Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[X-tra]

Hello everyone !

This thread is sort of a continuation of this thread. Here, I’d like to present you a set of 30 cards I’ve crafted over early 2019 ‘til now. Why am I doing this? Well, it’s because after all this time, I’d like to have this set printed for it to be ready for IRL plays. However, printing is not cheap. So I’d like to make sure the cards truly are ready before I commit the cards for printing. I thought maybe you guys could help me spot the design mishaps in this set.

The name of the set is Urbanisation. It was named that way because that was the theme that emerged from the 30 Kingdom cards in this set. A lot of cards represent city stuff. A good chunk of them are also people doing various jobs. Therefore, Urbanisation, as a name, came to be. This set introduces no new mechanics, but rather, it borrows existing ones. Urbanisation also does not have any landscape cards (albeit, it does contain out-of-Supply cards and some new components, such as a mat). This set is a hybrid of cards I have posted in the Weekly Card Design Contest thread, cards I have posted in this thread and cards I have shown and have been given feedback for in the Dominion Discord server. So some of the entries here might not be new for some of you guys.

Posting 30 cards right away like this will undeniably be overwhelming for the readers. Therefore, I will post them slowly over time, following this model:

• 3 cards will be posted every 3 days, usually around 8PM EST (I might not be too punctual though, don’t expect much from this scatterbrain ).
• If possible, of the 3 cards posted, they will be split as such:
  
  • One will be a card posted in the Weekly Card Design Contest thread.
  • One will be a card posted in my other thread.
  • One will be a card posted in the Discord server.
• Links on each card post will be put to navigate this thread with more ease.
• 3 cards every 3 days for a set of 30 cards means the whole set will be posted in around a month.
• In the end, after all cards are posted, I'll make a short analysis of potential cohesion problems of the whole project. I'll also note what Urbanisation does a lot of and what it doesn't do a lot of.

Any feedback is appreciated. Sometimes, an extra pair of eyes can shed light onto problems my own brain just refused to notice over time, if y’know what I mean . So let’s end this increasingly big wall of text and let’s just straight into the first of 10 card posts:

Card set #1

          

True to its name, Urbanisation presents lots of folks with lots of different backgrounds. Here, we are offering you 3 people performing 3 different jobs for your kingdom. Choose your people wisely, m'Lord!

• Appraiser (Discord card): Meet Appraiser, a card you’ll probably open with. It’s a decent trasher and people like that. And a non-terminal one too, uh-oh! This card was entered in this set relatively late, because there wasn’t enough trashing in Urbanisation. So what can it do for you? Well:
  
  • Early game, it trashes your crap for a payload of . An opening of double Appraiser is not out of the question.
  • It’s a Silver trasher that turns Appraiser into a Laboratory.
  • Late game, it kills your expensive Action cards (or Treasures) you no longer desperately need for a clutch of 2.
  On its own, Appraiser looks neat. In the set, though, it’s somewhat problematic, because out of all the cards I will present in this thread, this is the only one that dispatches tokens. It’s not very cohesive with the rest of Urbanisation.
  
  
• Informer (Weekly Contest thread): Informer is a card I’ve reshaped constantly, even within the Weekly Card Design Contest thread. I really wanted to give a Command card a crack. With the current version of Informer, I’m pleased. You have 5 cards Informer can hit. And if it doesn’t hit, well it’s a terminal Silver. And hey, your left neighbour’s going to have a crappy turn anyway, you know that now! So, the pill is easier to swallow. I’ve had a nasty game where my opponent kept playing my Prizes (mostly Followers) through their Informer and that annoyed me, but in a good way! So Informer is extra potent when there are unique cards only one player can have. It’s also good if you’ve been junked more than your competition.
  
  
• Vigil (my other thread): And finally, we have the good ol’ Vigil. It has changed quite a bit in the other thread (mostly its wording though). The version I am presenting here is also different. Opponents must have 5 or more cards in hand to discard to Vigil. It used to be 4+ cards. Discarding your 2 best cards is unfun though. One Pillage effect is enough. Vigil is a disappearing money Attack that only gives you . It’s not great... but if you open with one and go to your buy phase to play a Copper, it’s a weaker Cutpurse. Anyway, you’ll have to do some setup here. 2 Vigils can be good: Use the first one to scout your opponent’s hand and play the second one to make them discard something nasty. Again, some serious setup is required for it to be truly annoying. It probably scales better in games with more players.
  
  

Next set of 3 cards → | List of all cards →

[D782802859]

Vigil might be a tad strong, it's pretty close to a targeted discard.

[gambit05]

Appraiser: I like it as it is.
 
Informer: I have a similar card , though it is not fully thought out yet. But may be it helps for the discussion:

Blind Man’s Buff
$5 Action – Command

Each other player reveals their hand.
Choose one: Gain a copy of a revealed Treasure
onto your deck; or play a revealed non-Duration,
non-Command Action card costing up to $5,
leaving it there.

Obviously, there are some fundamental differences. My idea was that, when there is too much junk in the deck, it's not worth to buy Blind Man's Buff, and copying a Treasure is for the situations when either the player wants big money, or as consolation, when no valuable Action cards are revealed. I have used a higher cost and a limit of targets to avoid too much craziness. In Action heavy decks, a valuable target costing $5 should be regularly found.

Vigil: This can be quite brutal, for example when a second Vigil is played immediately and the opponents have to discard theirs; or early in the game, when the only Silver or Gold has to be discarded.

[segura]

They all look pretty sound (and the art is nice).

Appraiser is my favourite here, simple TfB yet strategically rich.

Informer is similar to 4est's Falconer which has a weaker first option but a better/smoother second option.

I'd prefer Vigil to be terminal. Sure, there is a trend towards more non-terminal Attacks in the last expansions (especially Nocturne), non-terminal Copper is not that great of a vanilla bonus and of course the non-terminality makes it easier to set up a good Action for discard (we know from Kiln how hard that is, you gotta play Village-Village-Kiln-terminal if you wanna copy a terminal). But the Attack is potentially harsh and I would think twice about making this non-terminal instead of giving this some terminal vanilla, like e.g. +2 Cards.

[X-tra]

Thank you for the comments, guys. It seems like there’s one problem everyone unanimously agrees upon, and that’s the power level of Vigil. This is odd because to me, I don’t see it being as strong as you guys pointed out. I feel like you need to put extra effort into Vigil if you want to make it work – and all of that not to help your own deck, but to hinder your opponents’ turns. The guessing game of what you could play next for the other players to discard seems like an unsafe investment for you to go down that road. Pillage is a one-shot, yes, but at least, you know it’ll work any time you use it (well, you still do hope your opponents have good hands when you decide to trash your Pillage).

That being said, I am not against the idea of turning Vigil’s vanilla bonus into a “+2 Cards”.

• One, this’ll give you more cards to choose from for the discarding Attack.
• Two, it’s not as spammable as it being non-terminal.
• Three, as a whole, and as you’ll see in the next couple of weeks, Urbanisation has a big weakness and that is: its lack of drawing cards. Turning Vigil into a + Cards would help fill that gap a little more.

By the way, I edited Appraiser to reorganise the choice below in “ascending” order. I also added “Action card” (as opposed to simply “card”) in Informer.

[Jack Rudd]

The specific problem with nonterminality for Vigil is that it allows for easy plays of Vigil - Village, which can just totally destroy an opponent's subsequent turn.

[gambit05]

The specific problem with nonterminality for Vigil is that it allows for easy plays of Vigil - Village, which can just totally destroy an opponent's subsequent turn.

Whatever the version of Vigil is, one could give the other players a choice for the attacking part, a la Torturer, e.g.

The next time you play a card this turn,
each other player either discards a copy of it
or gains a Curse, their choice.

[X-tra]

Here is what a terminal Vigil would look like, keeping its cost the same:



This seems more reasonable to me. However, trying to make your opponent discard some good stuff is way harder now, to the point where it might not be worth killing your tempo pursuing that strategy. As is, it's probably a Treasure discarding Attack, which is easier to deal with.

[Fragasnap]

The name of the set is Urbanisation. It was named that way because that was the theme that emerged from the 30 Kingdom cards in this set. A lot of cards represent city stuff. A good chunk of them are also people doing various jobs. Therefore, Urbanisation, as a name, came to be. This set introduces no new mechanics, but rather, it borrows existing ones.

A set does not necessarily require any new mechanisms, but I believe it should have a mechanical theme at least to lend games using its cards a stronger flavor.  Hinterlands' "on-gain" effects were not necessarily new, but between it and the sub-theme of sifting and big-decks, Hinterlands has a strong flavor its own.
Do you have a functional flavor in mind?  One is not immediately apparent here.
Appraiser: Smaller decks; Card costs; VP tokens.
Informer: Player interaction; Choices
Vigil: Card names

[Appraiser]’s a Silver trasher that turns Appraiser into a Laboratory.

The key $3-cost Appraiser target is Appraiser.  Identically to Spice Merchant, trashing Silver is just sifting that eliminates the Silver when you don't want the stop-card and don't need the economy (non-terminally losing 2 cards to draw 2 cards).  Double Appraiser on the other hand gives you additional trashing early and then they eat each other for free.  I think Appraiser would be more exciting if it gave you stacking bonuses for trashing more expensive cards. 

Code: [Select]

+$1
Trash a card from your hand. If it cost at least...
$2: +3 Actions.
$3: +3 Cards.
$4: +3 Buys.
$5: +$3.

You have 5 cards Informer can hit. And if it doesn’t hit, well it’s a terminal Silver.

I'm always leery of Command cards the use other player's Actions for any possible circumstance that avoiding Actions becomes ideal.  In this case, if you've itemized for Informers too early, I can move towards a money strategy that will make all your Informers terminal Silvers.  I think the key is to make missing stronger than hitting, so rather than Informer giving some consolation prize for another player's Money strategy, the player's Action strategy should throttle Informer.

Code: [Select]

The player to your left reveals their hand. If they reveal any non-Duration, non-Command Actions, play one of them, leaving it in their hand. Otherwise, play a non-Duration, non-Command Action from the Supply, leaving it there.

It probably scales better in games with more players.

I like the terminal $4-cost version better.  The Attack is political in nature in multiplayer as I might play a Vigil, knowing that the player to my left has a Silver with the other 4 cards due to the player to my right's Vigil that missed.  You could reduce such instances by using a persistent effect (which is a notable buff to the Attack as you can initially fish for better Treasures) which would make it virtually never miss.

