. Either way, here's a throne room variant that turns your cards into durations. (Cards that are durations themselves play out their next-turn effects on the next turn along with their normal text, and then next turn effects only the turn after that.)

King's Festival: The first payment card that was made. Its wording is overwhelming and not-regulation for the sake of space. "With Actions" means that you discard an Action card and get half its worth in coin, but that didn't fit on the card. It's very clunky, but the options it can provide, if you can get past that, can be useful.

King: A pretty simple engine piece that gives you a massive benefit if it gives you a card that will potentially end your Action streak.

Landlord: My favorite card, although I'm sure its bizarre nature isn't for everyone. The app it refers to is here: https://output.jsbin.com/kugayow (JSbin graciously implemented by reddit user dbclick, from my god-awful original). The app uses a crude but semi-accurate formula I designed to calculate the cost of a card. It's far from perfect, because the power of Dominion cards is so multi-faceted, but it can often ballpark fairly well, and it feels cool to have a unique card. The strategy of figuring out when to buy it and for how much is interesting as well.

Pretender: My attempt at a tamer Black Market. Originally it didn't give a Hex, but having someone get a Pearl Diver from this and another a Goons is just too swingy.

Pursuivant: Just as the pursuivant is a rank under a herald in medieval nobility, Pursuivant is a weaker Herald. I have other versions where the options from a non-hit are "discard or put back" and "trash or put back." I'm still not convinced that this version is the best of the three, but it's fun to play with.

Queen: A more strategic card that, admittedly, gets insanely powerful in engines that easily draw your whole deck. In tamer games, though, the cost-benefit of bricking Coppers and improving Silvers makes for interesting decisions. Was originally "discard Treasures costing $6 or more" but Potions and alt-treasures broke that very quickly.

Royal Guard: My attempt at making a card synergetic with the greens: a conditional village that loves Victory cards. Its reaction seems very powerful, but having to get it with a Victory card makes hitting it much less likely.

Serf: A no-frills card that works well when you can pull off playing it in multiples.

Sibyl: I'm obsessed with the idea of being able to change what a card does, but actually implementing that without breaking some cards can be hard. This is my best attempt at that; a powerful card that will make another card quantifiably worse. Player interaction can be interesting when there are several choices on the next card.

Suitors: A weak card that lets you make it better by paying. The fact that you can choose based on the situation whether to take an action or a card makes it surprisingly flexible. This card doesn't work on every board, though, so it has the bottom text to make it potentially better in other situations.

Troubadour: A potentially heavy junking attack that lets you thin your deck to mitigate its own effects.


Thanks for reading!! Again, any comments are appreciated. This is my first set and I hope to make many more and improve from here!
[EDIT: Entirely forgot to put General in. Oops.]
[EDIT 2: Aaaand I forgot High Throne!! This proves I have to organize my computer's folder's better.]
« Last Edit: February 08, 2019, 01:46:42 am by Supernova888 »
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majiponi

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Re: Dominion: Nobility
« Reply #1 on: February 06, 2019, 08:45:49 am »
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I think Assassin should say "Each other player reveals their hand." That's shorter and simpler. Attacking part needs limitation. Playing 5 Assassin and paying $5 kills other players' turns. 5 or more cards in hand is nice, I think.

Sibyl almost always do nothing but sometimes gives you a benefit. For example, I play Trading Post. I have to trash 1 card to gain a Silver, right? And when does it leave play? Why duration?

Royal Guard can wipe out the Gold pile. For example, imagine you trashed your deck down to 5 cards, and you have a Royal Guard and an Estate in hand. You can discard and draw the Royal Guard and gain a Gold. You can still discard and draw them and gain another...
Of course other player will avoid this, but shutting out an Attack isn't a good idea. How about setting aside and discarding afterwards?
« Last Edit: February 06, 2019, 11:12:54 am by majiponi »
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Supernova888

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Re: Dominion: Nobility
« Reply #2 on: February 06, 2019, 11:13:18 am »
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Thanks so much for the feedback!

The only problem with revealing your hand with Assassin is that it lets your opponent know what cards to target if they play Assassin again. I see where you're coming from with 5 or more cards in hand, but given how much the card costs and how lucky you'd have to get (save for knowing an opponents' hand, which is feasible) to use Assassin properly may makes it okay in my opinion. Perhaps 3 or more cards, so that it can't wreck an entire turn?

