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X-tra

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A Dozen of Custom-made Cards
« on: June 23, 2020, 01:29:06 pm »
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Hi everyone! I’d like to share a couple ideas for custom Dominion cards I’ve had for the past couple of months. Yes, I was bored. The confinement has taken its toll on my recreation starved brain.

So I first appeared on this forum with another set of custom Dominion cards which were labeled under the expansion name “Odyssey”. This fan-made expansion was conceived by my brother and I right after we discovered ShardOfHonor’s online card maker. Thrilled, we wanted to take a shot at making custom cards. We compiled a bunch of ‘em and, in the end, I made 15 cards and my bro made another 15. Now, even back then, we knew about the suggested guidelines for card creation. But we were still relatively new at this. And so, in the end, Odyssey was... uhhh... pretty messy. Actually, it was very messy. Looking back at it, there were some nifty concepts, but not much is salvageable in there. Over time, the Weekly Card Design Contest thread helped me better myself at creating cards. And it’s with this new set of skills that I present here today a nice little catalogue of cards. Hopefully, I will have learned from my past mistakes in Odyssey.

I should say that a lot of these cards were created out of the desire to see something cool and unique. Sometimes, yeah, some of these cards can be centered around a gimmicky concept. But my goal was to make this work! And finally, another important self-imposed guideline I wanted to follow was to keep it simple. As much as possible. I was dreadfully avoiding shrinking the text by putting too many words. I’ve mostly respected it (there are 1 or 2 exceptions).

Alright. So below, you’ll find the list of cards. Some cards use Artifacts or whatnot. Scroll further down to find them. In my next post, I will provide you guys with a nice summary for each of these cards (in alphabetical order). This summary will further explain the intent of a given card, its history, the potential pitfalls it comes with, etc (don't worry, you don't have to read any of that stuff).

In the end, I just want to say that I’d appreciate your opinions/thoughts on these cards. You don’t have to judge everything. Merely picking one card and saying what you think of it is more than enough for me. The goal, of course, is to get better at making cards. :)



Kingdom Cards


     
     
     



     
     
     



     
     
     



     
     
     




Landscape Cards


     



     







Artifacts and State Cards


     




Faces for the D6 (For the Dice Games card)

                  

There are 20 Tracker Tokens. 10 with a faceup side showing “+2 Actions” and a facedown side showing “+3 Cards” and 10 others with a faceup side showing “+” and a facedown side showing “+1 Buy”.
« Last Edit: June 28, 2020, 06:45:23 pm by X-tra »
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Re: A Dozen of Custom-made Cards
« Reply #1 on: June 23, 2020, 01:29:22 pm »
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Ballroom (Action)
Set aside up to 2 Action cards from your hand. Play one of them twice, then play the other twice.
A Throne Room Variant. This time though, it’s 2 different Action cards that are going to be played twice. This means that the net total of Action played through Ballroom is 4. This is more than what King’s Court does! Hence the cost (used to be , but it became obvious that it was too overpowered).

However, Ballroom might be harder to setup. We always dread that time where you draw your King’s Court/Throne Room without any Action cards in your hand. With Ballroom, to be fully efficient for what you paid, you need 2 other Actions! This is primarily why there is a little +1 Card that snuck in there. I know what they say about “+1 Card”: it’s awkward. But here, putting it a +2 Cards would’ve been overkill, even for a card. And putting no draw at all worsens the problem of Ballroom not colliding with any Action cards, like I previously mentioned. So it is what it is for the time being.
     
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Clock Tower (Landmark)
When you shuffle, +1 and trash an Action card from the Supply.
Through all these cool Landmarks Empire gave us, none dealt with Shuffling. So I took that opportunity. Clock Tower seems to encourage smaller decks. Or decks with stuff like Chancellor, Scavenger, etc. For every shuffle, you score a . That’s simple enough. But then, yeah, you have to remember to do so. But Star Chart exists, so I’m allowed to do stuff like Clock Tower *sticks tongue*!

The trashing clause has been included for a very simple reason. dispatching card-shaped things need to do so whilst bringing the game closer to an end state. Here, people could just, y’know, keep shuffling their decks, hoping to out shuffle and out their opponents. And there’d be an overall tendency of not buying cards, cuz that’d go against having a small deck easy to shuffle for Clock Tower. In sum, the game would go nowhere. Or at least slow down. So yeah. With the trashing effect, the game will at least move forward. Plus, it’s flavorful: it’s as if time is running out!


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Custodian (Night – Attack – Duration)
Set aside a non-Duration card you have in play. At the start of your next turn, put it into your hand. Until then, each other player cannot buy a copy of it.
The idea behind Custodian is rather simple. You jail away a certain card you’ve played. It’s now illegal for others to buy that card (it’s locked away by the keymaster after all)! However, they may still gain that particular card through other means, like with a Workshop. Custodian didn’t use to have the “non-Night” thingy. But then, what happens if you set aside a Custodian that wants to set aside the Custodian that just set him aside? My head is spinning. So yeah, that’s necessary.

Custodian’s Attack could be mild or rather annoying. Hard to say in theory. If you focus more on the Attack part, it’s tough to know which card you want to block from your opponents. It’s kinda like Contraband in a way, but it applies for everyone.

EDIT: Custodian was edited to lock away a non-Duration card instead. Tracking stuff should be even easier with this revision. And it still prevents a Custodian to lock another one!
     
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Debate (Event)
At once, whoever reveals the card with the highest cost takes equal to that cost and if it wasn’t a Victory card, gains a copy of it. If it was you, take less. Otherwise, +1.
Oh boy. Debate. Originally posted in the “Actually Passable Card Ideas” thread, this card suffered quite a bit of changes (thanks to Minotaur for pointing out the original flaws). Now, we are left with this painfully large wall of text (gotta cover those edge cases, man)! But functionally, it should be alright.

So it’s an interactive card. Everyone reveals something from their hand. The highest “bidder” (the one with the most expensive card) gains a copy of it, but also takes some as some kind of payment for their win. That oughta teach you to use the taxpayers’ money for these useless political Debates! Of course, this has to not work with Victory cards. Can you imagine if it did? The horror! Anyway, the initiator of the Debate’s got to have had a reason to do so. So they gain a if they “lose” the heated Debate and take a little less should they win. If these consolidation prizes didn’t exist, then you could just lose a Debate you bought and feel silly (and mad) you wasted your Buy all the while helping your competition!

There’re multiple ways to go around a Debate. You could initiate one, purposefully losing to get that . But if everyone else does not wish to get any , they could also all reveal a Copper. In that situation, you’d win the Debate, knowing you always win ties. So, you paid for a Debate, using your Buy, only to end up gaining a Copper. Hurray? There’s a little bit of a mental game in there.

This is the card closest of leaving this set of cards. I do not like how complicated it is and how much there is on this card. I fear that the first impression most players will have reading this is “huh?” with them promptly opening the rulebook for clarifications. Dominion needs to be straightforward with its cards. Debate isn’t. That’s troublesome.


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Dice Games (Action)
Roll the D6. Either discard a card to re-roll, or apply the result of the dice.
(You may put a Tracker token on this to remember the result.)
This isn’t the first time Dice have been suggested in Dominion cards. I’ve seen some toying around this idea in their own custom cards. An obvious piece of criticism against this concept would be that it’s too swingy. Swinginess bad! Look, I agree. That’s why I added a little something on Dice Games to help you mitigate that luck! More power to the player. So you can discard a card in hand to reroll. I feel like that’s kind of a cool-ish idea, nah (tootin’ me own horn here)?

Dice Games comes with, of course, it’s own dice. Pictures of the 6 faces of that dice are illustrated above. So you can kinda see what kind of ratio I went with with this card.

