I think your concept is interesting. The alternate back is a good solution to the mandatory play, though I think the wording on your rules needs a little work. Maybe something like "At the start of each of your turns, as well as directly after resolving a card during your turn, if you have at least one Tool in your hand, play it." Some of your cards need some work. Here are my thoughts, going card-by-card:
Armor is probably alright, most of the time it will be a Junk Dealer without the extra
.
Axe is interesting; it's a very risky card to put in your deck, but barring 3-piles, the worst it can do is discard the top card of your deck and cost you a card in your hand. That's a pretty low floor though, since in that case you may as well have a Ruined Village for the same effect it has on your turn. Granted, it will usually be at least somewhat better than that, but man, it'll suck hitting your green cards in the end game.
Bag of Holding as a cantrip workshop is probably fine.
Bow and Arrow really sounds like it should be an attack of some kind. Other than that, it's pricing is awkward. Better than Harbinger in most cases, but strictly worse than Mountain Village. I think for this card I'd go with
, but again, it's kind of awkward.
Compass is essentially a mandatory Guide. The issue here is that while Guide gets saved for when you need it, Compass could just as easily read "+1 Card, discard the top 4 cards of your deck," and have the same basic effect on your hand and deck. This is one where being mandatory really hurts its attractiveness
so much more than the other Tools. The only place I can really see using it is in some kind of Tunnel or Village Green scenario, and even then, Guide would be so many leagues better than this for only
more.
Moccasins is really unattractive to me. The other tools have the benefit of being nonterminal, so you're usually not too upset to be forced to play one you didn't totally want to. This just sucks. Like, you could make a cute little engine by itself, but your payload better be basic treasures because that's the only way you're going to be able to buy anything. It's a very self-synergistic card, but unlike Sauna/Avanto, you won't have any extra actions to play anything else, and any villages you manage to play are wasted by the chain of Moccasins. Sauna/Avanto chains also have built-in trashing, while Moccasins are going to choke
really hard, really quickly. On a flavor note, I'd probably call the card Hammer or Anvil, to relate to the precedent set by Smithy and Royal Blacksmith.
Rations' mandatory village thing is cute, especially since you can do it retroactively, like CotR or villagers. I don't understand the point of that last line of text though: how the hell are you playing this during your buy phase? There are only a couple ways that I can see that happening:
1) you have your +1 Card token on the Gladiator/Fortune, Encampment/Plunder, or Catapult/Rocks pile, and you play the treasure from that pile, or
2) Capitalism shenanigans. Neither of those are particularly likely to come up, especially since the first requires cards from 2 different expansions. I'd drop that rider, and probably reduce the cost to
depending on how powerful it ends up being.
Spellbook needs a few things changed, not conceptually or power-wise, but for rules issues. First, it should have the Command type. Second, should specify non-command. Third, you probably also want to say non-victory and non-curse to avoid the "What happens if I use Spellbook to play an Estate or a Curse" inevitable question, unless you really want to be able to play Humble Castle and Island, in which case specifically call out Actions, Treasures, and Tools.
Sword is
for a strictly worse Warehouse. Making it "just a lab" is probably not a bad thing and I doubt it would be worth
. Sure, you can play it when you have no actions, but then you can't play any actions you draw, and when you have actions left, you don't get to choose when to play it. I think the tradeoffs make it an adequate
at just +2 Cards, but perhaps not the most exciting. But they can't all be the most exciting lab variant ever. This is also a card that sounds like it should be an attack, but that's just flavor stuff.
Telescope is hard to judge power-level wise. The effect is interesting enough. I'd probably test it both at
and at
just to be sure.
Wagon should probably cost
. It's a Market Square without the reaction that you can play when you have no actions left.
Battalion and
Broken Sword are really cool. I'd change the wording on Battalion to "You may discard two cards. If you do, each other player..." as "making" a player do something isn't really card terminology that we have, and it sounds awkward to me. I like the concept of putting Tools in an opponent's deck as an attack. This is definitely my favorite of your designs.
Charlatan and
Cursed Antique, another Tool "attack." I like that this is a defense against itself; you're given a cursed object by a charlatan, so you hire your own to get rid of it for you, but you're still stuck with the curses you already gained. Minor wording quibble, Charlatan should probably say "At the start of cleanup this turn..."
I hope I didn't sound too harsh, I sometimes have difficulty with that when trying to give constructive criticism. To be clear, I think Tools have merit, the execution could just use some polishing.