Code: [Select]

+2 Cards
This turn, when you play a card, each other player with at least 5 cards in hand discards a copy of it (or reveals they can't).I'm not sure it needs such a buff in 2-player, though.

[X-tra]

Thank you for your comment, Fragasnap!

A set does not necessarily require any new mechanisms, but I believe it should have a mechanical theme at least to lend games using its cards a stronger flavor.

Agree’d. It makes the whole thing feels like it sticks together more. In my first post, I said I was going to make some kind of “eulogy” once all 30 cards are posted. In this eulogy, I’ll point out what mechanical themes emerge from Urbanisation. It’s nothin’ too fancy, but it’s there. Like Hinterlands, like you pointed out, with it’s “on gain / on buy” cards, or like Dark Ages with its trashing subtheme. It’ll all make sense in the end . At least you guys know about the flavour theming of this set, so there’s that already.

Appraiser: The idea you’ve suggested is cool. But while adding more mechanics to a card makes it more strategically rich, it takes away from the simple and elegant design of the card. Cards with a minuscule font because of how much text there is on it, for instance, are a pain to teach and to read. They also look unappealing to the eye, imo (looking at you, Pirate Ship and friends). I think it is a very important piece of card design, but it seems to often be overlooked. Also, the idea was to have cards dance around Appraiser’s cost, which I think is a fun idea in itself. I’ll keep the idea you’ve posted in mind, though. Seems like it could be tied to another card and be fun to play with.

Informer: I think even if you pursue a money strategy if your opponents gets Informers, they would still be worth it. Oftentimes, Actions are better than money and they tend to win the game. If you shut yourself from them, fearing the Informers, then you’re hurting yourself even more than pulling a “gottem” on those who took Informers. If all you need is one Informer in your deck to scare your left neighbour, then so be it. You scared them into killing their deck. Witch on the board? I’ll get an Informer! This way, my opponent will never get a Witch themselves, out of fear my Informer hits it, hehehehe!

Vigil: I’ve come to appreciate terminal Vigil more and more over time. I think it’s definitely going to stay as a +2 Cards. Yes, it might be a little political, but so is Taxman and a bunch of other cards. I think these cards are like, “soft political” cards, where you do not straight up point to a specific player, but where you can play with your cards to hurt someone more than the others. I think these sorts of cards are accepted within the game.


In other news, I will post the second batch of cards in about 30 minutes.

[X-tra]

Card set #2

          

Your emerging cities must be productive for them to be successful! Here are some engine components. You'll probably want to allocate a part of our budget to erect a few masterful laboratories, a few trading towns in the nearby desert and- hey, are these two birds fighting!?

• Arid Village (Discord card): I can already feel the heavy breathing (of disapproval) from the crowd with this one. Okay, so before we jump onto what it does, let’s take a moment to inspect the theme. So, Snowy Village gives you a couple of Actions, but exhaust any further ones this turn. It’s too cold! So, as a parallel to that, Arid Village provides you with a nice head start for your turn, but kills any further card draws. Now, it’s too hot! Dangit kids, stop playing with the thermostat!
  
  I’ve seen that concept attempted before, so this was me giving it a shot as well. Here, we have a Lost City that comes with an extra Buy as well? Sign me the heck up! But any further +Cards this turn are weakened. Is the tradeoff worth it? Some people have pointed out that some cards, such as Cellar, say “draw” instead of giving you +Cards and Arid Village cannot work because of those. I say this is fine. These cards are not common enough for it to be a major problem. And hey, if they are present, it’s up to you to work that combo out!
  
  
• Duality (my other thread): This one’s a Village that does not look like a Village at first glance. But it is. It’s a Village where the +1 Card is going to be an Action card. But! That’ll only work if you already have 2 other Action cards in your deck! If you only have 1 other, then your left neighbour will be more than happy to discard it, leaving you short handed. Forum user loneXolf helped me in the other thread to get the functioning of this card right, so shoutout to them!
  
  All in all, you can sort of see Duality as some kind of mini Golem, where your best of your 2 revealed Action cards get nullified by the player to your left, hence why the Potion cost is absent here.
  
  
• Grand Laboratory (Weekly Contest thread): The big one. The grander, shinier Laboratory. A Laboratory+ is often seen as a no-go when it comes to card design. I do believe that Grand Laboratory can work regardless, but it’s up to you guys to help me decide that . Some might think that it self-synergises a little too easy. But... so be it, I think? The turns you spend grabbing more Grand Laboratories with your Grand Laboratories is a turn where you have not drawn with Grand Laboratory (cue to Xzibit “yo dawg” meme here). Anyway, I quite like this Workshop/Laboratory chimera. It’s like when you see Grand Market on the board: suddenly you become all excited like a kid on Christmas! It’s shiny, it’s big, we want it all.
  
  

← Previous set of 3 cards | Next set of 3 cards →

[mail-mi]

I don't have a comment on the cards, but your "next 3 cards" and "previous 3 cards" links are genius.

[Jonatan Djurachkovitch]

Would Arid Village eat the draw you get from Flag? The clean-up phase is technically the same turn as the turn you played Arid Village. Other than that it will really eat up your draw, and I don't know if its worth it. If you play two drawing actions afterward it is basically a necropolis. Maybe you should consider upping it to +3 cards, to lower the power level variance, considering the combo with Library and other draw-to-x cards, but maybe that's too strong. AV makes you think twice before you buy it, and promotes a different way of building your deck.

[D782802859]

Arid Village: This is a great idea, but it would probably be a good idea to test it to make sure the numbers are right. Snowy Village worked out, so why not this?
Duality: Seems good, although perhaps not the best buy with ruins.
Grand Laboratory: This is a bit too strong of a strategy on it's own, this with just a couple villages gets you a ton of Labs very fast, and it can drain piles.

[MiX]

Does Arid Village's drawback stack with itself?

[X-tra]

Thank you for the inputs! Here are a couple of thoughts:

I don't have a comment on the cards, but your "next 3 cards" and "previous 3 cards" links are genius.

Thanks! Although, I wish the links simply refreshed the page at the appropriated place instead of opening a new tab each time...

Would Arid Village eat the draw you get from Flag? The clean-up phase is technically the same turn as the turn you played Arid Village. Other than that it will really eat up your draw, and I don't know if its worth it. If you play two drawing actions afterward it is basically a necropolis. Maybe you should consider upping it to +3 cards, to lower the power level variance, considering the combo with Library and other draw-to-x cards, but maybe that's too strong. AV makes you think twice before you buy it, and promotes a different way of building your deck.

Yes, Arid Village would kill your Flag draw. These 2 cards do not really synergise well together, hahaha! And you are very much correct: Arid Village and draw-to-X cards are a natural fit.

Does Arid Village's drawback stack with itself?

It does. With 2 Arid Villages in play, a Moat would draw nothing. This is why it says “to a minimum of 0”, so that 2 Arid Villages in play doesn’t yield you -1 Card when you play a Cantrip thereafter.

[LibraryAdventurer]

I think Arid Village would be better if its drawback didn't stack. Maybe put "If this is the first Arid Village you played this turn..."
You want to be able to play a few villages in the same turn, but if Arid Village is the only village, that's not going to work very well.
I guess if you stopped the drawback from stacking, you'd probably want to remove the +buy to keep it from being strictly better than Worker's Village.

Alternatively, you could have its drawback only apply to other Arid Villages. "When you play another Arid Village, draw one less card (to a minimum of 0)."

As it is, I think its drawback is too much of a drawback.

[silverspawn]

I completely disagree. I think Arid Village seems quite strong as is and its drawback should definitely stack.

In particular, I think it's a good thing if a village gets a lot worse as you play more of them. We have the situation "just buy as many villages as you need" on plenty of board, it would be neat to have more of "getting +Actions will become progressively more expensive".

I think Arid Village is pretty cool. I don't like how cards like Catacombs just ignore the effect, but there's not really anything you can do about that, and it's not enough to ruin it.

[segura]

Pretty sure that it is too weak. Snowy only hurts non-terminals, i.e. you can play your Smithies afterwards. Arid on the other hand hurts all drawers, i.e. your villages and your Smithies.

[X-tra]

Arid Village is probably a card you want to play later in your turn if possible. You can always dump your Villages and Smithies before playing your first Arid Village, if your hand allows you to do so.

An Arid Village followed by an Arid Village isn't that bad of a deal on its own. The second Arid Village is straight up a Worker's Village, and for the same cost. So you'd go: Cheaper Lost City with an extra Buy → Worker's Village. There's been worse in Dominion.

The cards that are even more sucky with an Arid Village in play are the ones that give +Cards at 2 different instances while resolving their effect, like playing an Ironmonger and revealing a Victory card. That Ironmonger would draw absolutely nothing. Cards with +Cards bundled together at a given moment are hit less badly, like playing a Shepherd and discarding 2 Victory cards. You'd draw 3 cards from that (+4 Cards, -1 Card = +3 Cards). That's the ruling with Arid Village anyway.

[X-tra]

Card set #3

          

In the first batch of cards, we showed you a couple of specialists for you to hire. Now, said specialists are whining that they "need a place to live". Bah! Foolish complaints... although we should probably pretend to care. Here are 3 choices of urban planning, my Liege. Pick whichever will make them shut up the quickest.

• House (Weekly Contest thread): A simple little card. All cute with its almost inconsequential effects. A couple of Houses won’t hurt your deck though, but it won’t help it much either. It’s a Necropolis that yields . Bah. But it could yield instead if you have a couple of cards in play. It’s an almost Conspirator-like behaviour. The subtlety is that these cards don’t have to have been played the turn you play your Houses. So Duration cards from a previous turn count toward House’s extra bonus.
  
  You’ll see over the next couple of days/weeks that this is not the only card costing in Urbanisation. In fact, there are more than a few cards that share this cost...
  
  
• Suburb (Discord card): Our first Victory card of the set! And not the last one, my friends! Suburb is a card that needs a copy of itself for it to work. It’s a Distant Land situation where you could fail to get any out of it if you’re careless enough.
  
  How does Suburb bode against a Duchy? Well. Let’s take 2 Duchies VS 2 Suburbs for instance. The 2 Duchies give you 6 and you had to use over 2 Buys to get there. Meanwhile, 2 Suburbs give you 5 and you spent and 2 Buys to achieve that. It is easier to gain 2 Suburbs though. With an extra Buy, you can finish a pair for . It is significantly harder to do so with 2 Duchies... and at , might as well get a Province, y’know!
  