Also, since these kind of, like, “multiple choice” cards can be tough to track if a couple of ‘em are used in a turn, it comes with its own little Tracker tokens that you can put on your played Dice Game. Thus, on your Buy phase, you’ll have an easier time computing what happened with your dice rolls. Stuff like Pawn, but even Ironmonger or Minion, can be quite challenging to track in big turns. I didn’t want Dice Games to fall into that category. So there you have it.

By the way, the cost has been specifically picked so that no matter your initial split, you can afford a Dice Games and have it fully paid by turn 3.

EDIT: The last paragraph isn’t true anymore, since Dice Games’ cost was revised to make it cheaper.
     
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Draft (Action)
+1 Buy
Trash this. Gain a card costing up to .
This was born out of the interest of seeing if a cost Kingdom card could exist. Poor House paved the way for cards. So Imma try the same, but with a free Kingdom card instead. And thus comes Draft. It’s kind of a crappy gainer, but the +Buy it provides means that, no matter what, you’ll be able to toss in another Draft alongside the Buy you take this turn. So the Cycle continues. Therefore, Draft can kinda be seen as a Kingdom pile meant to be emptied quickly if you want to end the game on 3 depleted piles. Or, you know, sometimes you’re desperate for a +Buy. Draft gives it to you (albeit, only once). So, all in all, Draft is a small but nifty lil’ utility card.


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Duality (Action)
+1 Action
Reveal cards from your deck until you reveal 2 Action cards, discarding the rest. The player to your left chooses one. Play that one and discard the other.
I wanted to give those “The player to your left blablabla [...]” cards a shot and so Duality came to be. I also wanted one card to represent more of a concept with a cool illustration rather than an actual physical thing like a person or a building, kinda like stuff like Replace or what have you. Hence the name “Duality”.

Duality can kinda be seen as a Village where its +1 Card will be an Action card. So because it is a Village+, it must at least bear a price of . However, since there is a certain lack of control about which Action gets to be played (all thanks to your devilish left neighbour), I believe this drags down Duality juuuuust a tad. Is this enough to put it back into the price range? I haven’t tested Duality enough yet to make this decision. My hunch is that it is priced correctly, but I’d like to hear more opinions on that matter.
     
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El Dorado (Landmark)
The first player who buys a Gold takes Collecting Artifacts.
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Collecting Artifacts (State)
At the start of your turn, another player may take this. If nobody did, +1 and Gold makes this turn.
-----
When you take this from another player, gain a Gold.
Initially suggested this Landmark in the “Really bad card ideas” thread. If it was posted there, then what is it doing here, in a (hopefully) serious card list? Well, my first instinctive concern was that once a Gold would be obtained, Collecting Artifacts, the State card El Dorado comes with, would throw every player into decision mode at each start of turn of whoever currently has it. And, although not too bad in 2-player games, imagine the decision and thinking process in 4-player games. Sounds like it would considerably stretch the length of that game, which, in my opinion, should be avoided when possible.

That being said, I still love the idea of a moving Artifact that must be passed around to deter its owner, much to the detriment of whoever claims it. And I especially love the fact that it doesn’t start active in an El Dorado game, nor does it ever have to (Although in online Lord Rattington games, it will definitely trigger, lol). The funny part is, most of the time, when you buy a Gold, it’s because you’re looking for a money game. But claiming a Collecting Artifacts to stop someone else to reap so many circumvents that. All of your precious Golds will make and boy oh boy, you’ll be crying crocodile tears. On the flipside, maybe, as an Engine builder, you don’t want the Big Money guy to collect so many . But then, taking their Collecting Artifacts would add a clogging Gold card in your Engine. Hmmm.

Anyway, I like the devilish dilemma El Dorado/Collecting Artifacts subject players to. S’why it’s here!


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Handler (Action)
Choose one: Play this as one of the set aside Ways; or +1 Card and +1 Action.
-----
Setup: Set aside 3 Ways face up.
Handler kind of works like Druid, as in it sets aside 3 things and plays them differently. Handler has an exclusive use of 3 unused Ways (which, by the way, can’t be played as by other Action cards). It also gives its user the option that if, in a particular turn, none of these Ways are interesting to them, they can simply cantrip Handler away.

This card isn’t particularly strong. But it could be. I had it in a game where Way of the Chameleon and Way of the Horse were 2 of the 3 set aside Ways. I used a Handler as a Chameleon, replaying it as Way of the Horse afterward. This netted me and an additional Action after promptly returning the Handler to its pile. It was a pretty cool thing to do.

Yes, way of the Mouse adds a 4th out-of-Supply card shaped thing. Handler can potentially become a table clogger, lol. Again, like Druid when The Swamp’s Gift is out for play!
     
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Hops (Treasure – Duration)

At the start of your next turn, + if this is still in play.
I once heard that Treasure – Duration cards shouldn’t be a thing because they are hard to track. A lot of cards, such as Counterfeit, kills Treasure cards in play and remembering what’s supposed to happen on your next turn with no visual aid can be annoying. Dominion games can sometimes already be hard to figure out with all these crazy cards and we therefore shouldn’t strive to add more complicated edge cases. And if this isn’t proof enough, well, just remember that no Treasure – Duration cards exist in official Dominion expansions, a concept I’m sure Donald X. thought of before.

And yet here I am with Hops, trying to revive the idea. The simple addition of a “if this is still in play” makes it so that you don’t have to track stuff anymore. You Counterfited a Hops? Well, my friend, you just voided its Duration clause.

Anyway, onto the card itself. Uhhhh... Hops is cheap and easy to play. You probably don’t too many of these “Silvers split in 2 turns”. Yeah. ‘Nuff said.


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Market Town (Action)
+1 Card
+2 Actions
+1 Buy
+
Draw one fewer card for your next hand.
A card probably in dire need of fixing. In the aforementioned Odyssey “expansion”, we had a card similar to this. It was named Town Center. Here, I’m trying to revive the spirit of that card. The concept being that you have a powerful Market (like Grand Market) at the detriment of your next turn. Market Town is also a Village, so it’s bonkers.

It’s hard to judge if it’s worth cutting your next hand at the benefit of your current one. If Tactician taught us anything, then the answer is probably “yes”. Besides, after your 5th Market Town, you’ll suffer no additional penalty for your next turn. Granted, your opponents must let you run away with a lot of Market Towns for that to be true, but still.

This card used to be . But in my games, no one wanted to invest that much money into that. Now, my last bit of concern is whether I should remove the +1 Buy, or drop it to +1 Action, or drop it to +. Or, y’know, simply leave it as it is. Argh.
     
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Mobsters (Night – Treasure)

If it’s your night phase, remove all of your . Otherwise, take at the end of your Buy phase.
Now, this looks insane (and weird) at first glance, but this could the card I’m the proudest of in this list. Yeah, the initial plan was to try to fulfill the gimmick of a Treasure – Night card. But this evolved quite a bit since then. Just like Werewolf, the duality of its types means it can be played in 2 different phases. And consequently perform 2 different things depending on when you play it.

Mobsters, fittingly, involve . It works kinda like Capital in the sense that it gives you an amazing payload at first, but at the consequence of taking later on. Here, the taking process happens at the end of your Buy phase, meaning you could play 2 Mobsters for a Province and worrying about the later. Or, if you kept a 3rd Mobster in your hand, you could call to your shady friends to immediately pay back that in your Night phase. It works!

Thematically, I love the approach here. In the, errr, “Day” phase, or daytime if you prefer, these hoodlums agree to give you a nice sum of money. But if you can’t repay your loan, then the mafia puts you into debt. You owe them. But, in your Night phase, the Mobsters can perform their criminal behavior without fear of being caught. And so, they can erase that debt of yours if you agree to perform certain “tasks” for them, tasks that aren’t particularly law-abiding.