The point of Sibyl is that it actively hurts you, because your opponent chooses how to change the number. In the Trading Post example, your opponent would make you trash 3 cards to gain a Silver. Sibyl's regular text is probably balanced at a 6, being a strong Peddler - the changing a number is what makes it weaker. It's duration because, even though it will often leave play the turn it's played, it might stay out later if you don't play anything after it; it stays out until the drawback can be resolved. People have agreed with you that it feels weird to have this be a duration, but cards like Cargo Ship and Secret Cave are durations that have the option to only stay out for one turn, which is why I made it a duration.
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Commodore Chuckles

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Re: Dominion: Nobility
« Reply #3 on: February 06, 2019, 08:20:18 pm »
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You have some neat ideas here!

"Paying": Does this let you play Treasures in your Action phase like Storyteller? I think a different word than "pay" should be used, because Storyteller already uses it to mean something narrower (which is why it explicitly tells you to play Treasures first). Second, it's worth noting that Storyteller forces you to pay all of your $. I don't know for sure, but I suspect this is because it would be too difficult to remember how much $ you had left if you could choose how much to spend. I might be wrong, but it's worth thinking about.

Assassin: This should force players to reveal their hands, or there's no accountability. Also, regarding the $2 bonus: (1) it should say "trashes a copy from their hand", and (2) I think 2 Coppers and a Curse is too brutal even for the price.

Castle Grounds: I think this is good enough to be $5.

City State: I have to admit that on first glance, I'm not a fan of the idea. This usually rewards you for doing something you want to do anyway, making strategy less interesting. The value of this is also likely to swing wildly depending on the other cards used.

Endowment: The "whenever" is confusing. To me it implies that Endowment remains in play until the end of the game and you keep getting the benefit any time the condition is met. I don't think you meant this. I'd use "if" instead.

Heir: "Inheritance" is already a card name so the word shouldn't be reused. Also, what does it mean to "use" a face-up inheritance? Did you mean play a face-up inheritance? What's a "random" and "unused" Action card? A card that's from a Kingdom pile not being used?

Pretender: This should be at least $5. It compares well to Junk Dealer, another cantrip trasher with a bonus.

Pursuivant: This should also be at least $5. Turning over an Estate, Copper or Curse and trashing it is pretty close to what Junk Dealer does, and it's overall mostly a cantrip $1 with a bonus, comparing well to Market.

Royal Guard: Should probably say "discard any number of Victory cards".

Sibyl: This could put a -1 on cards such as Bridge.

Troubadour: I like the idea, but there's a strong potential for it to be too brutal. I would not want to be on the receiving end of an opponent with an easy way to gain Silvers or Golds and feed them to this.
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ClouduHieh

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Re: Dominion: Nobilit
« Reply #4 on: February 06, 2019, 10:24:44 pm »
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Unfortunately I won’t be able to even look at your cards. The format you have set up doesn’t seem to let me view the images. I’ve been waiting 5 minutes and still doesn’t load up this page fully. It doesn’t do this to any of the other pages and threads, just yours. The only way I’m going to be able to see them if you put them in separate replies on a different page or change the format to mine on my threads.

Your format 3 by 3

My format 1 by 1
« Last Edit: February 06, 2019, 10:25:52 pm by ClouduHieh »
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segura

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Re: Dominion: Nobility
« Reply #5 on: February 07, 2019, 05:47:15 am »
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Serf is similar to Herald and might have to cost $4. I also think that it is more boring as unlike Herald it doesn't makes you increase your Action card density. You can imagine a Kingdom in which you play a money-intense deck and buy the card as a half-Lab (if you have a lot of copies in your deck and manage to pull that off) just for the sake of drawing, something that would not be not feasible with Herald.
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Aquila

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Re: Dominion: Nobility
« Reply #6 on: February 07, 2019, 06:28:05 am »
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The thought you've put into this set is clear to see. Some individual cards are compelling and there is a good balance to the number of times bonuses appear that closely reflects the balance in real sets. I can certainly see why you've printed these off already!