  So yeah. Suburb. It looks like a cool deal at first glance, but remember: That’s 2 extra dead cards in your deck if you want to invest in Suburbs! Distant Land rewards you with less , but at least, it’ll get thrown off your deck at some point... the same cannot be said about Suburb!
  
  
• Market Town (my other thread): This card is like, a full package in one card. It’s a cheaper Grand Market that gives you an extra Action AND that does not have an on-Buy restriction. The drawback, however, is harsh. And it stacks. Drawing one less card for your next turn can be punitive enough. Unlike discarding Attacks, you don’t even get to decide which of your weakest cards in hands to discard. And hey, if you keep playing more and more Market Towns, you’ll be happy then, but a very sad panda on your next, barely playable hand.
  
  I have in the past compared this to Tactician. Like, you have a big plentiful turn at the expense of scrapping another one. However, forum user Aquila pointed that, unlike Tactician, the anticipation here is not that great. With Tactician, you are looking forward for your next hand. It’s exciting! With Market Town, you are building disappointment for your next hand. This is not a positive inducing behaviour, and maybe Market Town should work differently because of that.
  
  

← Previous set of 3 cards | Next set of 3 cards →

[/b][/size][/center]

[gambit05]

I like House and Suburb. Not sure about Market Town. In certain Kingdoms (hand-size attacks, card drawers at start of turn) it is probably quite good. In other situations, I probably wouldn't invest too much in Market Towns.
 
About Suburb: Couldn't the wording be simpler? For example: 2 Suburbs you have are worth 5 VP together (round down).

[faust]

I feel that House is too good compared to Conclave. The two cards are on a very similar power level and should cost the same. I can see an argument for $3, since House is weaker in the opening, but $2 seems too cheap.

[Fragasnap]

But while adding more mechanics to a card makes it more strategically rich, it takes away from the simple and elegant design of the card.

Comparing two variables on Appraiser is much more complex than comparing against a fixed list.  The sample I posted gave +3 of any given benefit because it's easier to remember.
Part of the suggestion was also to strip the clumsy VP tokens from it that are certainly making it less elegant.  Whatever you want if you're attached to having one card that uses VP tokens in an incredibly niche way.  Sacrifice and Bishop cover much of the "+VP for trashing" concept and in a more compelling way, the former adding other tempo-trashing options and the latter focusing strictly on the VP-tokens.

This way, my opponent will never get a Witch themselves, out of fear my Informer hits it, hehehehe!

Yes, obviously I won't be stupid and not buy any Actions when Actions are good.  The point isn't that I buy only money, it's that I play a more money-centric strategy:  BM+Gear is pretty fast, but other things could be faster.  A player taking Informers will make their deck weaker against BM+X strategies because failed Informers are really bad, so if you are buying Informers I'll lean more into good money strategies if they are available.  Additionally, because it targets the player to your left, multiplayer games get strongly political as Informers also counter Informers.
Informer won't always be beaten by any given BM+X, but any chance of pushing the game in that direction is too much as far as I'm concerned.

[Duality]’s a Village that does not look like a Village at first glance. But it is. It’s a Village where the +1 Card is going to be an Action card.

It seems both time consuming and complicated if you're worried about beginner players parsing card text, let alone that it has a +Card and +Action hidden in that paragraph.  It would be much easier to understand if it put the card into your hand and gave you the +2 Actions directly.
I imagine it is strong, but even if I am wrong I would not want to play a game with a large number of Dualities being gained.  Similarly time consuming cards like Advisor and Hunting Party are not cards you are gaining in multiple just because you need them to play additional Actions.

Pretty sure that [Arid Village] is too weak. Snowy only hurts non-terminals, i.e. you can play your Smithies afterwards. Arid on the other hand hurts all drawers, i.e. your villages and your Smithies.

I think fundamentally you just can't play Arid Village in a drawing-engine, which makes it quite unique.  Certainly among my favorites here since it requires you build your deck so differently when it is relevant.

About Suburb: Couldn't the wording be simpler? For example: 2 Suburbs you have are worth 5 VP together (round down).

A snappier wording might run into issues.  If I have 5 Suburbs and each Suburb tells me I get 5VP for 2 Suburbs together, do I get 10VP per Suburb for 50VP (because the Suburbs are each giving me 5VP/2 Suburbs)?  The longer wording is more specific and thus preferred.
This comes down to the matter of semantic complexity versus word complexity.  More words do not make a concept more complicated.
I like Suburb.

[House]’s an almost Conspirator-like behaviour.

I think we have a fair number of cards really incentivize laying down strings of cantrips, let alone that cantrips are often better than stop-cards generally.  I might like House better if its benefit were flipped and it instead gave a stronger bonus for having fewer cards in play.  It is likely roughly on-par with Squire (Squire's primary advantage being its +Buy option), so I would guess it balanced enough as is.

[X-tra]

Thanks everyone for your input once again!

Comparing two variables on Appraiser is much more complex than comparing against a fixed list.  The sample I posted gave +3 of any given benefit because it's easier to remember.
Part of the suggestion was also to strip the clumsy VP tokens from it that are certainly making it less elegant.  Whatever you want if you're attached to having one card that uses VP tokens in an incredibly niche way.  Sacrifice and Bishop cover much of the "+VP for trashing" concept and in a more compelling way, the former adding other tempo-trashing options and the latter focusing strictly on the VP-tokens.

Yeah. The tokens are a bit out-of-nowhere compared with the rest of Urbanisation. But I like how the card function. I think it would have been better to keep Appraiser for another set where it fits more with the rest of the cards. However, like I said, I think its trashing ability is welcomed in this set, since there aren’t that many cards that do so to begin with.

I wouldn’t say that Bishop and Sacrifice are more compelling in their trashing for abilities. They just do it differently. Appraiser is the only strictly non-terminal card of the 3 and that’s different enough for it to have the right to exist.

Yes, obviously I won't be stupid and not buy any Actions when Actions are good.  The point isn't that I buy only money, it's that I play a more money-centric strategy:  BM+Gear is pretty fast, but other things could be faster.  A player taking Informers will make their deck weaker against BM+X strategies because failed Informers are really bad, so if you are buying Informers I'll lean more into good money strategies if they are available.  Additionally, because it targets the player to your left, multiplayer games get strongly political as Informers also counter Informers.
Informer won't always be beaten by any given BM+X, but any chance of pushing the game in that direction is too much as far as I'm concerned.

You just highlighted what I love so much about Informer! A deliberate shift in strategies! But not a mandatory one. Its mere presence on the board makes you reconsider if a money-centric strategy could actually work in this Kingdom and that’s pretty neat. Other cards, like Pirate Ship or Wall, push you toward different strategies without forcing you to do so and that ain’t bad at all. Like, why invest in a money strategy at all if there is Pirate Ship on the board? And yet, Pirate Ship is an official card. I’m not debating the strength level of Pirate Ship here, mind you, I’m just saying that it has a right to exist. I think Informer is in the same boat (no pun intended).

It seems both time consuming and complicated if you're worried about beginner players parsing card text, let alone that it has a +Card and +Action hidden in that paragraph.  It would be much easier to understand if it put the card into your hand and gave you the +2 Actions directly.
I imagine it is strong, but even if I am wrong I would not want to play a game with a large number of Dualities being gained.  Similarly time consuming cards like Advisor and Hunting Party are not cards you are gaining in multiple just because you need them to play additional Actions.

Yes, there is a bit of tempo loss with Duality, I agree. Flipping through cards is time consuming. Other cards are insufferable in how long they take as well, like Golem and Scrying Pool. But these 2 examples are locked behind Potion costs, so the pill’s a little easier to swallow. I’ll say though that Duality is, in this set, one of the cards that has the most text on it, and still it wasn’t enough to shrink the font. So I think that at the very least, it's not that big of a head scratcher in trying to understand how it works.

I feel that House is too good compared to Conclave. The two cards are on a very similar power level and should cost the same. I can see an argument for $3, since House is weaker in the opening, but $2 seems too cheap.

I think we have a fair number of cards really incentivize laying down strings of cantrips, let alone that cantrips are often better than stop-cards generally.  I might like House better if its benefit were flipped and it instead gave a stronger bonus for having fewer cards in play.  It is likely roughly on-par with Squire (Squire's primary advantage being its +Buy option), so I would guess it balanced enough as is.

The Conclave comparison had me worried, because I never saw the card like that before and doing the comparison now left me with the sensation that House was indeed underpriced. However, I think the comparison with Squire is fairer. House is a Squire that has no other option than the +2 Actions. So it’s weaker. But it can yield one more than Squire, so that part’s stronger. All in all, I think it rebalances itself. So the price of seems justified, yeah.

[mxdata]

Appraiser would make a nice combo with Rats.  Rats turn your trash into other Rats, and then Appraiser turns those Rats into 2 VP each

[X-tra]

Card set #4

          

We now have people working and living in your empire. However, they need mobility to get things done. Horses, Sir, horses. Let us utilize the raw strength of our animal brethren. Here are some ways to achieve that…

• Handler (my other thread): Like I said in my other thread, the clear inspiration with Handler is Druid. It works just like Druid, except that you have a choice of 3 Ways to do stuff instead of 3 Boons. Oh or I guess you could cantrip it if you’re not interested to play one of the set aside Ways that turn. So, in a way (harr harr), Handler could end up being something like: “Choose one: +2 Actions; or +2 Cards; or +; or +1 Card and +1 Action”. Not a bad deal for . There are certain games where Handler is more potent than others, but the same can be said about Druid. For instance, if Way of the Pig is one of the set aside Ways, then Handler looses 1/3 of its decision power. Not too good. But if Way of the Goat is one of the set aside Ways and is the only trasher on the board, then Handler becomes a lot more attractive.
  
  
• Stallions (Weekly Contest thread): All these beautiful horses! Here, we have something akin to the Castle pile: A Kingdom consisting of all different cards, ordered by their cost. Here, though, it’s (mostly) all Action cards. So Stallions, I suspect, will be bought quicker than Castles. Each Stallion dispatches Horses, with the exception of the guy on the bottom, Arabian Horse (and I guess Paint Horse gives Horses to your opponents rather than yourself).
  