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Plague Doctor (Action – Attack – Duration)
Each other player gains a Curse. At the start of your next turn, +1 Action and +.
This card is nasty. Unlike Witch, Plague Doctor is a Village, so that non-terminality means you probably can afford a couple of ‘em and build around that. It doesn’t overstay its welcome once the Curses are gone. Plus, if you play one every turn (meaning you DO have to get a couple Plague Doctors), then you’ll always start with 2+ Actions. Beside that, Plague Doctor is pretty basic. I believe is the correct price for this Duration card (even though it doesn’t do anything for you the turn you play it).
     
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Science Grant (Project)
Gain a Potion. During your turns, Potions are also Actions with “+1 Card, +1 Action, +”.
Again, here we have something that’s been created around a gimmicky idea. The idea being, of course, to try to have a card with a 2 cost. I couldn’t figure out a way to make a normal Kingdom card work with this idea, so my attention shifted toward Projects. And here we are with Science Grant. A 2 Project. The mere idea of a Project costing can seem preposterous. So imagine a 2 Project. That’s pushing the envelope a little bit.

But hear me out! I think the effects of buying that Project more than makes up for the weird investment of buying at least 2 Potions. Because, in a nutshell, it transforms all of your bought Potions into Peddlers! So now, they’re pretty interesting cards. And hey, maybe you’ll even want to buy more of them from there on, knowing their new function! Maybe, lol... maybe the Potion pile could even be emptied before the game ends. That’s something you don’t hear every day.

At first, I wanted to have a little setup clause in the bottom of Science Grant stating: “Setup: Add a Kingdom with a cost to the Supply”. I wanted people to have more reason to invest into Potions than simply aiming toward Science Grant with them. But I realized that it was fine as it is. And also it is waaaaay less wordy right now.


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Secret Path (Action – Duration – Victory)
At the start of your next turn, +3 Cards, then discard 3 cards.
-----
1
I confess: I only did this to see a beautiful green/orange card. Here, we have the poor man’s Den of Sin. It used to make you draw 2 and discard 2 at the start of your next turn. But this was tweaked to “+3 cards, discard 3 cards” instead. It was weak sauce before that. Unlike Den of Sin, it takes an Action to get that bonus. Plus it isn’t gained to your hand. Finally, while you can sift a little bit with it, it doesn’t increase your handsize. And the 1 is not enough to make up for that, even if Secret Path is cheaper than Den of Sin. And uhhh when you play it, well, it does nothing for you this turn. So ‘grats my dude.

I like the card though. It’s probably sucky, but it exists. The flavour of the card is cute, which hopefully will sway people to toss pity points at it. Although for the flak I gave it, I should probably say that Secret Path is probably an auto-hit the next turn you play it should you open with one and, I dunno, a Silver. That’s a cool thing it does.
     
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Statue (Action – Victory)
Set this aside and an Action card from your hand costing up to .
-----
Worth equal to the cost in of the set aside card.
Another card I’m extremely pleased with. Statue can give a lot of , but requires some serious setup to do so. First, imagine you set aside a Action card. With a bought Statue, this sums up to an investment of and 2 Buys. Plus some deck control and/or shuffle luck to have the 2 cards collide. For 5. Seems like a poor investment. However, it has a   payload that can make a difference in certain games. It gives more   than Duchy dancing, for instance.

So Statue can be seen as an “on the side” way of adding to your score. Tucking away Action cards you no longer need in your endgame phase. Kinda like when you start Remodeling your Golds which are better transformed in for you at this stage of the game. Converting a Mint or something when people start greening doesn’t seem like such a bad plan.


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Stray Cat (Action – Reserve)
+2 Cards
Put this on your Tavern mat.
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When you draw a card during your Action phase, you may trash this from your Tavern mat for +3 Cards.
Another Odyssey card that got completely transformed. Stray Cat is a nice little utility card. And it works with itself so it’s not a complete failure in Kingdoms where it can’t be triggered. The Stray Cat allows you to draw a little more when you draw with something else during your Action phases. But it’s a single use card, so it goes to the trash right after. As if the cat caught stuff for you (like the Magpie does) and goes on its way right after. It can be a mega turn enabler if used at the right time though, so that’s cool. But if you fail, you’ll have to invest into another one to try again. Stray Cat is slow, but strong when used.

Note that you can’t immediately draw 3 cards by calling a Stray Cat you just played because of the +2 Cards it gave you beforehand. The drawing of those 2 cards happened BEFORE you put that kitty on your Tavern mat.
     
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Tithe (Action – Attack – Duration – Reserve)
Each other player with no takes . At the end of your next turn, put this on your Tavern mat.
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At the start of your turn, you may call this for +.
This card, I suspect, is going to be hard to gage. First, there are no Attack in Dominion. And I understand that attempting to carry out that idea can be seen as a potential pitfall. Second, this is a Duration card that does something at the end of your next turn, something that could be hard to remember. Third, this Frankenstein card that combines a little bit of everything can be confusing and hard to place in one’s deck.

But darn if I didn’t want to try to make a Reserve – Duration hybrid. The slowness, here, counterbalance the annoyance of the Attack and the huge bonus of calling it from your Tavern mat. I believe the slowness IS a feature, not a bug. It ties in with the other concepts printed on Tithe. But uuuuhhh I’d like to hear you guys’ opinion on the matter.


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Truce (Event)
If you don’t have the Pact, take it.
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Pact (Artifact)
When you take this, gain an Action card.
-----
When someone takes this from you, gain a Copper.
I should say that this wasn’t tested that much. There might be an uncovered broken scenario with this Event. I hope you guys can help me figure out if such scenarios exist.

Anyway. Buying a Truce gives you the Pact, a nice deal at first glance. You get to gain any Action card in the Kingdom, potentially stuff like Possession! But, if your rivals decide to take that Pact from you, you’ll be junked by a Copper. This can go on and on. This is a liiiiittle similar to El Dorado and Collecting Artifacts shown earlier.

My biggest hunch would be to put a cost limit as to what Action cards can be gained with Truce. Maybe cards up to ? Or should it stay as it is and go “screw it, carnage time”?
     
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Vigil (Action – Attack)
+1 Action
+
The next time you play a card this turn, each other player with 4 or more cards in hand discards a copy of it (or reveals they can’t).
I like Vigil a lot. The Attack seems annoying, but fair. This is kind of like Pillage where you get to target the better cards in your opponents’ hand rather than having them discard whatever they want à la Militia. Or sometimes, you can try to use Vigil to block a Copper in the early game and this turns into yet another Cutpurse. But heck if it isn’t annoying. Vigil requires some setup and some effort by the player using it, so having your opponents discard just what you want at the right time is a nice payoff. And there’s always this cool little combo where you play 2 Vigils back to back. The first one being played only to take a peek at your opponents’ revealed hand (unless they discard a Vigil, which, whatever, it’s still nice) and the second one being played to know exactly which next card to play with the new information you’ve just gathered. To poke them where it hurts!

This is a non-terminal Attack. We ought to be careful with these. Coven from Menagerie says that it’s not completely illegal to do so however. And I think it’s fair to say that Vigil wouldn’t work without that +1 Action. It’s just so tied in with what this card is trying to accomplish.


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Watchmaker (Action – Reserve)
+2 Cards
You may put this and an Action card from your hand on your Tavern mat.
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At the start of your turn, you may call this to play a non-Reserve Action card from your Tavern mat.
And finally, we end this massive wall of text with Watchmaker. First of all, I just want to say that I’m annoyed that the first part of that card spans into 3 lines. It used to take 2 lines and the text was nice and big, but I just had to add the “you may” part for accountability. I also am disgruntled that the art is not really of Dominion’s time. I mean, watches aren’t really medieval material after all. But it sounded cool, so I followed through with that name.