Almoner - the first play is often the same as Villa, then it's quite hard to keep getting good bonuses. $2 feels the right price and it feels like good fun to get good bonuses on each play. But here I am making assumptions; the card is a bit hard to understand. One card or less where, in hand? No Treasures where, in hand or in play from the payment mechanic? These are important details to try and squeeze on.

Assassin - converts unspent $ into an Attack. That could be a nice premise to go with, but this looking for a target card means it can be chance dependent who it affects and thus political. I would drop that part and probably reduce the cost, seeing that it asks for money throughout the game.

Audience - I would relate it to Storyteller, weaker at the card draw in not getting everything to hand but making up for it with potentially keeping the $1.  It's certainly cheaper than Storyteller, possibly $2 cheap. The big draw option looks hard to use well; Silver flooding might work.

Burgrave - should be nice to get several Burgraves with the Reaction and these become the deck's payload. Powerful, but you have to take the Attack each time. Good one.

Camarilla - that is a seriously powerful bonus, but with a devastating setback; you pretty much cannot buy Provinces if you use this. Should it have a +Buy on it like Contraband does, so an $8+ turn isn't so wasted?

Castle Grounds - simple Village that fits the set. But you can have 0 Actions during the Buy and Night phase, can it be played then? This is exceptionally good with terminal draw, so giving only 1 Action as you wanted is a good idea.

City State - are +Action bonuses those you unconditionally get on play, so this itself counts but e.g. Almoner wouldn't? It looks rather hard to get points from this, 8 is a lot for just 1 point.

Dictator - does it really balance out? At least it feels unpleasant to have a Village that degenerates the Actions it plays. More cards and/or Coffers in place of the Actions could be better.

Diviner - this does look fun to try and play first. Nice one.

Endowment - so this gets to be an Action of your choice next turn if you can get enough $ to match is cost, and it's free if your money comes entirely from Treasures? That Action has to ideally be played nicely in the Buy phase or there be a payment Action in your deck. If it didn't give 3 Actions now, it would feel simpler and more appropriate as a delayed terminal. I think the being an Action later if you achieve something could work somehow, but not quite like this; what happens with debt Actions? Playing the Action immediately would interrupt an Action with +$, which would be confusing and potentially broken.

It's nice to analyse your cards, but also time-consuming. I'll have to stop here for now.
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majiponi

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Re: Dominion: Nobility
« Reply #7 on: February 07, 2019, 10:18:44 am »
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The point of Sibyl is that it actively hurts you, because your opponent chooses how to change the number. In the Trading Post example, your opponent would make you trash 3 cards to gain a Silver. Sibyl's regular text is probably balanced at a 6, being a strong Peddler - the changing a number is what makes it weaker. It's duration because, even though it will often leave play the turn it's played, it might stay out later if you don't play anything after it; it stays out until the drawback can be resolved. People have agreed with you that it feels weird to have this be a duration, but cards like Cargo Ship and Secret Cave are durations that have the option to only stay out for one turn, which is why I made it a duration.

Oh, I misread. I thought, for example, when I play Cursed Village, your opponent can choose 2 or 6 to replace it to 1. So you almost always play cantrip to avoid damages. +3 Actions, draw up to 6? Overpowering, I suppose.
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Neirai the Forgiven

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Re: Dominion: Nobility
« Reply #8 on: February 07, 2019, 12:00:21 pm »
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I will try to be gentle but will rip on a bunch of cards, and praise others. Overall I echo what Aquila said: this is a well-themed set that has had a lot of thought given to it.

Almoner - The wording of this card puts it all over the place. I can see that the design of this card is: if you don't have a thing, get some! But I can't necessarily read it and know what I'm doing. For instance, I think the intent is:
--> If you have one or less cards in your hand after you play this, +2 Cards.
--> If you have spent all of your intangible actions by playing this, +2 Actions.
--> If you reveal your hand and it contains a 0 cost card, + 1 Buy.
--> If you do not have any +$ from Actions in play, +$1
--> If you do not have any Treasures in your hand, receive a Boon.

But this is up for interpretation, for instance it could start by making me reveal my hand, then give me cards if I only reveal 1 or less cards, actions if I reveal no actions, buy if I reveal a $0, $1 if I reveal no Actions with +$1 in my hand, and a Boon if I reveal no Treasures. Which one is it?

