I designed this set with an idea of "outdated" cards, where each merit they give comes with a some sort of a demerit. There are 4 main sub-themes: 1) Slavery - cards, that interact with Curses in your deck; 2) Self-destructive attacks - Hurt them more than yourself; 3) Alt-VP - Being useless until the end of the game is there own demerit and as such i decided to include them; 4) Vanilla cards with demerits - a variations on the Base set cards with some sort of demerits a user needs to overcome to properly apply a card in his deck. Each non-Victory pile has a 10 cards in it, with Victory piles having 8 copies for 2 players and 12 copies for 3 and more players. Exeptions numbers listed in figured parenthesis.
Slaves
{The number of slaves at the start of the game should be equal to the number of curses used in the game}
The problem with this type of drawback is that in games with trashing, you can easily break Slaves by trashing them and completely circumventing the drawback, and in games without trashing, the point penalty can vary between debilitating and meaningless. I've seen games lost with over 100 points and won with negative scores. I also think that Slaves is probably too weak anyway. It's just a free Silver+, and it isn't even a great Silver+. My biggest issue with Slaves, however, is that their presence in the Kingdom makes cursing Attacks way too powerful.
Slave market
This reaction is way too weak. It's effectively the same as +1 Action, cards cost $1 less this turn, which is already barely a
-cost effect, but it also needs you to have multiple Buys in a turn and waste the first on a Curse in order to get that effect. Market Square, on the other hand, has a Reaction that is effectively +1 Action, gain a Gold (way better), can be drawn into, and reacts to something you'd already frequently want to do anyway.
Pagan Shaman
Rewording suggestion:
"Trash the card on the Exile mat. Put a card other than a Copper from your hand face up onto the Exile mat (or reveal you can't).
In games using this, at the start of your turn, if there is a card on the Exile mat, reveal your hand and discard all copies of it." This reduces the number of words in the text, makes it clearer, and keeps you honest (as you've worded it, there's no way to prevent players from pretending they have a hand full of Coppers). There's no way to get multiple cards onto the Exile mat at once, so you don't need to word Pagan Shaman as if you can.
Freeloader
{The number of Freeloaders at the start of the game should be equal to the number of curses used in the game}
You have to waste a buy to give your opponents Freeloaders, so I don't think it's worth doing unless it's the only
-cost Kingdom card.
Omen Tracker
This is too powerful. If you discard a Victory card or a Curse, your opponents essentially have a 2-card hand on their next turn. I would reduce it to two cards topdecked and have it give +
to the player to make it more like an oddball Militia variant.
Feud
This is way too swingy. You could very easily trash an Estate from your hand and hit an opponent's Province, leading to a 12-point swing in your favor.
Next is Alt-VP Split-pile. {4/4 copies for 2 players and 6/6 copies for 3 and more players.}
Top half: Bottom half:
Ancestral rights Border Lands
Nobody in their right mind would ever risk giving their opponent a ton of points by buying a Border Lands. Especially since Ancestral Rights isn't even hard to buy or play. And since nobody would buy Border Lands, Ancestral Rights would get left alone as well, considering that without Border Lands it's a double-cost Estate.
Free land
This doesn't really change the game in any interesting ways, imo.
Shared land
This is worded strangely. I assume that the player who has Shared Land chooses which Victory card it mimics, but as worded, it sounds like you choose a player at random at the beginning of the game and they decide which card Shared Land mimics. Here's how I would word it:
"When scoring, choose another Victory card in the Supply. This card is worth the same amount of
as the chosen card."
Mound
Even in games with heavy trashing, I don't think this is going to be worth enough
to make it worth
, especially since it can only trash Treasures. It also needs to say "or reveal you can't" after "trash 2 Treasures from your hand" because it's possible that you play it while only having one Treasure in hand (or none in hand).
Primordial village
+Buys should come before +
. Other than that, this is by far the best card in your post.
Pagan totem
This is too weak. It removes junk from your deck, but once you run out of cards to trash, it becomes significantly worse junk than any of the actual junk since it takes up space in EVERY hand for the rest of the game, and you Curse yourself if you try to trash it. Since you can easily play it every turn, it also really isn't that different from Cathedral if you think about it.
Chief's hut
This looks good on paper, but I think it's actually very weak. Many Actions are very bad and some are even useless if you have to discard your hand afterwards. The optimal targets for Chief's Hut are Actions that give +
and +Buys, and considering that you need to play a non-terminal before CH works (because you need to have an Action left to play the CH), non-terminal coin is far too rare to make CH useful, especially when you also take into account the fact that the optimal targets also don't give +Cards because any cards you draw are wasted.
Shaman's hut
This compares too favorably to Forum to cost the same amount. They both give the same net handsize for the current turn, but Shaman's Hut improves your next turn as well. I would price Shaman's Hut at
.
Tradional rite
Rewording suggestion:
"Reveal your hand and choose two cards from it that have the same cost. If you couldn't, trash this and gain a Curse. Otherwise, set aside both of them. Now and at the start of your next turn, trash one of the set aside cards and gain a card costing up to
more than it."
Aside from the rewording, I feel like it should just fail to do anything if your cards all have different costs, since you can always just not play it. It also compares way too well to Remodel to cost
. It is a conditional now-and-next turn Remodel, but you'd be hard-pressed NOT to be able to get that effect. I would price it at
at the very least.
Chief
This is strictly better than Militia and therefore has to cost at least
. I would actually suggest pricing it at
.
For future reference, I would strongly recommend reading the
fan card creation guide pinned to the top of this Variant and Fan Cards forum's front page. It was invaluable for me to learn how to get better at designing fan cards and avoiding common pitfalls.