Okay. So Watchmaker is probably best seen as a megaturn enabler. You get a couple of them and you call everything at once at the beginning of a given turn. But that is a slooooooowww setup, my friends. You’ve got to invest in a bunch of Watchmakers AND Action cards you plan on setting aside for it to become a thing. I still haven’t unlocked the full potential of this card in my playtests, nor am I sure it even exists. Maybe you guys can help me come up with a scenario where the slow process of setting a bunch of stuff aside to play it for free on a later turn can truly shine? Hard to see right now. Maybe it should be a ? Pricing stuff is hard.

And uh, oh yeah. The +2 Cards, I think, is necessary to help the poor Watchmaker collide with an Action card.
« Last Edit: August 19, 2020, 09:25:35 am by X-tra »
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Re: A Dozen of Custom-made Cards
« Reply #2 on: June 23, 2020, 03:23:15 pm »
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Ballroom: Might be crazy on itself, but so is King's Court, so it's probably OK.
Custodian: Enough Custodians could theoretically lock opponents out of actions, but it's hard to set up and less practical than similar pins. This honestly might be under-powered since benefit to you is pretty low.
Dice Games: Interesting concept, and well implemented. The issue here is inconsistent power level. There's no problem conceptually, Boons could actually be said to be similar, but there's a massive difference in power level between the different sides. +1 Buy is a zero cost junk card, but +$4 is a powerful payload card. If the different options were closer in power level this would be quite interesting.
Draft: An excellent and very interesting implementation of a 0 cost Kingdom card. Simple, but sometimes useful.
Duality: I'm not sure how good this is exactly. It can cause trouble with forced trashers but it is a sold village without them. Play-testing is needed.
Handler: A useful little $2 cost card. Most Ways are slightly worse than a 2-cost card, so this is balanced.
Hops: Definitely on the weak end of things, but they can't all be greats. Strategically interesting.
Market Town: This is simple enough that there's not a lot to say. I think play-testing is something that would be needed to see if its balanced.
Mobsters: This card is an interesting and flavorful Capital Variant. It might warrant a small buff since it costs a lot and is meh without being able to chain them, but removing 1 debt in the cost would suffice.
Plague Doctor: This is balanced, and reasonable, if a bit mean. Surprisingly low impact for a curser.
Secret Path: Interesting, slightly weak. Having it be non-terminal on the first turn is worth consideration.
Statue: Interesting alt-vp card.
Stray Cat: I was a pretty big fan of the original Stray Cat, but it had issues. This captures some of its spirit and offers some great strategic elements.
Tithe: This is slow, which is intentional, but this makes it really weak at 5. I'm not sure if the attack is as strong that the card need be balanced around it this way.
Vigil: I think there might be a better phrasing here, like axing the + action and changing it to play the blocked action directly.
Watchmaker: This should say on the second half "other than this" since I assume it isn't meant to be able to play itself and there might be infinite loops there.
Clock Tower: This is similar to an Empires outtake. This just doesn't effect anything much.
Debate: This really needs playtesting to see how well it works. It would probably benefit from an extra buy.
El Dorado: This is a nightmare for how many choices players will have to make constantly. It'll really slow games.
Science Grant: This has an issue where it's never worth it without other potion cards which are extremely sparse. If that's the only potion payoff, then it's not worth the tempo loss.
Truce: Gain an action card with no conditions is a huge risk that's probably too dangerous to be put on a card. It has almost no disadvantage, especially compared to Banquet.
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Re: A Dozen of Custom-made Cards
« Reply #3 on: June 23, 2020, 03:25:11 pm »
+1

Formatting suggestion: put the paragraphs of explanation next to the picture of the card. I find myself scrolling back and forth a lot on a large monitor; I can't imagine trying to make comments on a laptop or phone.

Some brief thoughts:

Ballroom: I wonder if this alternative wording is clear enough: "You may set aside up to 2 Action cards from your hand. Play one of them twice, then play the other twice." At least, I assume this is the intent: if Ballroom sets aside Village and Smithy, you must either play Village-Village-Smithy-Smithy or Smithy-Smithy-Village-Village, not e.g. Village-Smithy-Village-Smithy.

Hops: I wonder if "At the start of your next turn, +$1 if this is still in play" would read better. As written, I wasn't originally sure if it would stay in play until next turn, a la Gear with no set-aside cards. (To be clear, I think it does from a rules perspective, but it isn't as obvious as it could be.)

Might come back for some more feedback, but in general I like these cards.  :)
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Aquila

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Re: A Dozen of Custom-made Cards
« Reply #4 on: June 23, 2020, 06:35:59 pm »
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These cards show a clean elegance overall, they feel much better than what I remember of Odyssey (which isn't much).

Ballroom: simple design that's fairly failsafe. If playtesting showed you $6 was too little then this is likely good to go. Over other throne variants, this calls for precision deck control strategies.
Wording: you don't need to say 'you may', set aside up to 2 cards includes 0.

Clock tower may not be the best way to involve shuffles. If you want to do it lots you want some time to benefit from it. Go for something less centralising.

Custodian: I like the elegance here, how the attack neatly fits into the self benefit. It's probably a bit too rude an attack for my liking, contraband is self-inflicted. You'll also want to make it set aside something that would be discarded, otherwise durations get wonky (hirelings played multiple times).

Debate: you may have found this to be relevant or not, but you have to not play a card you want to try winning with, whilst the other players can play their card. A big sting if you lose, I imagine.

Dice games: the first time I end up discarding my entire hand to getting +1 Buy or +2 Actions every time, I'm probably finished with this card. It'll happen. The random outcomes need to be much less varied.

Duality achieves its intended purpose, though it needs to discard all of the other revealed cards as well as the other Action.

When 2 or more players (in 3+ player games) want to take collecting artifacts...?

Some games handler will probably be centralising, like ox, owl and rat maybe. A bit like a self-gaining nobles.

I guess with market town against tactician, it just feels better to prepare a future turn at the cost of the current one; you have something to look forward to. The opposite makes the wait between turns not fun. The cases where you can prepare for market town setbacks, like scheme and library, are very few.

Stray cat could simply read 'you may trash this from your Tavern mat for +3 Cards'. Sound and interesting besides this, control over draw quantity.

Comparing tithe to bridge troll, it's slower but ruder. It may not be fun to play against.

Truce is like 'I can get a Forge (player 2: 'I can get a Forge...') then a Goons for my opening? Don't mind if I do. And then city quarters? Sweet.'
So yeah, this is always causing trouble in the opening, even if just $5/Copper/$5.

Vigil may have enough reason for it to be added to decks, or + $2 at $5 cost would add more. Not sure I'd want to add an Action copper to the deck that has an attack that may miss.

Watchmaker feels very slow and very niche. What can it do that Way of the Turtle can't?

Mobsters and statue look sound and interesting. Draft, secret path, plague doctor and hops are sound and a bit less interesting.
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alion8me

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Re: A Dozen of Custom-made Cards
« Reply #5 on: June 23, 2020, 07:12:18 pm »
0

The only option worth 7 Debt on Dice Games is the +$4, and because of the randomness on the card you probably want the options to be stronger than a hypothetical 7 Debt card would be. I feel like the concept might work better on a cheaper card, to avoid swinginess.

A lot of the others look pretty neat, I might comment on them later. My gut feeling is that a lot of these could be buffed/have a lower price. I like Stray Cat a lot.