In either case I think the text can be streamlined to make the card more clear. Once I have a better understanding of the card, I can comment on power level.

Assassin - hot take: this card needs to die. Nicer take, well, if you're not going to kill it, here's how I'd redesign it:
The two issues I take with it is, 1) "Each other player reveals a copy of the named card, if they can" -- Dominion doesn't work that way, instead Each other player reveals a copy of the named card, or reveals they can't. In which case this messes with the final line, which is that if no-one reveals, you shuffle this card back into your deck. So everyone must reveal, and you're always going to shuffle this card back into your deck... semantics, I know.

2) it does different things at different payments, which I dislike, since you have to balance each payment at powerlevels.... and wordy... and... such.

Here's my thought: why not instead, make it do something like....
Quote
Name a non-Victory card. Then, pay any amount of $. For each $ you paid, look at the top card of the Hexes, and choose one. Each other player may discard a copy of the card you named. If they don't, they receive the Hex you chose. If anyone discarded a card, shuffle this into your deck.

It's different, maybe it's bad, maybe I'm bad for disliking this card :) It's your expack, do what you want :)

Audience - I think Audience is great. I think it's probably perfect as-is, unless it should cost $1, not sure. The quibble I have is that it quickly becomes very costly for a small reward; you're only ever going to want to spend more than $1 on it if you KNOW that the payoff is going to worth it. Because a Laboratory with $-1 for $2 is probably good, but a cantrip for $-1 for $2 is not. And a Laboratory with $-2 for $2 is not good, I'd say. So maybe even making Audience give +$2 baseline is okay? But then what's the price value for a +1 Action +$2? Basically a Silver at that point... hmm. Maybe it's not perfect-as-is? It's still a great idea, I just wonder if it's a tad on the weak side right now.

Burgrave - Should probably be recast to use "set aside" wording, i.e., "..gain a card costing $4 or less, setting it aside. Put it in your hand after the attack resolves."

Camarilla - I echo Aquila, this card is nice, I like it a lot. It's a nice variant to Contraband. I assume if you gave it a +1 Buy, however, you have to let someone else dictate your buys twice. Now at that point I assume you go, I have $16, do I buy Colony or Province? They say, Province. You say, I now have $8, do I buy Province or Duchy? etc.

---
I'll try to get to 5 more cards later. I tend to do this in batches so I don't get overwhelmed. Or fired.
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Aquila

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Re: Dominion: Nobility
« Reply #9 on: February 07, 2019, 05:43:22 pm »
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Right, where we we?

Frankincense - a Treasure Villa indeed, which instead of being played after a terminal on gain, it can do consistently after it's gained. The $0-ing is a neat feature to get around; the best use for this would be to help hit $8 several times in certain engines. If my imagination is correct this is a pretty great card.

General - digging Village that likes Actions from the same price bracket, single Treasure and/or single Night decks. It works, should be quite nice.

Guillotine - wow, an opening one of these could cripple the opponents' turn 3-5 by bringing them down to just 1 or 2 coppers, which could be game deciding. And don't talk about turn 1 Summons of these. Basically it can be very swingy depending on how the first shuffle goes, and seeing as that's its strongest time it can prove to be an automatic open most games. Later on it looks an interesting card; this would be ideal going at the bottom of a split pile.

Heir - a shared journey token effect on using 2 unique cards, that could either be fun or annoying. Depends on the play group I suppose, but that's true for other cards in this set too. Having the two different costs can be interesting, but sticking +1 Action on them can turn them pretty powerful, making the flipping interactivity even more impactful.

King's Festival - probably the biggest case of 'if a card's text doesn't fit, it's doing too much' here. Everything it's trying to do makes good sense, but remembering it all and considering just what the best move is to do each play. Does the $1 pay for +Buy need to be there? The discard Actions for half its $ really needs to be on the card, because I first thought you paid unused Actions for $1 each. With the payment to do extra things being extra cost, could you boost the +Cards to 3?

King - mostly grammar for this one, you're revealing the cards from your deck until an Action not drawing them, right?  And what counts for yielding a +Action, anywhere in the text like Almoner (Capitalism wording), or giving +Action bonuses as I read City State to do? Either way it looks a nice enough card.