  Shetland Pony is a strong opener for the Stallion pile. It temps you to uncover the trasher, Clydesdale, which is also attractive. Clydesdale then opens the way for Appaloosa, which exploits the stuff Clydesdale will trash. After this nice little chain reaction of these Stallions paving the way for the next one, we arrive to the engine cards, Paint Horse and Gypsy Vanner. Paint Horse is strong for its cost (a Lab+), but gives your opponents Horses, not unlike Bargain. Gypsy Vanner, meanwhile, helps you not returning your Horses to their pile while still doing what they would’ve done in the first place.
  
  As you dig deeper in the Stallion pile, you’ll start uncovering the bottom Victory cards. It all ends on Arabian Horse, who rewards you for keeping Horses in your deck. It isn’t too hard to score 9 to 12 with it, especially if you got your hand on the powerful Mustang or Friesian. Everyone should have a shot at getting an Arabian Horse without being denied theirs, hence why Arabian Horses only work if you have exactly one copy of it in your deck. You could technically buy a second one and trash it afterwards (with Clydesdale, for instance). That’s big brain enough for me to accept this as a valid strategy. It is dang expensive and time consuming to do so after all!
  
  
• Courser (Discord card): Our second Attack shown thus far. And our first Curser! Not the last one, though... Anyway. Courser did not use to give a Horse when played. But then, people rightfully told me how weak this was. So now, Courser looks like this.
  
  So, Courser introduces a weird twist on Curses. A mean one, should I add. Trashers won’t be enough to remove Curses out of the game’s circulation. Courser will re-add them back in the Supply and the wheel won’t stop turning. You can even do crazy stuff like this: On an empty Curse pile, play a Junk Dealer, trash your Curse, return said Curse to the Supply with a Courser and then give it to your opponent. That Curse basically travelled from your hand onto the other player’s discard pile! Courser can be a little political in 4-players or more game, since one or more player(s) won’t be affected by the return of the 2 Curses into the Supply. I’m okay with that, though. Let’s remember that Ambassador is a thing, y’know.
  
  

← Previous set of 3 cards | Next set of 3 cards →

[D782802859]

Handler has a lot of duds. Butterfly, Chameleon, Frog, Camel, Worm, Rat, and Turtle are all useless or mostly useless.
The Stallions are a bit overly pushed, to the point that they're probably dominating.
Courser is probably reasonable.

[LibraryAdventurer]

Handler has a lot of duds. Butterfly, Chameleon, Frog, Camel, Worm, Rat, and Turtle are all useless or mostly useless.

How are those duds?

If the set aside Ways are Chameleon, Sheep, and Squirrel, you can play it as Way of the Chameleon and then as one of the other two. So it essentially turns your three choices into four: Sheep, Squirrel, Chameleon'ed Sheep, and Chameleon'ed Squirrel.

The only ones I see as being duds are Butterfly (because buying a $2-cost to exchange it for a $3-cost is usually a silly idea) and Pig (because Handler already has the +1 Card, +1 Action option).

Ways like Worm and Camel would only rarely be used, but each one is only one of three options. Rat could be good if the other two set aside Ways are good.

(I like Handler and in the other thread, I argued that it could easily cost $3.)

About the other two cards:
The Stallions look fine, but not especially interesting. Appaloosa is weird. Why would it give you more Horses for gaining a silver from the trash rather than a copper?
With Courser, I really don't like the idea of returning curses from the trash to the supply. It's nice to have a period of the game where the curse pile is empty and cursing attacks are dead.

[D782802859]

Handler has a lot of duds. Butterfly, Chameleon, Frog, Camel, Worm, Rat, and Turtle are all useless or mostly useless.

How are those duds?

If the set aside Ways are Chameleon, Sheep, and Squirrel, you can play it as Way of the Chameleon and then as one of the other two. So it essentially turns your three choices into four: Sheep, Squirrel, Chameleon'ed Sheep, and Chameleon'ed Squirrel.

The only ones I see as being duds are Butterfly (because buying a $2-cost to exchange it for a $3-cost is usually a silly idea) and Pig (because Handler already has the +1 Card, +1 Action option).

Ways like Worm and Camel would only rarely be used, but each one is only one of three options. Rat could be good if the other two set aside Ways are good.

(I like Handler and in the other thread, I argued that it could easily cost $3.)

About the other two cards:
The Stallions look fine, but not especially interesting. Appaloosa is weird. Why would it give you more Horses for gaining a silver from the trash rather than a copper?
With Courser, I really don't like the idea of returning curses from the trash to the supply. It's nice to have a period of the game where the curse pile is empty and cursing attacks are dead.

Chameleon wouldn't cause the Way used by Handler to be affected.

[LibraryAdventurer]

Handler has a lot of duds. Butterfly, Chameleon, Frog, Camel, Worm, Rat, and Turtle are all useless or mostly useless.

How are those duds?

If the set aside Ways are Chameleon, Sheep, and Squirrel, you can play it as Way of the Chameleon and then as one of the other two. So it essentially turns your three choices into four: Sheep, Squirrel, Chameleon'ed Sheep, and Chameleon'ed Squirrel.

Chameleon wouldn't cause the Way used by Handler to be affected.

Are you sure? Why not?

[GendoIkari]

Handler has a lot of duds. Butterfly, Chameleon, Frog, Camel, Worm, Rat, and Turtle are all useless or mostly useless.

How are those duds?

If the set aside Ways are Chameleon, Sheep, and Squirrel, you can play it as Way of the Chameleon and then as one of the other two. So it essentially turns your three choices into four: Sheep, Squirrel, Chameleon'ed Sheep, and Chameleon'ed Squirrel.

Chameleon wouldn't cause the Way used by Handler to be affected.

Are you sure? Why not?

I had written up a whole post going into detail about why you couldn't use multiple of the set-aside ways at once last night, when I realized why Chameleon was different and you were right in the first place, so I just didn't post it. I'm guessing D782802859 has the same mix-up I did.

Because the set-aside ways aren't actually in the game in the same way that a normal way would be, you can't just use one of them any time you play an action. But with Chameleon, you are told to follow Handler's instructions, which involves choosing a set-aside way (again).

I would say Handler with Chameleon is actually far too messy to be really usable. If you choose Chameleon, and then choose Chameleon again, I guess that would just switch your and cards back to how they were originally? Nothing stops you from choosing Chameleon forever... although I guess that the Menagerie rulebook also failed to stop you from choosing Mouse forever, and it was only a special ruling by Donald that said you can't do that.

*Edit* Now I re-read D782802859's comment and think that there's more to this... he wasn't mixed up int he same way I was. Chameleon only affects "each time that would give you..." The "that" in that sentence is "following this card's instructions". When you use a way, you aren't "following this card's instructions" anymore. As seen by this long discussion. However, this depends on the specific intent behind how Handler's wording works... because it's using a wording that is different from normal ways. It says to "play this as" one of the set-aside ways. That's like old Band of Misfits wording, which would actually cause you to re-play the card.

I assumed however that the intent of Handler was to treat the set-aside ways just like a normal way in the game, meaning you can choose to follow their instructions instead of Handler's instructions. The whole "play this as a way" is weird and not quite sure what it means. A possible wording that makes it clearer and also removes the weird potential Chameleon interaction (making it weak with Chameleon):

Handler
Action -

+1 Card
+1 Action
--------------------------------------------------------
Setup: Set aside 3 Ways face up. These Ways are available to be used this game when you play Handler.

I'm guessing that this was the intended behavior of Handler.

[X-tra]

Interesting discussion about Handler. I had definitely foreseen the infinite “Way of the Chameleon play”, but had ruled in my head that this case would be tackled in the rulebook (if one existed) or something.

Didn’t see the impossibility of replaying another Way with the effects of Way of the Chameleon applied, though. To me, Handler morphs into one of the set aside Way, it’s not just “playing it as”, like it would with a normal Way. GendoIkari is right, Handler interacts with its set aside Ways differently. I would love for Chameleon to be able to work as imagined. Playing a Handler as Way of the Chameleon, replaying him as Way of the Sheep for +2 Cards, for instance. Again, I believe that a little mention of that scenario in the rulebook isn’t too far fetched and would be, dare I say, acceptable? It’s debatable if this special case deviates from the normal rules too much. It looks tolerable to me, I guess.

[LastFootnote]

I am not a fan of Courser. I think junking games without trashing are already brutal enough. Having a card that makes that effectively happen more often doesn't sound like any fun. I get that it's sort of novel, but not in a way I would enjoy.

Lots of these other cards seem cool though.

[segura]

Courser could be phrased as something like „each other player gains a Curse; if the Curse Supply is empty, they gain a Curse from the trash instead“ to make it scale better across the number of players. As the card is weakfish vanilla-wise, it can most likely get away with refilling Curses.

I don’t think that Handler necessarily needs the cantrip option.

[mutated]

Handler
Action -

+1 Card
+1 Action
--------------------------------------------------------
Setup: Set aside 3 Ways face up. These Ways are available to be used this game when you play Handler.

Another possible wording: "On turns when you play Handler, you may use these Ways." This is actually a buff (means you can use Ways on non-Handlers on the same turn) but reads more clearly to me.

I think that manipulating below-the-line text to allow Handler to use the Ways without expressly stating "you may play this as a Way" above-the-line is the right thing to do, regardless of exact wording.

[GendoIkari]

Handler
Action -

+1 Card
+1 Action
--------------------------------------------------------
Setup: Set aside 3 Ways face up. These Ways are available to be used this game when you play Handler.

Another possible wording: "On turns when you play Handler, you may use these Ways." This is actually a buff (means you can use Ways on non-Handlers on the same turn) but reads more clearly to me.

I think that manipulating below-the-line text to allow Handler to use the Ways without expressly stating "you may play this as a Way" above-the-line is the right thing to do, regardless of exact wording.

The problem with that wording is that "on turns when you play Handler" isn't clear; it sounds like if you were going to play Handler at any time during the turn, then it should work for that whole turn. I assume what you really mean is that it works from the time you play Handler until the end of turn. It could basically be something like this:

Handler
Action -

+1 Card
+1 Action
--------------------------------------------------------
While this is in play, the set-aside Ways are in the game.
--------------------------------------------------------
Setup: Set aside 3 Ways face up.

When you play it the very first time, it's already in play before you are following any instructions, so you could choose to use one of the Ways immediately instead of the +1 Card +1 Action.

[X-tra]

I am not a fan of Courser. I think junking games without trashing are already brutal enough. Having a card that makes that effectively happen more often doesn't sound like any fun. I get that it's sort of novel, but not in a way I would enjoy.