Also, I'm worried that Custodian can be too oppressive, especially in multiplayer games where it could make building a deck impossible.
« Last Edit: June 23, 2020, 07:15:18 pm by alion8me »
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Re: A Dozen of Custom-made Cards
« Reply #6 on: June 23, 2020, 07:36:29 pm »
0

First, unrelated to anything said so far, I just want to point out that I forgot to put an "Action" label on the bottom of Watchmaker. Nooooooo! I added the "You may" thingy, like, minutes before posting this thread. I thought I accounted for everything, but this lil' mistake snuck right in. I'll fix this in a future update. But my fingers are fatigued right now. :D


D782802859: Thank you for your thoughts. I indeed remember you posting in the other custom card thread I've done a couple of months ago. In retrospect, it was like 95% duds in there, hahaha. But one can learn over time, I'll tell ya this much.
  • Custodian: Yeah the Custodian can lock away a turn should you play, like, all 10 of them, setting aside a different card in play with each of them. Although, you need to have all of those different cards in play for the dream to become a reality. This kind of stuff is extremely hard to pull off. Also, you'll never be able to lock away Duchies and Provinces, since they can't be played (you can deny Estates if it is an Inheritance game). But even if you do that, you won't be able to do it next turn, seeing as Custodians are of Duration type. This means that they'll all go into play next turn and won't be in your deck for you to try to pin your competition once more.
  • Tithe: Tithe really feels like a -. From the moment you play it, you can only get it back into your hands 4 turns later (1. Play turn, 2. Duration turn, 3. Calling it from your Tavern Mat, 4. Finally having a chance to draw it). Maybe the on call effect should reward you with instead for your patience. Like Giant does. But I'm just scared some people will stockpile Tithes on their Tavern Mat and call a bunch at once when the opportunity is just right.
  • Vigil: It's because I want the Vigil to have the choice to try to make your opponents discard either an Action card or a Treasure card (or even a Night card, why not, lol). I don't want that card to put Treasure cards in play outside of your Buy phase. Donald X regrets that part of Black Market.
  • Watchmaker: Once Watchmaker is played, it isn't in your hand anymore. So you gotta put a different Action card on your Tavern mat. Technically, you could put another Watchmaker you have in hand on your Tavern mat, lol. But uhhhh... I don't see a reason for doing that, knowing that Watchmaker can only put a non-Reserve card from your Tavern mat into play. Those Watchmakers will be stuck there forever, lol. At least they can boast to each other about their cool watches at the bar. :D
  • El Dorado: Luckily, that decision process only happens at the start of turn of whoever currently has it. So it's not necessarily a thing that happens every turn. Unless it's a 2-player game and both of them keep tossing it around to each other in some kind of freakish tug-of-war session. But at this point, just why, lol. But yeah. I understand your concern with this Landmark. It's not unfounded, I'll say that much.
  • Truce: The biggest mistake here is a lack of serious play testing with this Event. I am now pretty sure of this: it needs to be limited somehow.


mutated: For the formatting, I think I might put a quote box above each card statement in the second post in which the card’s effect will be displayed. I’m sorry about the weird formatting, I swear my goal wasn’t to make you guys’ mouse wheel catch on fire! :D
I might do that later tonight or even perhaps the day after tomorrow (national holiday tomorrow over where I live, so I won’t have time then).
  • Ballroom: You are correct, this is the intended purpose of Ballroom. I don’t want the player to be able to criss-cross both cards, if you will. Like card A, card B, card A, card B, just like you demonstrated. Matter of fact, it used to let players do just that, but this was removed rather quickly when we saw weird on-play cases. Anyway, your wording is way better than the one I wrote on the card, so I’m going to shamelessly steal it, yessir.
  • Hops: Another better suggested wording that I’ll take as well. Dammit I swear I took time to meticulously write stuff, why do you guys gotta make it so easy. :D


Aquila: Wow, thank you for your comments! I really like it when you guys take the time to help other fellow forum users like that. S’how I learned to make better stuff than the rather unprofessional stuff I presented in Odyssey. You guys are oozing expertise (gross metaphor, but bear with me) and it’s nice that you’re willing to share it with others.
  • Ballroom: The “you may” shall be removed. If I can remove redundant words, then I’ll do it, no questions asked. I like a clean and elegant job.
  • Custodian: You know what? I think you just gave me an idea. Instead of being unable to set aside a Night card, Custodian should be prevented to set aside a Duration card instead. This still tackles the weird case of setting aside a Custodian in play, since it is a Duration card itself! And now it will avoid weird tracking cases, just like Captain tries to do as well (and now Procession too).
  • Dice Games: I was trying to have a stronger Smithy/Village ratio on Dice Games since that’s what most people will look forward to. With a little + jackpot and a cool +Buy since why not. Maybe the +Buy should turn into another +? Oof, I dunno here. I think it worked okay in our games, but that’s just anecdotal.
  • Duality: Oops, heeheehee. Yeah I forgot to add a “discard the rest” for the other non-Action reveal cards. You can tell that Duality was added late because of that gaffe. Also how I mentioned that I didn’t playtest it much (or at all if I kinda don’t want to be a liar).
  • El Dorado: I mentioned this in the Really Bad Card Ideas thread, but if multiple players claim Collecting Artifacts, then the closest player to the active player in turn order has higher priority and takes it. Somehow, I failed to remember to write this in the little description box above.
  • Market Town: I think you nailed why it wasn’t being bought at in our games. People generally hate to self-inflict setbacks in their decks. Stuff like Death Cart isn’t particularly liked with my group because of the 2 Ruins it comes with (we know how the card works, yet it’s not enough of a push for us to like it). If too many people find the concept here displeasing, then I will gladly drop it from this pseudo set. Sometimes stuff works, sometimes it doesn’t. We ought to learn from those experiences.
  • Truce: Truce is busted. I tried not to dud with these cards but heck, it happened again. I think it’s definitely fixable though. I need to make sure Truce does not invalidate Events like Banquet. That’s going to be my benchmark card for the revision.
  • Watchamker: Watchmaker could be a . Donald X once said that if he can make a card cheaper, then he will. I think the same. So I might decrease the price of that card. I’m just not 100% convinced that there is a broken strategy yet to be unfolded here.

Weeew! Thanks for the comments guys! I will definitely do a revision. I dunno if I should update the OP by replacing the old versions by the new ones or if I should just post them further down this thread.
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spineflu

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Re: A Dozen of Custom-made Cards
« Reply #7 on: June 23, 2020, 08:53:37 pm »
0

Dice Games
i'd try to narrow down the range of options to like, either strictly action-y things (+cards, draw-to-x, +actions, etc) and make it non-terminal, or strictly buy-y things.
Like for the former (bearing in mind you've already got +1 Action from the card), something like the six faces being:
1: Draw until you have 5 cards in hand
2: +1 Card, +1 Action
3: Draw until you have 6 cards in hand
4: +2 Cards
5: +2 Cards, +1 Action
6: +3 Cards

or the latter:
1: +1 Buy
2: +$1
3: +1 Coffers
4: +$2
5: +$2, +1 Buy
6: +$3

to have some consistency with what the card does while still allowing for "duds"
This can help eliminate the need for the re-roll mechanic
<7> might be too expensive w these revisions tho

Custodian
You might want to add a "costing $2 or more" clause to this so you can't pin someone who did a dumb thing like trash their entire deck out of Coppers. I'm curious to see how this'd play out with one person gaining the bulk of the pile and denying the board to everyone else.

Draft
This is neat and I like it. You may want to make it conditional with its gain (like Embargo) but maybe not, maybe it's fine as-is

Handler
You get to double up on this with some ways (chameleon) but good impulse w this, looks interesting.

Statue
i like this. Might be OP in highway games. I think the way (fan) cards have gotten around this before is with "printed cost"

Tithe
I don't love the idea of being able to debt-pin people. Maybe just make this give two -$1 tokens, so people can still buy copper?

Watchmaker, Stray Cat
These look bonkers strong at $4. Or, maybe not, but they definitely look like cards i'd underestimate and then lose abysmally to.

Clock Tower
Finally, my village-scavenger deck pays off.

Debate
Again, giving other people debt can lead to some very Feels Bad moments. I get it in theory but color me unconvinced on its use case showing up.