And there's my take on the next 6.
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Jack Rudd

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Re: Dominion: Nobility
« Reply #10 on: February 07, 2019, 05:49:53 pm »
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*inserts usual rant about the Landlord's parenthetical clause*
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Aquila

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Re: Dominion: Nobility
« Reply #11 on: February 08, 2019, 05:15:48 am »
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Carrying on:

High Throne - actually a play-now-and-next-turn Throne is an outtake from Seaside. "It's confusing and weak", to quote Donald. "What happens with Durations?" And I guess this should really be Duration itself, making it weaker. It doesn't take much to play the same Action for two consecutive turns, so this doesn't really add much to the deck.

Landlord - definitely a fan card and not one you could see officially. I was worried that you'd be spending ages thinking out the card instructions and getting the app to cost it, but it's the other way round, put in a price and the app randomly generates a simple card. Are you supposed to go with whatever you get first, or can people reroll to get just what they want? The former just isn't nice. With the latter I'd think it be best that everyone set their Landlord at the start of the game, so there isn't a pause every time a player first got one. Overall seems OK in terms of power, though once I got 3 cards 1 buy $1 on a $5, that feels more like $6.
I get the fun factor, to be sure, but potentially with every game with this in, the best strategy is going to be an engine using this. That could actually detract rather than add to the game, in my mind.

Pretender - Commodore said it, this is $5 strong, or higher. A cantrip trasher that changes role when it's done. The wording 'gain a card...' implies you can pick literally anything from the randomiser deck; so it's like Landlord in being useful or even the best strategy every game. When would it be wrong to open 2 of them and be the only player with King's Court and Mountebank, as a for instance? So everyone's rushing these from the start. And do you intend to put the blue backs in the deck, or get a copy of a brown back from the box? People can 'shuffle' the blue backs to be just where they want.
Your own description, though, implies you get a random card. Backs are still a concern, but it does tame the card a lot. Either way, you can probably tell I'm not a fan of this one.

Pursuivant - Commodore's right again, this is $5. Even then, cantrip trashing and peddler together is rather powerful. At least, this is a strictly better Oasis.

Queen - you've pretty much said everything about this yourself. It could be more expensive than $3, as an entire deck strategy in one card; I could see this being a big debt-cost card, seeing that it's better later, but I can't say confidently.

Royal Guard - what majiponi spotted, and you also have a choice between Actions or gaining Treasures when you're hit by an Attack. This is not a very interesting decision to make, as in not fun. A Donald outtake from Nocturne reflects this.

Serf - this isn't a new idea to the forum, so others will say better things about this than me.

Sibyl - an activated Conspirator that needs a numbered Action to weaken or it stays permanently out of deck. This looks convincingly balanced and interesting, I like it.

Suitors - the on-play effect is all fine I think, but I've recently toyed with the on-trash effect this has; if you Inherit (event) the Suitors and there are Estates in the trash, you can trash Suitors, gain Estate, reveal Watchtower to trash the Estate and gain Suitors, reveal the Watchtower to trash Suitors, repeat. With Tomb, that's infinite VP.  Figure out a way to get around this.

Troubadour - hard to judge how balanced this is on the face of it, but certainly powerful enough with the starting Estates and Coppers, Coffers for you and 3 Coppers for them.

Favourites: Frankincense, Sibyl.
Least favourites: Pretender, Landlord.

Hope this all helped. I remember you posting a Sultan idea before, and the main ideas from that card you have implemented in this set. I can understand your favourite ideas are going to appear in your first set; if you go on to do others, I would encourage you to try moving away from highly flexible cards. Give them a few distinct functions, so that they depend on other cards in the kingdom to be good or bad. That's closer to what makes Dominion fun, what sets it apart from other games.
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Gazbag

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Re: Dominion: Nobility
« Reply #12 on: February 08, 2019, 08:24:37 am »
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I'm not sure what people are talking about regarding Persuivant, it's a much weaker Junk Dealer. It can only trash the card you reveal, so say if you reveal a Copper but had an Estate in hand that's not as good as Junk Dealer, if you have an Action on top it doesn't trash and if you reveal a Silver or Gold it's really bad. It's probably better than Oasis a lot of the time but it isn't strictly better. Maybe it should cost $4 but I actually think it's one of the best designed cards here.
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Neirai the Forgiven

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Re: Dominion: Nobility
« Reply #13 on: February 08, 2019, 12:30:52 pm »
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Continuing...