Wouldn’t these sort of games be acceptable considering that Courser is just the one card keeping Curses alive longer amongst a metric ton of other cards? Wouldn’t these games be unique because of Courser’s presence? And even then, there would need to be a trasher in these games for Courser to do its full thing. Mountebank is perhaps my most disliked card since it leads to overly long and annoying games, but he rarely pops into my games, so when he does, I’m alright.

I think that manipulating below-the-line text to allow Handler to use the Ways without expressly stating "you may play this as a Way" above-the-line is the right thing to do, regardless of exact wording.

Handler has the “play the Ways” clause above the dividing line to mirror the way Druid is worded. A lot of people have questioned why Handler has a cantrip option in the first place and I’m finding myself more and more agreeing with them. I may attempt a non-cantrip one.


By the way, forum user Something_Smart pointed out to me in Discord that 2 of the Horses were missing a “from your hand” clause, so here’s the fixed versions:

     

[mutated]

Handler
Action -

+1 Card
+1 Action
--------------------------------------------------------
Setup: Set aside 3 Ways face up. These Ways are available to be used this game when you play Handler.

Another possible wording: "On turns when you play Handler, you may use these Ways." This is actually a buff (means you can use Ways on non-Handlers on the same turn) but reads more clearly to me.

I think that manipulating below-the-line text to allow Handler to use the Ways without expressly stating "you may play this as a Way" above-the-line is the right thing to do, regardless of exact wording.

The problem with that wording is that "on turns when you play Handler" isn't clear; it sounds like if you were going to play Handler at any time during the turn, then it should work for that whole turn. I assume what you really mean is that it works from the time you play Handler until the end of turn. It could basically be something like this:

Handler
Action -

+1 Card
+1 Action
--------------------------------------------------------
While this is in play, the set-aside Ways are in the game.
--------------------------------------------------------
Setup: Set aside 3 Ways face up.

When you play it the very first time, it's already in play before you are following any instructions, so you could choose to use one of the Ways immediately instead of the +1 Card +1 Action.

TWO below-the-line effects? The madness!

(Makes sense to me. I do think "on turns when you play Handler" is clear enough for Dominion-ese, but hey.)

I think that manipulating below-the-line text to allow Handler to use the Ways without expressly stating "you may play this as a Way" above-the-line is the right thing to do, regardless of exact wording.

Handler has the “play the Ways” clause above the dividing line to mirror the way Druid is worded. A lot of people have questioned why Handler has a cantrip option in the first place and I’m finding myself more and more agreeing with them. I may attempt a non-cantrip one.

The verbiage for "taking" and "receiving" a Boon is well-defined; the verbiage for "playing this as a Way" is only a shorthand (that the online client uses) as far as I know, and is not well-defined. That's why the original wording feels strange to me.

[X-tra]

Card set #5

          

Urbanisation has its fair share of junking and provides ways to deal with that. What if a nasty plague hits your newly built cities? What to do with those lazy aristocrats sucking the productivity of your lands in their rich Estates? Some solutions: Lend your Estates for a healthy profit and relocate your sick people to your crappy-nobody-cares-about towns!

• Junk Village (Discord card): “It’s strong”, a little voice tells me. “Way too strong”, she continues. Then she realises that Junk Village does not draw. And that’s kind of a big shortcoming. In our play testing games, it was neat to Village and trash at once, but as the game progressed, we were getting more and more disgruntled to have a weaker Shanty Town in our hands. I guess this is why this village is so junky to begin with. Oh and, the +Buy is thematic, I guess (trash some crap to reshape it into some kind of weird scummy economy), but it’s mostly, in reality, a consolidation prize to boost it above a simple Necropolis.
  
  
• Lease (Weekly Contest thread): It’s Moneylender, but for Estates! Will you be able to connect your Lease with your starting Estates in your first reshuffle? I dunno, ask Baron. He tries to do that stuff all the time. Except, I guess, that Baron does something if he fails, but w/e. Moneylender doesn’t and neither does Lease. So, I guess it’s a weird cross between Moneylender and Baron, in a way.
  
  All in all, Baron has the possibility of giving you your sweet continuously. Lease trashes your crap and frees your deck though. It’s a choice to make, I guess.
  
  
• Plague Doctor (my other thread): No no, it’s not the Doctor that’s being mean here! A plague hits the lands (the Curse part) and next turn, your Plague Doctors are prepared, ready and sent to try to cure it (the Duration part). They look scary, but they want to do good.
  
  So, the card. 3rd Attack of the set. That’s already more than Renaissance. It’s also the second Curser shown thus far. And it’s a non-terminal one, spicy! Okay, you gotta wait next turn, but it’s not impossible to dance around a couple of Plague Doctors to always start with 2 Actions or more. In the end, Plague Doctor really is just a Fishing Village that instead Curses on the turn you play it. That’s enough of a change, in my opinion, to buff the price up to .
  
  

← Previous set of 3 cards | Next set of 3 cards →

[segura]

I never got Coven, it is simply Cultist-level broken in too many Kingdoms (ironically Cultist is likely broken because it is semi-non-terminal).
Nocturne could get away with so many non-terminal Attack cards because Hexes are weak and random. But non-terminal Cursers are in my opinion not something you should do except for good reasons.

Plague Doctor is weak-ish vanilla-wise but you can easily imagine Kingdoms where you prefer it over Witch because terminal space is so scarce. And it feels weird and artifical to buff it via making it non-terminal and then nerf it via making it a Duration.

[mutated]

I like the simplicity of each of these cards.

I wonder if Lease should be cheaper, or have a secondary effect that isn't dependent on trashing Estates. Moneylender, in the absence of other trashing, will continue to do something for many shuffles. The probability of Lease doing something after trashing even one Estate goes down significantly.

Lease could be more similar to Baron, granting you the option to gain Estates and/or providing +Buy. It could be cheaper: perhaps a 3-cost Lease that allows you to also grab a 4-cost in the opener. (Optionally it could grant less +$ in this case.)

[X-tra]

Hrmm yeah. I guess Lease is done way quicker than Moneylender is. My first draft was to have it give a Vanilla + and grant an extra upon trashing an Estate. Splitting the bonus into a more consistent payload, basically. That way, once its done trashing stuff, it turns into a sad Flag Bearer. Another possibility would be to have it give you an Estate on-gain, but I'm unsure about that. I just want it to not be too close to Baron, this is why I'm avoiding the +Buy here. And, as you'll see over the next days, there are a lot of +Buy cards in Urbanisation (one of the thematic approach actually)!

As for Plague Doctor, I'm okay with the non-terminiality of it. Sometimes, it's a cool way to shift games toward Attack chaining without Dominion completely breaking. Certain cards may be centralising in certain games, and I'm not too afraid to let Plague Doctor be one of them if it comes to that. There was non-terminal Vigil before too, but you already convinced me to give it +2 Cards instead.

[segura]

I think that Lease is fine. It runs out earlier than Moneylender respectively misses more often, but it also provides 2 more Coins.

[X-tra]

Card set #6

          

Buying is fine, Sir, but what if we could accelerate that process? Here's some ideas to acquire new cool stuff without even spending a penny! Our economic advisors will be more than pleased!

• Draft (my other thread): The card of the set, because why not? When you play a Draft, you will have an extra buy, so you can always use that one to grab a new Draft. The cycle can continue like that until the Draft pile get emptied. Its mere null cost with its +Buy means that the Draft pile could be short lived if a lot of players invest into it. Its mere presence can threaten a 3-pile ending.
  
  Other than that, it gains a card, reinforcing the 3-pile thingy if you keep getting cards from a cantrip pile. It’s not a very good gainer, but hey, it’s free and it recycles itself!
  
  
• Hoarder (Weekly Contest thread): Sleep tight people, that’s our first Night card of the set! And… it’s another Attack. We’re up to what, 4 now? And… it’s another non-terminal Attack, joining the rank of Plague Doctor! Vigil would’ve been up there too, but he has changed since the inception of this thread. Here, the Attack is nooooot too mean, mostly to account for the fact that multiple Hoarders could be spammed in one turn (like Vampire can be). I mean, if the first Hoarder hits you and you must gain a Copper to your hand, then you can simply discard that same Copper if another Hoarder hits you. So Hoarder only Attacks 1 time out of 2 at best. And being junked by Coppers is always a tiny notch better than being junked with, oh I dunno, Curses? Hi Plague Doctor and Courser!
  
  Then there’s the gain part. The part where you actually get something out of Hoarder. Not unlike the rest of the cards shown in this set, he gains stuff for you and he does it à la Courtier. He cares about card variety in play. And Hoarder, coincidently, always count for 2 of those card types (Night and Attack). Play an Action, put some Treasures in play to buy something and then finish it up with a Hoarder and most of the time, he’ll gain you something costing . Add something neat like a Duration (Plague Doctor) or a Stallion (Shetland Pony) and suddenly, you’re gaining cards with Hoarder. And it can go higher than that! It’s even possible to straight up grab a Province with Hoarder, though you’ll have to work hard for it and it won’t be true in most games he appears in.
  
  
• Overwork (Discord card): Ladies and gentlemen, a card cost increaser. The impossible thing to do since Livery (and frowned upon even before that because of the weird interaction with cost decreasing cards). Here, though, it’s limited to your hand. Goodbye game-breaking Horse/Livery shenanigan! Overwork’s pretty neat in the sense that as your hand increases in value, you’ll be able to transform some of your stuff into disproportionally higher costing cards. A Copper overworked into a Duchy, for instance, is totally doable here. Overwork, with a little help from other cards, can thus surpass Expand in all of its remodeling glory. I’m sure there’s other card interactions hidden here, but I don’t know too much about that still. If some of you can find a way that Overwork can break, please let me know!
  
  

← Previous set of 3 cards | Next set of 3 cards →

⚠ From the next set of cards onward, 2 cards will be from my other thread and the other one will be a Weekly Design Contest card. I have run out of Discord card to show. ⚠

[D782802859]

Draft might be a bit crazy at draining piles, especially since you can gain extra copies of it by using the extra buy.
Hoarder is reasonable, albeit on the weak end. You can usually get it to 4 types, so it's mostly a Workshop.
Overwork is pretty strong, functionally being a Remodel with +2 Cards that improves.