Science Grant
Have you tried this as an inheritance variant yet? Maybe set aside (players+1) action cards each costing $5, everyone has to pick a unique one for their potions to turn into (i'm borrowing a little from how Scythe does its factory cards). Having them be peddlers isn't going to be worth it without other potion cost cards - compare/contrast with Treasure Map for odds on colliding potions.



All in all these look like fun.
« Last Edit: June 23, 2020, 10:17:53 pm by spineflu »
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segura

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Re: A Dozen of Custom-made Cards
« Reply #8 on: June 24, 2020, 01:23:26 am »
0

Duality as Action-digging Village looks quite sound.

Mobsters can be read as a Fool's Gold variant. Looks far too expensive though, unless I am underestimating the last turn Capital tricks or in general the spike potential.

Statue looks fun and like a Menagerie Victory card (cards with variable costs like Destrier and Animal Fair make this shine).

I don't like the delaying of Tithe. It can easily be forgotten as it does not do anything on the second turn and it seems like a very unnatural nerf.

Stray Cat seems like a very weak one shot (if you count the net effects: Village and Workshop gaining Stray Cat = Hunting Grounds; obviously very weak)

Watchmaker is an interesting Lab variant and easily my favourite of the bunch . Probably not as good as Caravan or Advisor but $3 would obviously too cheap. And Lab variants always get quickly bought anyway so it is my eyes actually more of an asset than a liability that this is weaker than the other $4 Labs.

Science Grant is the best stab at the DoublePotion idea I ever saw. Sadly, it only works if Alchemist, Apothecary or Scrying Pool (i.e. either of the Lab variants from Alchemy) is in the Kingdom and never ever in any other Kingdom. That is too narrow and scripted for my taste.
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LibraryAdventurer

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Re: A Dozen of Custom-made Cards
« Reply #9 on: June 24, 2020, 03:58:03 am »
+1

I like a lot of these.

I like the idea of Ballroom, but I don't like it as-is for partly the same reason I don't like King's Court: It gives a big boost to whoever is already ahead. While one person takes advantage of it, the other person may take several more turns for them to have $7 to buy it. I would cost it at 5<3> ($5 and 3 debt).

Agree with others that Custodian's attack can be too nasty. Maybe, other players can buy the set aside card but they gain a curse if they do, like a one-turn embargo?  (But then it may be slightly weak for $5 cost.)

I think Vigil's attack can be too nasty too. Often, there's a clear very strong $5 action on the board. Play this before your power $5 each turn, and it's like a Pillage that doesn't trash itself.

I think Market Town is fine. You usually wouldn't want to play more than 2 of them in a turn (unless you can set up your next turn with something like draw to X), but that's okay. It might be overpowered on boards with Cursed Village (or other ways to erase the drawback).

Plague Doctor seems weak compared to other cursers. Might need a little buff. (Also, plague doctors might have been misled in their methods, but they did try to help people. It not thematic for an attack card IMO.)

I like Statue, but what happens if Statue sets aside another Statue? Are they both worth 4VP or just one of them?

I agree with Segura about Tithe.

I happen to have my own fan card which is almost the same as Watchmaker. (and was made before Way of the Turtle) Great minds think alike.

I like the idea of Debate, but I agree with Aquila that it stinks to pass on playing a good action if you don't win the Debate. Maybe have Debate put your revealed card into your hand next turn (whether you win or not) to make up for not playing it that turn. It's (usually) optional for other players who can just reveal a copper if they don't want to get debt. I'm guessing the only effect in case of a tie is that you get +1VP, right? So, ties are not a problem. -Actually I just saw in your 2nd post that you intend for the person who bought it to win ties, but the wording doesn't say this. hmmm... On one hand, I think it might be better if there was no winner in case of a tie. Paying an extra buy for +1VP usually isn't bad, but also this should be once per turn. OTOH, trying to make all this clear on the card is probably going to make it too wordy to be worth it.

My favorites are Draft, Statue, Mobsters, and Handler.

EDIT: I like Duality, but I suggest discarding the other revealed cards before playing the chosen card (in case this reveals a lot of cards and you end up playing something like another Duality with it...).

EDIT2: I have a suggested revised wording for Debate:
"Once per turn: All players reveal a card from their hand at the same time. The player who reveals the non-victory card with the highest cost gains a copy of it and takes the card's cost in debt. If it was you, take <2> less. Otherwise, +1VP. In any case, set aside your revealed card and return it to your hand at the end of your turn (after drawing)."
Does this fit on a landscape card? I think it might...
« Last Edit: June 24, 2020, 05:30:54 am by LibraryAdventurer »
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loneXolf

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Re: A Dozen of Custom-made Cards
« Reply #10 on: June 25, 2020, 08:49:47 pm »
0

Ballroom - Decent KC variant that requires more actions.
The +1 card and +1 action makes this feel stronger but maybe I am underestimating the amount
of extra action cards needed for this.

Custodian - This in 4 player games and bad kingdoms I can see this being nightmare, if everybody buys into it.
Also what would happen if you set aside a Duration card?

Dice Games - Random is fun, I think making a die that multiple cards can refer to would be better
than making a die for just 1 card.
Also, The die faces seems kinda weak for 7 debt and the randomness.

Draft- Interesting, seems weak can probably work, but I can see this being ignored often.

Duality - On first glance this seems like a pretty strong 4 cost village and better at Wandering Minstrel at
cycling for actions. Yet it can have actions you want to play miss cycles which is huge.
Also I would had preferred this to punish you for having only 1 action instead of rewarding.

Handler - Yea, I also made a druid type card for Ways. But it would unset aside the targeted way for the turn.
I don't like the Or "+1 Card and +1 Action", since Way of the Pig.

Hops- lighthouse treasure.

Market Town- Village Grand Market! I like how the downside is a tad less in militia games and how it can
combo well with draw to X effects. Yet spamming this seems bad. I would like to see this tested.

Mobsters- I cannot tell how good this will be spammed with just a glance. But removing all debt is interesting
I wonder how strong it will be with other debt costing cards.

Plague Doctor- I typically avoid junkers that net actions, but the delay makes this something.
I don't like the +1 coin seems like fluff.

Secret Path- Looks weak. I see this as a estate variant more than a warehouse one.

Statue- Looks like a strong alt-victory. How does the ruling work with throne room?

Stray Cat- I like how it nets 1 more card than Experiment and costs 1 more. (not counting the moat body)
I don't like the proc timing, in some kingdoms stray cat will be the only card that
can proc it.

Tithe- Mean attack and great coin value for $5, But having to wait 2 turns feels rough.
The +4 on demand would look so good with a +1 Buy on it, but it already makes a slow 6 coin gap.
Unsure overall need to see it played.

Vigil- Feels too annoying to me. I feel like you have to make this 5 or more cards in hand else
it can be the most annoying discard attack in the game. Besides maybe Torturer.
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MiX

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Re: A Dozen of Custom-made Cards
« Reply #11 on: June 25, 2020, 08:57:15 pm »
+1

Seeing lonexolf's comparison of Market Town to Grand Market, it makes me want to add another: it's a frontloaded festival. And as far as festivals go, I think starting from a smaller hand is an incredibly punishing move when your villages aren't net drawing cards, which makes lining up draw with the village that much harder. You can say that it goes well with draw-to-X effects, but you usually need to get lucky with drawing them in your starting hand, and most of them are terminal anyway so you want to play a market town first. Overall, it seems like a worse festival, and not that much more interesting. Seems to be only good when you can play it every turn, where you can delay the no-draw turn indefinitely.
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Re: A Dozen of Custom-made Cards
« Reply #12 on: June 25, 2020, 10:05:19 pm »
0

Seeing lonexolf's comparison of Market Town to Grand Market, it makes me want to add another: it's a frontloaded festival. And as far as festivals go, I think starting from a smaller hand is an incredibly punishing move when your villages aren't net drawing cards, which makes lining up draw with the village that much harder. You can say that it goes well with draw-to-X effects, but you usually need to get lucky with drawing them in your starting hand, and most of them are terminal anyway so you want to play a market town first. Overall, it seems like a worse festival, and not that much more interesting. Seems to be only good when you can play it every turn, where you can delay the no-draw turn indefinitely.