Before I start, side note, I don't see a "High Throne"... was it removed? Is Aquila that influential? Or is there a problem on my end?

Castle Grounds - Solid. Cost might be too low, even; in some ways, think of it as +3 Actions +1 Card, with the drawback of, you can only use the third +Action to play this, except you can play this to use that Action on itself. But if you, say, played Smithy, drew 3 actions and one of them was this, then it's giving you 3 Actions in principle. Still, not entirely sure. Also, unless you plan on people being able to play this during Buy or Night phase, which I sort of doubt, I suggest replacing the "You may play this..." with what I used for this sort of ability on my Mastermind, (below a line) "Directly after resolving an Action, if you have no unused Actions, you may play this." I don't know, could be confusing, but it borrows from both Reserve calling and Diadem.

City State - I think this is good? It's going to only be worthwhile when you can get at least 4VP for it -- the +2 Actions is not really worthwhile as a functional bonus to your deck, since to make this work you're going to have to have so many other +Actions that the +2 Actions on this won't be impactful other than of course helping the City State score more, which is the point. So you should only really go after this if you can hope to get +32 Actions in your deck or more. That might be a good balance point, might not be. I feel like it might be too weak, really, but, I also feel like the design is solid and that "per 8" is a great knob to turn up or down as testing proves me right or wrong. I would borrow much more closely from Capitalism's wording, though: "Worth 1VP per 8 +Action bonuses in the text of cards you own (round down.)" I think there's a good questions as to whether "bonuses" is the right word for +Actions, it could be "amounts" like in Capitalism but amounts does sound money-like.

Dictator - Wow, I like this design. I'm not sure about balance, but my gut says it's okay; maybe extra powered in a 5/2 vs 4/3 scenario where you buy it asap.

Diviner - Wow, I like this design too. I'm not sure about "put the others back in the same order" because it might be prone to mistakes.

Endowment - it's a cool idea but it needs to somehow limit the targets to non-debt cards or cards with only $ in their costs; past that, I think I'd rewrite the wording to make the timing more explicit: "Starting next turn, directly after playing a card, if your $ is equal or greater that the set-aside card's cost, put..." I know it's a bit more wordy but it removes some of the weirds. Another way you could do this is to put Endowment aside with a number of tokens on it, and then play the card when you have more $ than tokens. Then you don't have to pick your Treasures back up: "Set any Action card from the supply with this and its $ cost in tokens. Starting next turn, after playing a card, if your $ is equal or greater than the number of tokens on the set aside card, play it and return it to the supply."
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Commodore Chuckles

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Re: Dominion: Nobility
« Reply #14 on: February 08, 2019, 06:03:14 pm »
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I'm not sure what people are talking about regarding Persuivant, it's a much weaker Junk Dealer. It can only trash the card you reveal, so say if you reveal a Copper but had an Estate in hand that's not as good as Junk Dealer, if you have an Action on top it doesn't trash and if you reveal a Silver or Gold it's really bad. It's probably better than Oasis a lot of the time but it isn't strictly better. Maybe it should cost $4 but I actually think it's one of the best designed cards here.

The important difference is that Pursuivant doesn't force you to trash. Having to discard a good Treasure sucks but Peddler variants encourage engines over money anyway. The relevant comparison is with Poacher, another Peddler that sometimes makes you discard. I think Pursuivant's trashing clearly makes it better than Poacher.
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Gazbag

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Re: Dominion: Nobility
« Reply #15 on: February 09, 2019, 12:33:11 pm »
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I'm not sure what people are talking about regarding Persuivant, it's a much weaker Junk Dealer. It can only trash the card you reveal, so say if you reveal a Copper but had an Estate in hand that's not as good as Junk Dealer, if you have an Action on top it doesn't trash and if you reveal a Silver or Gold it's really bad. It's probably better than Oasis a lot of the time but it isn't strictly better. Maybe it should cost $4 but I actually think it's one of the best designed cards here.

The important difference is that Pursuivant doesn't force you to trash. Having to discard a good Treasure sucks but Peddler variants encourage engines over money anyway. The relevant comparison is with Poacher, another Peddler that sometimes makes you discard. I think Pursuivant's trashing clearly makes it better than Poacher.