[LibraryAdventurer]

Draft is fine. I like the idea of Overwork, but I think it's too strong. The second one you play in a turn is like an Expand with +2 Cards.
Hoarder needs to be limited to gaining non-victory cards or else it gains provinces way too easily in games with any cards that have several types (or else trash itself like HoP when gaining victory cards).

[LastFootnote]

I am not a fan of Courser. I think junking games without trashing are already brutal enough. Having a card that makes that effectively happen more often doesn't sound like any fun. I get that it's sort of novel, but not in a way I would enjoy.

Wouldn’t these sort of games be acceptable considering that Courser is just the one card keeping Curses alive longer amongst a metric ton of other cards? Wouldn’t these games be unique because of Courser’s presence? And even then, there would need to be a trasher in these games for Courser to do its full thing. Mountebank is perhaps my most disliked card since it leads to overly long and annoying games, but he rarely pops into my games, so when he does, I’m alright.

You could use that logic to defend any terrible, no-fun card as long as it was unique. Yeah Courser is academically interesting and it's one card out of 500 or whatever, but that doesn't mean it's worth making if games with it are mostly bad. And to be clear I'm not defending Mountebank, though personally I tend to like Mountebank games fine these days.

[NoMoreFun]

Courser would be more interesting if it only gave Curses from the trash, and it trashed curses by some other method. You still get the interaction but it's limited.

Something like:

Courser
Action/Attack - $4
+$2
Trash a card from your hand.
If there aren't more other players than Curses in the trash, each other player gains a Curse from the trash.
-
When you gain this, you may exchange any number of Victory Cards from your hand for Curses

[faust]

I assume you mean for Hoarder to be an attack? The current phrasing has "may" before everything the opponents do and thus suggests that they could just opt to do nothing. Suggested wording:

"Each other player may discard a Copper from their hand. If they didn't, they gain a Copper to their hand."

It takes a bunch of work to get Hoarder up to being able to gain Provinces even on boards where it is possible, so I don't necessarily think it is overpowered; there are other Province-gaining combos after all. Something that could be a problem though is that it's best with the two mixed piles - Castles and Knights - and those can easily lead to situations where one player is able to play Hoarder for Provinces and the others aren't because the only Action-Victory cards got sniped.

An idea would be to change the Copper attack to a Looter, that adds more types into the game immediately and makes the attack more interesting because the opponents might benefit from gaining Ruins.

[X-tra]

You could use that logic to defend any terrible, no-fun card as long as it was unique. Yeah Courser is academically interesting and it's one card out of 500 or whatever, but that doesn't mean it's worth making if games with it are mostly bad. And to be clear I'm not defending Mountebank, though personally I tend to like Mountebank games fine these days.

With Courser, I must admit that I wanted urm, some kind of “feels bad, man” card into this set. Not unlike Mountebank that I previously mentioned. I want players to be like “Okay, so Curses are truly going to be an issue here. So think, my dude, think! Should I trash them at the risk of being re-Cursed, or hold onto the 5 Curses I’ve been given and roll with a less optimised deck anyway?”. These kinds of mental preparations are pretty unique to Courser games and that’s the sort of intriguing meta I was aiming for.

Uh. In Dominion, there are also cards like Wall and Bandit Fort, which, to me, makes games dreadful and not very fun. But! I accept their presence and hey, the game doesn’t completely break when they’re there. Likewise, I don’t think Courser breaks Dominion. It does make you go “aww shite” indeed, but it ain’t, in my opinion, so offensive that it has no right to exist.

It takes a bunch of work to get Hoarder up to being able to gain Provinces even on boards where it is possible, so I don't necessarily think it is overpowered; there are other Province-gaining combos after all. Something that could be a problem though is that it's best with the two mixed piles - Castles and Knights - and those can easily lead to situations where one player is able to play Hoarder for Provinces and the others aren't because the only Action-Victory cards got sniped.

I thought of these piles being problematic, but came at peace with them when I pondered on how they would play with Hoarders.

The Castle-pile, first of all, is ordered in a specific way; which means you know what to expect, you know what you’ll be revealing for your opponent(s). You can plan to try not to reveal Small Castle and Opulent Castle – you’re in control of that. Um. For Humble Castle, though, I suppose it’s 1st player advantage to grab it. But it ain’t a very good opening, at least. In games with more than 2 players, this problem becomes even less apparent, because there is an extra copy of these 3-typed Castles anyway.

As for the Knights, only Dame Josephine gives you 4 types in one. The Victory tag is the extra type you want for Hoarder. But! It’s risky, because Dame Josephine can be trashed by another Knight anyway. So the investment is pretty unsafe and can be broken. Therefore, I don’t believe it’s too unfair if you managed to snipe her. Besides, she’s pretty bad as a Knight.

[X-tra]

Card set #7

          

It's now been a couple of weeks since you've ascended to the throne, m'Lord. I think we should treat ourselves and purchase some really expensive goodies! After all, our gainers shown last week did wonders for our economy. Though, remember to check our savings first, that might just make us rich enough!

• Mobsters (my other thread): Joining Hoarder is the second Night card of Urbanisation: the do-no-good Mobsters! And hey, look, a Treasure card too, hi! Huh? “Night – Treasure”? Yes. “Night – Treasure”. A weird dual type, an inexistent one in fact, but hey, I really wanted to give it a shot!
  
  At day, they lend you a nice sum, at night they help you repay what you owe by means I’d rather not say. And of course, the mob is a friend with non-benefits: they’ll tax you should you ever need their help. There are holier paths to an end in life, my friend!
  
  Mobsters, in my other thread, used to be, let’s be honest, crappier. They used to yield if played as Treasures. So with 3 Mobsters, you could use 2 of them to gain a Province and spare the 3rd one in your Night phase to repay your . Except, 3 Golds do the same job, generate more and are cheaper to acquire. Oops. Mobsters also used to cost . Now, it’s the other way around: . I believe Mobsters should be more viable in this form.
  
  
• Savings (Weekly Contest thread): 2 Treasures shown in one set. Holla holla get dolla. This card has remained unchanged since it won the contest for which it was submitted, harr harr harr. Simple enough, it’s a Treasure that subtracts or add a Buy to your buying power. Of course, when you add a Buy, the card is subpar: it’s basically a non-terminal Woodcutter. No, you want the -1 Buy option. The + this option comes with makes it a Treasure for , a sweet deal indeed. You’ll need to take that Buy back somehow, though. Easiest case: Add another Savings to your deck. Better case: Market’s in the Kingdom. Dancing around Savings is pretty fun; and I believe it works!
  
  
• Ballroom (my other thread): The Big Pharma of Urbanisation. The King of Kings. The… alright. Well, it’s the most expensive card of the set, if I didn’t make it obvious enough. It’s also the only card costing (Mobsters also costs , but it’s a cost split with Debt, so w/e). Ballroom, it Throne Rooms 2 of your cards. That’s a cool deal! 4 Action plays through the usage of one card, that’s more than what King’s Court can do! True, but it’s also harder to connect. That’s why the itsy bitsy +1 Card exists on Ballroom. Hopefully, the clutch is good enough to find the other Action card you were looking for. Because remember: If you play only one card twice through Ballroom, well, it’s as if you overpaid way too much for a Throne Room.
  
  

← Previous set of 3 cards | Next set of 3 cards →

[gambit05]

I like all of them; cool cards. Especially interesting looks Mobsters. I am sure you are aware of this, but just want to mention it anyway: Mobsters has a quite strong interaction with other Debt-cost cards; the most extreme case being Mountain Pass. If the first bidder has a Mobsters in hand, they can immediately bid 40 Debt.

[segura]

I think Ballroom would be more compact if it were simply a Throned Throne Room, i.e.:
Do this twice: You may play an Action card from your hand twice.

Thus you can draw into new Actions and the card would look less weird without the +1 Card. The effect on the power level is ambiguous, on average probably a slight nerf (my version is only stronger if the first card you Throne is a net drawer).

[segura]

About Savings, I think it needs a different wording like „spend a Buy for“. Otherwise you could would get the extra 2 Coins even if you were already down to 0 Buys.

[X-tra]

Sorry about the late arrival of the new set of cards (set #8). I was out of town for the past couple of days and couldn’t update this thread. I will post the new set around 8 PM (EST) tonight as usual.

Anyway, about the last bunch of cards:

The reason why Ballroom is worded as such is because I want to force the player to already have their two other Action cards at the moment they play Ballroom. I don’t want them to hijack their deck by drawing into their second Action card. This way, I want to encourage Ballroom users to plan into having a higher deck control than they otherwise would.

As for Savings, since -1 Buy is an in-existent concept in Dominion, I’d apply new rulings for it. In this case, your total number of Buys can go under 0. But if you have a negative amount of Buy, it’s as if you had 0 Buys, in the sense that you cannot buy a card with a sub-zero amount. For instance, if you play two Savings for their -1 Buy option and then play a 3rd one for its +1 Buy option, in the end, you have 0 Buys (1 – 1 – 1 + 1 = 0).

[X-tra]

Card set #8

          

We have workers, we have houses, we have riches. Let's make your glorious reign a successful one! Urbanisation provides you with a handful of Victory cards. Will your successors grow up to be powerful monarchs surrounded by their beloved green cards?

• Successor (Weekly Contest thread): He’s just a poor boy from a poor family. Actually, not really. He’s well on his way to inherit beautiful lands his family have gathered over multiple ages. Soon to be a Landowner himself, he’ll have little kids of his own who will then have their turn to get their hands on all that sweet sweet land. Thus the cycle continues. Meanwhile, our original little Successor is now a rich Aristocrat, which in turn becomes a region-known Magnate. In the very end, he becomes the almighty Monarch and suddenly, all of your collected greens stop being burdens in your deck. Forever.
  
  This Traveller line is a tough one. We all dread how Treasure Hunter from the page line dilutes our decks with unwanted Silvers. Now here, imagine how you’ll feel as your Successors and Estates multiply in your deck. Because for each Successor you take, the Landowner he turns into makes sure another one gets tossed into your deck. Ouch. It certainly becomes a commitment. Once you go Successor, you are definitely aiming for a particular “deck is trash until…” strategy. It’s a valid one, and maybe there are other cards in the Supply that can help you handle it.
  
  Aristocrat turns the Estates your Successors gave you into Duchies. He returns them to the Supply instead of trashing them, because then, the Successor line would encourage pile outs too much. Then, the Magnate profits off these newly acquire Duchies and happily discards them for a nice sum. Sum on top of the drawing vanilla bonus, should I add! The last guy, Monarch, cantrips all of your Victory cards, except for Province. This is a fail safe so that you don’t do weird stuff with Provinces in play with, say, Changeling or something.
  