Yea, I thought how Market Town would be if it worked like a -1 card token "Draw one less card the next time you draw card(s) this turn".
And that would just make any market towns played directly afterwards a Festival.
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Re: A Dozen of Custom-made Cards
« Reply #13 on: June 26, 2020, 09:20:26 am »
+1

First things first, a little wording / quality of life fix for some of the cards. No balance has been touched as of yet. Here are some small touchups:


     The “you may” part was dropped. Reworded the playing 2 cards twice part with the help of forum user mutated.
     
     Custodian now cannot set a Duration card aside (instead of non-Night cards). Otherwise, V1 Custodian allowed you to pick back up your Hireling or Champion and play it again. I don’t even know what the hell happens if a player does that, lol. But also, overall, this makes stuff easier to track.



     Duality now mentions what to do with the other revealed cards (you discard them).
     
     Reworded the text part of Hops to be easier to understand at first glance. Also thanks to mutated for the help for the wording!



     Honestly, just a typo fix here (“reveal” is now correctly spelled as “reveals”).
     
     Correctly put back the “Action” type on the bottom of the Watchmaker card.

Now, it is apparent to me that the black sheep of the bunch are Dice Games, Tithe, Debate, Science Grant and Truce. My attention will primarily go toward these and I’ll see if I can salvage some of ‘em. In the case where I can’t figure out an elegant solution to the problems of these cards, I’ll simply drop them.
But anyway, thank you guys for the additional comments. I will go over your comments/suggestions/enquiries soon enough! :)

(Also, I will edit the OP with the card revisions above.)
« Last Edit: June 26, 2020, 09:23:53 am by X-tra »
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scolapasta

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Re: A Dozen of Custom-made Cards
« Reply #14 on: June 26, 2020, 11:26:19 am »
+2

FYI, my suggestion for the posts (since you already have the top two posts).

Re-edit, so that Post 1 is always the latest version (and add the blurbs from post 2 there).

Then you can put all the v1s in post two. So that you always have the historical context there, but anyone coming in fresh sees the latest in post 1.
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Re: A Dozen of Custom-made Cards
« Reply #15 on: June 26, 2020, 12:15:58 pm »
+1

The current wording of Vigil causes the structure of time to be altered. The ability happens when you play Vigil, but at that point you don't know what the next card you're going to play is because you haven't played it yet. You should reword it to "The next time you play a card this turn, [...] discards a copy of it".

Duality seems way worse than Village. Most of the time, I'd rather draw a random card than discard the better half of my Action cards.
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Re: A Dozen of Custom-made Cards
« Reply #16 on: June 28, 2020, 06:42:53 pm »
0

Another little round of small touchups on certain cards. Quality of life stuff, etc, etc. So here we go:


     Talk about overpriced, lol. A lot of users here correctly stated that the cost was way too inflated for what Dice Games provides. Rather than trying to change the faces of the dice, I simply reduced the cost for the time being. It now costs . It might not be perfect still, but it simply is better, I believe.
     
     The bottom part was reworded just a tad. It said “this” twice before (“you may call this to trash this […]”). That was functional, but not very elegant. Drawing inspiration from Wine Merchant, I suppose that a Reserve card does not have to always be “called” to get its arse off your Tavern mat. Thank you Aquila for the suggestion!



     Although the previous version was, in my opinion, perfectly understandable in what it was trying to achieve, V3 Vigil was not perfect in the way it was worded. Now, it is worded just like Kiln from Menagerie is. The part in parenthesises was also reduced so that it works like other existing Dominion cards (Villain for instance). Thank you Awaclus for pointing this problem out!
     
     Nothing major here. I was simply still very disgruntled about the small text on Watchmaker. So I went “screw it” and removed the extra spaces above and under the dividing line and in between the +2 Cards and the text under it. This made the text bigger and so I’m happy about that.

I have edited the second post of this thread to include card descriptions in quote boxes above their respective paragraphs of explanations. Should be easier to navigate this thread now! Also, I’m editing the OP to replace the old cards with their newer versions above.

Scolapasta, I will indeed put back the oldest version in either my first or second post. But I’ll wait a little bit before. I’m mentally blanked out right now after editing everything today hahaha!
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Re: A Dozen of Custom-made Cards
« Reply #17 on: June 29, 2020, 11:18:00 am »
+1

By the way, thank you all for the comments! Taking the time to post your thoughts, ideas and what have you can take a little while, so I’m glad you guys took the effort! Here is another reply to some of you guys’ comments. I only replied to those where I had things to say about it. So sorry if I’m not replying to everything!

Spineflu :
  • Dice Games: Perhaps that a change to the dice faces is indeed a path worth exploring. However, I will try to not make too much text fit on a small dice. Hard to judge in theory how small that text would be if a hypothetical real-life dice for that card existed, but yeah. Better safe than sorry. I’m considering changing that one “+1 Buy” face into another “+”. The lone +1 Buy is massively underwhelming when compared to the cost of Dice Games. And maybe a higher chance of having a decent payload would make Dice Games more attractive?
  • Custodian: There’s definitely a scenario where one could get trapped with another player playing a Custodian every turn, always choosing to block Coppers. But uhhh one could get there too by buying Donate turn 1 and trashing their entire deck. You can’t really block everything while keeping the card not too wordy and sometimes I think it’s okay to just let that situation be. It’s so rare that it happens that a player would have to purposefully try to lose to get there. I’d argue that at this point, it’s on you, man. :P
  • Draft: This is kinda like a mini (and sucky) Workshop. Workshop makes you unconditionally gain a card and so Draft does the same thing here.
  • Statue: People can get away with stashing more expensive cards under a Statue in turns where their cost got reduced (Destrier, Highway or Bridge turns, Wayfarer, etc.). I think it’s a valid strategy and I encourage people to exploit it! It requires some kind of deck dexterity to get there anyway and you deserve the reward for your hard work. :)
  • Science Grant: Maybe Science Grant could make you gain 2 Potions once you buy this Project. When you do, you’d then have 4 Potions/Peddlers in your deck. But maybe this is not the way to make Science Grant more appealing, I dunno.

LibraryAdventurer:
  • Vigil: Bumping the requirements for discarding at 5 cards or more in hand, I’d be a-okay with that. I haven’t had games where 2 Vigils successfully made an opponent discard in 1 turn, so maybe this is a rare enough scenario that makes it okay to leave it as is. You want your first Vigil to discard something that your opponents have in their deck. Sometimes, that’s a terminal Action (Smithy for instance). So playing the Smithy after your first Vigil could make them discard theirs. But then, your Action phase would be over and you won’t get to play your 2nd Vigil. Thus, you’d need a Village to get 2 Vigils to work in a situation like this. And that’s not counting for the Vigil misses. It is quite an investment for not that big of a reward on your turns ( worth of disappearing money, lol), so buying a lot of Vigils seens questionable at best.
  • Plague Doctor: About the flavour of that card, I considered it this way: A plague hits the continent (represented by Curses). After people realize what’s going on (at the start of your next turn), you send Plague Doctors to try to eradicate the plague (the +1 Action being the work your Doctors do and the + being the money the population pays for their service). So all in all, they’re the nice guys in this Attack. :)
  • Statue: If a Statues statues a Statue, then only the first Statue gets the . The other Statue didn’t set aside anything. It sounds confusing I know, lol.