I disagree that Poacher is a particularly relevant comparison because the card fills a completely different function. Sure it has some similarities but Poacher is a card you get for early economy which has the risk of becoming weak as the game goes on if some piles empty while Pursuivant is an early game trasher that can become a Vassal-like Peddler thing later in the game. I think relevant comparisons are to other cheap trashers like Forager or Lookout and I don't think Pursuivant is so much better than either of those, if at all. I do think it should probably costs $4 as double Pursuivant seems very automatic due to the anti-synergy with Silver.
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segura

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Re: Dominion: Nobility
« Reply #16 on: February 10, 2019, 02:51:59 am »
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Pursuivant CAN be used as trasher but you can also thin via other cards and use this as something that is only a bit weaker than Poacher/Peddler once you are thin.
Or, more likely, you use it as both. A Forager or Lookout that transformed into a Peddler would be pretty sweet which is why I think that this is definitely a $4.
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LittleFish

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Re: Dominion: Nobility
« Reply #17 on: February 10, 2019, 01:29:18 pm »
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"After playing this if you have..." Should this make you reveal your hand? because you'll most l likely have no treasures in play. Does spending the moeny as in Black market count as having from actions?
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King Leon

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Re: Dominion: Nobility
« Reply #18 on: February 10, 2019, 02:22:24 pm »
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Can Sybil change the costs of a card or did you mean „any number in its text“?
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Neirai the Forgiven

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Re: Dominion: Nobility
« Reply #19 on: February 11, 2019, 02:34:47 pm »
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Frankincense - Solid card. Take another turn with what's left over from your hand, +1 card. Could maybe land you in trouble if one player has a lot of Frankincense, but I like that it doesn't discard from play, so you can only possibly chain 10 turns.

General - Another solid card. But, have you thought of the scenario where I play Big Money + Generals and the only card I ever name is General? This could result in a huge Coffer engine.... OR it could be too slow to matter. And I'd have to avoid buying Duchies.

Guillotine - As everyone else has mentioned, this is super punishing in the early game. Dropping your opponents to 1 Copper, 1 Estate, +1 card is too broken to live. I'd suggest either discarding 1 copy of each card in their hand, or discarding 1 copy of each card in their hand that they have more than one of, or excluding Coppers. Alternative suggestion, make everyone discard down to 1 copy of each card, then draw up to 4 cards.

Heir - I really, really like this card! However, I'd rename the Inheritances to something that doesn't get confused with the current Event, which is a source of so much confusion already.

High Throne - (Side note: I can see it today. Not quite sure what was going on... o.O) This one is okay; I disagree that it's strictly a rehash of a card that Donald tried and gave up on, because of it allowing cards from the discard pile. Were it up to me, I'd actually reverse the... polarity... and make it try your discard pile first before allowing you to play from your hand: "Play a differently named Action card from your discard pile. If you can't, play one from your hand." If not, I think you need to fiddle around with the wording to eliminate the implicit reveal vs an explicit one. Also, I think this should be a Duration card, since it is doing something on this turn and on the next.
« Last Edit: February 11, 2019, 02:38:32 pm by Neirai the Forgiven »
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Neirai the Forgiven

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Re: Dominion: Nobility
« Reply #20 on: February 11, 2019, 03:24:44 pm »
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Bonus round:

King's Festival - This card is literally trying to do too many things. But let's say you like it and you don't want it to die... what to do?
I'd suggest moving the "you can pay with actions" part to an event. Add an event, dunno, "King's Favor" that lets you discard Actions to get 1/2 their cost in money.... so "$0. +1 Buy. Discard an Action for +$1 for each $2 it costs, rounded down." Include it in the game whenever King's Festival is in the game. If you want, you could make it so that the event says "You can only buy this when you have King's Favor in play."

Uh then what? move the rest of King's Festival to an event as well. "$*. +1 Buy. Pay what you want, get the rewards." You can also restrict it to when King's Festival is in play.

It's a weird way to implement it, as separate events, but I feel like it'll work better than having everything crammed into one card; at this point you'd almost be better to have the card just say "Please consult the rulebook" rather than trying to tell you what to do.
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