  All in all, Secret Path and Statue shown here will benefit from the Monarch. And even Suburbs shown in the second batch of cards welcomes your new Monarch overlord in your deck!
  
  
• Secret Path (my other thread): An orange and green card shown in my other thread. It has remained unchanged, for I believe that, while a little ordinary and borderline boring, it is balanced as is. It’s a point card that filters your next hand. It has come handy in almost every game I’ve played with it, even though it does completely nothing the turn you play that little guy. Amongst other thing, it is a good feeder for Hoarder, a Night card shown two card sets ago. A single Secret Path ups your Hoarder at a gain of , and playing a Treasure that turn boosts that number up to . I just thought that little combo was nifty.
  
  
• Statue (my other thread): Another Victory card that has remained unchanged since my last thread. I was damned confident about Statue back then, even going as far as labelling it “one of the cards I’m the proudest of”. And it looks like a cool alternate way to make too! But upon closer inspection, after a couple of test games, this may be on the weak side. I’ve toyed around the idea of making Statue non-terminal, but darn, it’s hard to judge. Maybe I’m just not seeing the epic endgame combo Statue can pull off. But if any of you do, please do tell!
  
  Still, if it needs any touch-ups at all, I’d like to keep the design as close as it is now as possible. I love the idea of sliding away a Victory card and an Action card for , especially the more expensive and juicer ones!
  
  

← Previous set of 3 cards | Next set of 3 cards →

[D782802859]

Successor's line is pretty interesting. I'm not sure Monarch is strong enough.
I think Secret Path could probably be non-terminal on the turn you play it.
Statue seem fine, it's slower than Dutchy but gives a bigger payoff.

[silverspawn]

I think I've already said in the WDC thread that I think the traveler line is too weak. I'd make Magnate +1$ per $ it costs (simpler and better power level) and Monarch a village or Lost City rather than Cantrip for green cards.

If this line were to exist, it seems like you would just stackpile terminals, and the payoff is that the line clogs a bit less but you still got lots of terminals

Statue is interesting. I don't think the limitation should exist.

[Fly-Eagles-Fly]

I really like Secret Path, but I agree it could be non-terminal, and I definitely think Monarch is a bit weak.

[dpm]

What happens if you Throne Room a Statue? 

What does Monarch do to Nobles or Mill? 

[Jonatan Djurachkovitch]

What happens when you have both Monarch and Inheritance? I also think that the wording on Statue is ambiguous when throned or played by itself. What about, "trash an action card from your hand costing up to $5. +1 VP per $ it cost. Trash this."

[Jonatan Djurachkovitch]

I also think that you should have Monarch make your Victory cards Peddlers, if you have to buff it.

[X-tra]

Monarch: Seems like a lot of you agree that Monarch is too weak as an end-of-line Traveler guy. This is odd to me because I feel like his powers of making it so that you have absolutely no dead cards in your deck (okay, save for Curses or Ruins) is pretty desirable. Especially since he gets fed by Successor and Landowner. Like, the effects are probably going to be immediate, save for some heavy trashing. If I were to change it, in my opinion, it’d be to make it so Victory cards under would turn into straight up Villages (“+1 Card, +2 Actions”) instead of being simple cantrips. It could help you play more than one Traveler guy at once, especially since you’ll have multiple of them because of the Landowner gaining a Successor, which turns into another Landowner giving another Successor, etc.

As for what happens for an inherited Estate under the Monarch’s influence: It simply gains the combined effects of the inherited card AND gains the “+1 Card, +1 Action” vanilla bonus on top of it. An inherited Smithy would thus turn an Estate into a “+4 Cards, +1 Action” card. The same goes for Action Victory cards, the cantrip effect is added on top of what it normally does. Nobles thus becomes “+1 Card, +1 Action. Choose one: +2 Actions; or +3 Cards”.

Secret Path: Wouldn’t a non-terminal Secret Path be too good in comparison to, well, Estate? For more, it’d non-terminally sift your next starting hand. I feel like it’s already worth its cost as is, but yeah, I could be wrong too.

Statue: Here’s a new version with better wording. It now completely mimics the wording used on Prince, so there should not be any confusion anymore:



It fixes the Throne Room question too. The Throne Room stays out with Statue like it would with Prince, except that it doesn’t do anything else beside that because of the new “If you do” wording (it is only set aside once and then fails to be set aside again because of the stop moving rule).

[silverspawn]

Monarch: Seems like a lot of you agree that Monarch is too weak as an end-of-line Traveler guy. This is odd to me because I feel like his powers of making it so that you have absolutely no dead cards in your deck (okay, save for Curses or Ruins) is pretty desirable. Especially since he gets fed by Successor and Landowner. Like, the effects are probably going to be immediate, save for some heavy trashing. If I were to change it, in my opinion, it’d be to make it so Victory cards under $6 would turn into straight up Villages (“+1 Card, +2 Actions”) instead of being simple cantrips. It could help you play more than one Traveler guy at once, especially since you’ll have multiple of them because of the Landowner gaining a Successor, which turns into another Landowner giving another Successor, etc.

If you think about it in terms of how good the effect is in an absolute sense, it sounds good.

If you think about the game state after you've gone through the traveler line, it sounds much less good. You'll have lots of fairly weak terminals and a bunch of points from now-cantrip estates.

It's fine if it's weaker than the existing traveler lines, but I expect it'll almost never be worth going for it at all.

under $6

no don't

[X-tra]

If you think about it in terms of how good the effect is in an absolute sense, it sounds good.

If you think about the game state after you've gone through the traveler line, it sounds much less good. You'll have lots of fairly weak terminals and a bunch of points from now-cantrip estates.

It's fine if it's weaker than the existing traveler lines, but I expect it'll almost never be worth going for it at all.

Don't forget about cantrip Duchies too, thanks to Aristocrat! Monarch just means that you won't clog your deck at all from Victory cards, an integral part of Dominion. I still think the bonus is worth it and it's definitely too strong to be printed on a card on its own. Still, I could buff it to Village Victory cards like I said, but I am still unsure if I should commit to this change.

no don't

Uh, if this is about the lack of coin symbols, worry not, they've been resorted in my post.

[silverspawn]

No, but don't add restrictions to your cards if they're not really needed. Just make it 'victory cards', not 'victory cards under 6$'.

[Jonatan Djurachkovitch]

Right now I wouldn't want to go for Monarch unless there's some strong enabler, especially Villa or Cartographer or other sifters.

[dpm]

You could Kiln a Colony.  That's pretty cool. 

It's OK that a Traveller line isn't always a must-buy.  Not everything has to be Teacher/Champion. 

[gambit05]

You could Kiln a Colony.  That's pretty cool. 

It's OK that a Traveller line isn't always a must-buy.  Not everything has to be Teacher/Champion.

That would be indeed quite a Combo. Unless I am not aware of any neat interactions that want the Victory cards to be real Actions, one could avoid this issue, e.g. "For the rest of the game, during your Action phases, you may reveal and then Exile any Victory cards from your hand."

[segura]

I don’t understand the Monarch cost restriction, it is not like the end of the line needs to be nerfed.

[X-tra]

The last guy, Monarch, cantrips all of your Victory cards, except for Province. This is a fail safe so that you don’t do weird stuff with Provinces in play with, say, Changeling or something.

People complained before how it'd make for some potential easy Province/Colony auto gains. I didn't care about it until I was bullied into changing Monarch to have a restriction. 

[segura]

I think that the card is weak enough to enable these combos. It is not like people complain about Swindling or Butchering Peddlers into Provinces.

[X-tra]

Here is what a non-limited Monarch with unchanged cantrip Victory cards would look like:



Note that without the limitation, it is possible to pull weird stuff with Monarch. For instance:

• A single Princess (or 2 Highways) + Advance can make you gain a Province by trashing one of your useless Successor or what have you.
• A Lurker can trash and gain from the trash a Colony.
• Quarry reduces the price of every Base Victory card in the Supply.
• Disciple can play a Colony twice and gain a copy of it.
• Colonies or Provinces can be Ferried.
• Colonies can be targeted with Transport or Invest, cheaply Exiling and acquiring them for or respectively.

And it goes on.

[silverspawn]

I admit that this does have more effects than I was thinking of. Although, restricting it isn't conceptually elegant since you can still disciple your duchy and gain a copy of it. It makes the combo weaker, but doesn't remove the weirdness. Exiling a Duchy for 3$ is still so good that you would probably pile out duchies before you buy provinces.

Confronted with these examples, I would still leave it unrestricted. It doesn't seem all that much more extreme than what teacher does, and less extreme than other existing combos

[LibraryAdventurer]

Here is what a non-limited Monarch with unchanged cantrip Victory cards would look like:



Note that without the limitation, it is possible to pull so weird stuff with Monarch. For instance:

• A single Princess (or 2 Highways) + Advance can make you gain a Province by trashing one of your useless Successor or what have you.
• A Lurker can trash and gain from the trash a Colony.
• Quarry reduces the price of every Base Victory card in the Supply.
• Disciple can play a Colony twice and gain a copy of it.
• Colonies or Provinces can be Ferried.
• Colonies can be targeted with Transport or Invest, cheaply Exiling and acquiring them for or respectively.

And it goes on.

You can prevent a lot of those just by saying "your Victory cards are also Actions..."

[X-tra]

You can prevent a lot of those just by saying "your Victory cards are also Actions..."

It used to be worded like that. But then it had the same problem as old Inheritance had, something user Something_Smart pointed out to me. Modifying "your" cards can lead to weirdness when cards are played while not in play. This is the whole reason Donald based Inherited Estates on who's turn it is rather than who owns them. Monarch follows these steps to avoid these potential issues.

I never minded dropping the cost restriction of Monarch, but it is at the risk of having a race to Exile Colonies or what have you with Transport when he comes in play.

[Jonatan Djurachkovitch]

Imagine if you put Adventures tokens on the Estate pile 

[silverspawn]

I never minded dropping the cost restriction of Monarch, but it is at the risk of having a race to Exile Colonies or what have you with Transport when he comes in play.

Not that different from a race for a +card token that's normal with teacher.

[LibraryAdventurer]

You can prevent a lot of those just by saying "your Victory cards are also Actions..."