loneXolf:
  • Duality: Sort of like having it worded such as: “The player to your left chooses one. Discard that one and play the other”? Having them discard the chosen Action card first. I dig that actually. Makes it so you have to buy Duality as your 3rd Action in your deck before it does something. It’s a matter of taste at this point, but I don’t dislike this at all!
  • Handler: Oh, sorry about the similar idea there! I swear I tried to genuinely come up with all of these ideas.
  • Statue: I didn’t think about the Throne Room variant scenario. Well first of all, as per official Dominion rules, we know that the Throne Room will permanently stay out with the statue. I guess Statue could set aside up to 2 Action cards and have reap the of both of them at the end of the game.
  • Vigil: I talked about the concern you’ve raised with Vigil in my comment for LibraryAdventurer.
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Re: A Dozen of Custom-made Cards
« Reply #18 on: June 29, 2020, 12:22:42 pm »
0

Spineflu :
Dice Games: Perhaps that a change to the dice faces is indeed a path worth exploring. However, I will try to not make too much text fit on a small dice. Hard to judge in theory how small that text would be if a hypothetical real-life dice for that card existed, but yeah. Better safe than sorry. I’m considering changing that one “+1 Buy” face into another “+”. The lone +1 Buy is massively underwhelming when compared to the cost of Dice Games. And maybe a higher chance of having a decent payload would make Dice Games more attractive?

Kinda, but like Aquila said, a consistency of domain would be better; if it's "in the vein of Laboratory" or "probably-a-woodcutter" that's easier to build around than a card that could be any market bonus.
Also i wouldn't try to cram the text on there; do icons instead. Or have a jumbo sized (foam?) novelty die that could have text roughly the size of card text on it.
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Re: A Dozen of Custom-made Cards
« Reply #19 on: June 29, 2020, 05:10:16 pm »
0



loneXolf:
  • Duality: Sort of like having it worded such as: “The player to your left chooses one. Discard that one and play the other”? Having them discard the chosen Action card first. I dig that actually. Makes it so you have to buy Duality as your 3rd Action in your deck before it does something. It’s a matter of taste at this point, but I don’t dislike this at all!
  • Handler: Oh, sorry about the similar idea there! I swear I tried to genuinely come up with all of these ideas.
  • Statue: I didn’t think about the Throne Room variant scenario. Well first of all, as per official Dominion rules, we know that the Throne Room will permanently stay out with the statue. I guess Statue could set aside up to 2 Action cards and have reap the of both of them at the end of the game.
  • Vigil: I talked about the concern you’ve raised with Vigil in my comment for LibraryAdventurer.
Duality: Yep, I don't really know how strong Duality is now, and that change is a nerf for sure.
Handler: No worries. I was just stating how my version is like for a comparison.
Statue: Yea, that's what I thought would happen.
Vigil: Yea i'm not sure how bad they would really be, but 4 player Vigil games seems like a nightmare.
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Re: A Dozen of Custom-made Cards
« Reply #20 on: August 19, 2020, 01:03:00 am »
+1

I just took another look at these since I generally like the cards you enter in the weekly contest thread (and might use some of them at home), so here's a little more feedback.

Looking at it again, I realized Mobsters is almost strictly worse than Fool's Gold unless it's combined with other debt-using cards. When you have 1 of them it's worth $4 and 3 debt, so basically $1. When you have more than 1, all but 1 of them are worth $4, and the other 1 is basically worth nothing (as it just removes the debt from the others). $4 and 3 debt can be better than $1, but it's still way too weak for its cost.

I still especially like Handler, but I think since it has a choice of 3 Ways and a plain cantrip, it should probably cost $3 (also, I think you should exclude Way of the Pig since that would be redundant). Compare to Steward which has a choice of three effects which would each be slightly weak for $2 on their own.
(Granted, Steward is mainly strong for its trashing, but Handler can have Way of the Mouse with Chapel or Encampment. And, as Aquila pointed out, some combinations of Ways are a lot stronger together than they are on their own.)

While I'm here, I was going to make a suggestion about Wager from the contest thread, but the more I think about it, the more I think it's fine as-is except it should probably cost $4 since it's strictly better than Village.
« Last Edit: August 19, 2020, 01:04:08 am by LibraryAdventurer »
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Re: A Dozen of Custom-made Cards
« Reply #21 on: August 19, 2020, 09:22:47 am »
+1

Thank you for the kind comment, LibraryAdventurer. I wanted to update this thread a little while ago, since I did some more playtesting since then. But I uh, I got lazy, lol. Why fix what’s old when one can always generate more untested crazy cards, hahaha! I kid’, I kid’, but the part about me wanting to revisit and correct some of these cards is true.

I ended up making a set of 30 cards as a weird Frankenstein (‘s monster) consisting of some of these cards here, some of the cards I have submitted in the weekly contest thread and some other ones I have shown in the variant subcategory of the Dominion Discord server for feedback. I’d love to post them here, but this thread will get messier. I’ll just say that, in the set I’ve made, some of the cards here have been dropped. All landscape cards have been dropped for starters, because they were the weakest, in my opinion, in the bunch. Plus, I did not have enough of them to justify adding them to the set. It looked like they were just sort of tossed in and it really looked amateur-ish. Not that my set isn’t! But uhhh, I try D: . Also, Watchmaker has been dropped. While cool in theory, in practice, there hasn’t been any of my playtesting games where our group has been interested in buying one (unless held at gunpoint and forced to gain one so that the damn thing could be tested). So goodbye, Mr.Watchmaker. Maybe I’ll revisit you one day!

I like your suggestions. Mobsters could use some tweaking. Though, so far, people have been happy to buy ‘em in our games. They did well in their deck too, I think. But, that is not ultimate proof that they’re perfect as is. I’m always happy to move stuff around and see what sticks. As for Handler, I think I’m quite content with this little guy costing . It definitely felt like it was worth its price in a lot of our games. Sometimes, there’s the occasional game where the set aside Ways makes Handler feel stronger. But I’m okay with that. ‘Cuz during these games, it’s up to the player to find that out and exploit it. As for Way of the Pig, I thought of this before, but I’m cool with that too. Handler will be weaker this one game and again, it’s alright that it happens. He can’t win ‘em all. :D

Finally, Wager should probably be a , yeah. I commented on that here.
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Re: A Dozen of Custom-made Cards
« Reply #22 on: August 28, 2020, 01:37:56 pm »
0

Honestly, I gave this more thoughts and I might just make another thread presenting the 30-cards set I mentioned in my previous post. Reason for that is, I'd like to print the little guys and play with them with my gaming group IRL. But printing can be expensive. And so, I'll only print if I feel like they truly are ready. But my POV on these cards could be different than what the community here can see. Some cards I have yet to present on this forum might not be perfect and you guys' expertise can only swing me in the right direction, which is good!

Ideally, I'd simply post the set here, but loading this many pictures (plus with the ones in the OP) is a little bit messy. Plus, there's a lot of text on this page and that can be a little discouraging when trying to navigate in it. So a fresh new thread is probably better! I might do this later today, I dunno. And sorry about this post which, as I type this, seems pretty useless after all. Eh, consider it just a little explication, 'cuz I like being thorough with stuff I do. :)
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Re: A Dozen of Custom-made Cards
« Reply #23 on: August 28, 2020, 01:53:24 pm »
0

And sorry about this post which, as I type this, seems pretty useless after all.

Why do you say that? Isn't the subject of this board "Fan cards"? So, we should be encouraged to present, discuss and improve our own cards and those of others.
I don't know what other people think, but presenting so many cards all at once is overwhelming. I also like to present some more (if there is enough interest and feedback), but only in small fractions.
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Re: A Dozen of Custom-made Cards
« Reply #24 on: August 28, 2020, 01:59:32 pm »
0

Yeah, showing 30 cards all at once, like, BAM, in your face, that's a little overwhelming. I agree with that. But I have no idea how I can better present the set though.  :-\
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