It used to be worded like that. But then it had the same problem as old Inheritance had, something user Something_Smart pointed out to me. Modifying "your" cards can lead to weirdness when cards are played while not in play. This is the whole reason Donald based Inherited Estates on who's turn it is rather than who owns them. Monarch follows these steps to avoid these potential issues.

I never minded dropping the cost restriction of Monarch, but it is at the risk of having a race to Exile Colonies or what have you with Transport when he comes in play.

oh well. I still use Inheritance with the old wording and never saw a problem with it.
EDIT: seems to me, the new wording causes more problems than the old wording in this case.

[Jonatan Djurachkovitch]

A single Princess would make province an Action card, with the old version. If you then played Quarry, its cost reduction would affect Province even if you Bonfired your Princess! Weird stuff.

[X-tra]

Card set #9

          

These cards above are just no mere Duration cards. For a shady specialty shop has opened in your lands: in it, you hope, an exclusive way to hire the services of some nasty people with nasty ways of dealing with your nasty neighbours. Nasty.

• Specialty Shop (Weekly Contest thread): A rule-bender if I’ve seen one. During setup, the mat shown above will be furbished with 3 randomly picked cards. It could be riddled with cheap little boogers like House; or it could hold the almighty powerful Ballroom. One thing’s for sure though: the cards put there must cost at least to avoid weird buying problems I’ve face before. So no Overlord, Vineyard, Transmute or even Draft on the mat.
  
  Once you commit to Specialty Shops, you set them aside when played. You’ll have 3 each turn, which you can then use to purchase exclusive Shop mat cards by using one of your buys. is used and depleted like is. It’s a by-turn resource that you have in limited quantity. However, with 2 Buys and 1 set-aside Specialty Shop, you could buy a Poor House and a Vagrant if both of them are on the Shop mat. Or you could buy a Village from the Shop mat and another card from the Supply using your . So you split your buys however you want as you would normally. Yes, there are weird overpaying, Potion and Debt cases with cards on the Shop mat. Peddler also messes with it a little. But everything should work, though. If you’re curious about how such behaviours are tackled, do ask!
  
  Specialty Shop is a card that varies in strength. An investment in them may or may not be worth it, it is up to you to decide. It’s basically a Black Market where you can see a static choice of the 3 cards you can buy even before playing it. If Ballroom or King’s Court are on the mat, remember that you’ll need at least 3 Specialty Shops on the side to buy them (unless, of course, you’ve played some cost reduction Actions before).
  
  
  
• Custodian (my other thread): Ah, the good old Custodian. Hasn’t changed one bit since my last thread! He’s also the 5th Attack card shown thus far. This is getting out of hand. Could this perhaps be a subtheme of Urbanisation ? Tithe just below has a thing or two to say about that (in support of).
  
  Custodian is the 3rd and final Night card of Urbanisation. This means that Custodian is yet another non-terminal Attack. It would’ve been the 4th one had Vigil not changed. A lot of people have raised concerns against Custodian and how he can be too nasty used in the right context. How a couple of them can lock away turns from others, especially with games of 4 or more players. It does seem a little rough and abusable on paper. But for having played a lot with it, I can with right assurance say that it is trivial most of the time. You can definitely play around the limitation imposed by an enemy Custodian. Besides, the perk-into-Attack thing that Custodian has going for himself is too well streamlined, that’s something I won’t want to change! I couldn’t really change the behaviour of the locked away card without breaking the beauty of helping yourself while making it harder for the others. So, there you have it. A way to prep yourself for your next turn by setting a card away, be it a Treasure or an Action card or what have you. Moreover, a way to prep yourself by slotting that card away in a non-buyable position for the others! “Grrrr”, they’ll say.
  
  
• Tithe (my other thread): Well yeah. The 6th Attack of Urbanisation. What’s not to love? Huh? A game ruined by broken friendships? Noooo come back, I swear Tithe isn’t too bad!
  
  And it really isn’t. Those without , say, because they haven’t been Attacked by a Tithe before their next turn yet, take . Then, Tithe waits on your side, until your next turn on your Buy phase where it comfortably nests itself on your Tavern mat. THEN, on your second next turn, you can call Tithe and get a good payload! THEN, 3 turns later, you can hope to have it back in your hands to fire off the Attack once more. And if you don’t manage to draw the damn thing that turn, then it can take even longer. That is how slow of an Attack Tithe is! So I hope that, by then, your are repaid, right?
  
  Tithe has changed since my last thread. It used to generate when called from your Tavern mat. This has been buffed to . People were very reluctant in investing in Tithe before. Hopefully, this initiative will make people reconsider Tithe.
  
  

← Previous set of 3 cards | Next set of 3 cards →

⚠ From the next and last set of cards, all 3 cards will be from my other thread. I have run out of Weekly Design Contest cards to show. ⚠

[Amuzet]

Love what you've done with the cards, it'll be bewildering on how i'll implement Specialty Shop
Tithe has always been a bit hard to explain to my play group, but they get it eventually.

[Jonatan Djurachkovitch]

So with Monarch you could make Province ungainable? Seems quite broken. Otherwise nice cards, but I still think that Specialty Shop can have a text without the weird, look-in-the-rulebook blue orbs.

[X-tra]

Love what you've done with the cards, it'll be bewildering on how i'll implement Specialty Shop
Tithe has always been a bit hard to explain to my play group, but they get it eventually.

Thank you Amuzet. Might wait for the next (and last) batch of card that I will upload tonight around 8PM, 2 days late as per tradition . Also, after the last set, I will post all the cards together with their corrected versions for clarity.

[X-tra]

Card set #10

          

My work as your advisor is done here, Sir! As a final goodbye, I will leave you with some very colourful cards! Urbanisation has a lot of different cards with different types. These final 3 cards are no different! Pretty, pretty colours. And oh, don't gamble too hard while I'm gone!

• Dice Games (my other thread): This mentions a D6. What D6? Why, a fresh and cutely added dice tossed into the Urbanisation box, if it had one! Alongside the Shop mat shown last week, the Dice and the Tracker tokens are the only other new materials included in this fan-made expansion. You can see the faces of the D6 above, in pale blue. So 1/3 chance of either rolling +1 Action or +1 Card; and 1/6 chance of rolling + or +1 Buy. Tracker tokens are little carboard chits you can put on your played Dice Games as a reminder of what you rolled; in case you need that. There’d be 10 of these trackers with a +1 Action side and a +1 Card side. 10 other Tracker tokens would have a + side and a +1 Buy side. Yay. I don’t want Dice Games to fall into the Pawn situation of “errr… what the shit did my fourth Pawn do this turn again?”. Yeah.
  
  Okay. So this card has changed. It has now a more bearable cost, whereas it used to cost more back in the days. Silly me. To also avoid some unfavorable dice rolls and having your whole turn ruined because the odds were against you, Dice Games is now a cantrip by default. So worst case scenario, you go “Drat. Didn’t roll good. Oh well. Moving on.” And that is even without your re-rolling option too! Look, Dice Games is trying to mitigate the luck factor the best it can, man. So it’s a cantrip with you plugging a random perk to it. So what can it be then? It can be…
  
  
  • A village.
  • A Laboratory.
  • A Market Square sans the Reaction.
  • A stronger Peddler.
  
  All stuff with various prices. A little reminder that you can discard a card any number of times after rolling to re-roll. Sometimes, you need that +Buy, what can I say!
  
  
  
• Hops (my other thread): Orange / Yellow hybrid. Never-seen before and for good reasons all explained by Donald. I think it can work here since the card is relatively simple and has an anti-lose-track failsafe on it (“[…] if this is still in play”). In my other thread, it used to yield on the turn you played it and give you another the next turn. Hurray. Except, not hurray. Lighthouse exists and it’s like, stronger than it. It’s also a non-terminal now, next turn. And it also defends you from attack. I think that was a good justification to change Hops a tad. I mean, sure it can’t be drawn dead, unlike Lighthouse, but that’s not good enough for me.
  
  In this version, it is a non-terminal Merchant Ship that only works for your next turn. I am very unsure how desirable Hops is in this form, but… It’s different than Lighthouse at least!
  
  
• Stray Cat (my other thread): Poor kitty. Waited all this time only to end up being the last and therefore 30th card to be shown. I don’t have much to say about the Stray Cat. For one, it hasn’t changed at all since my last thread. Two, it’s a pretty good drawer, I believe. It’s one-shot though. I wonder if it could cost , but I like it as is. It’s pretty tough to use, but the mega turn can be juicy. It’ll never fail too, since it will work on itself (aka, on another one of your Stray Cat played). Meow.
  
  

← Previous set of 3 cards | List of all cards →

[Jonatan Djurachkovitch]

Nice stuff! Pretty exotic expansion overall.
Minor wording issue: I don't think that you need the "you may" on Gambler Dice Games.

[D782802859]

Hops could get a small buff, maybe a buy on the turn you play it?
Stray Cat could also return to supply instead of self-trashing.

[silverspawn]

Not too big on those three. I think Hops is too close to Fishing Village and Lighthouse to be worthwhile. Lighthouse in particular, why would you want 0/2$ instead of 1$/1$ when the latter also protects you?

And Stray Cat seems busted. You pay 2$ and a buy for +1 card in a future turn (Ride) or 3$ and a buy for +2 cards in a future turn (experiment). This is 4$ and a buy for +3 cards in a future turn, and you can control it much better, which is a definite plus.

[MiX]

Not too big on those three. I think Hops is too close to Fishing Village and Lighthouse to be worthwhile. Lighthouse in particular, why would you want 0/2$ instead of 1$/1$ when the latter also protects you?

And Stray Cat seems busted. You pay 2$ and a buy for +1 card in a future turn (Ride) or 3$ and a buy for +2 cards in a future turn (experiment). This is 4$ and a buy for +3 cards in a future turn, and you can control it much better, which is a definite plus.

Well, when there's no attacks, 0/2 might be better than 1/1.

You still need to play stray cat, so it's not as immediate as the other 2, although playing a moat isn't exactly the worst you could be doing. Needing to buy, and play, it in advance definitely makes it weaker when compared to the other 2, this is more like a mega turn enabler.

[silverspawn]

It's not even later than the other two, since you need to draw and play them (horse, experiment) as well. Okay, it's one turn later, but that hardly matters.

And the fact that you need to play a moat first seems roughly value neutral, maybe slightly positive.

And I'm not buying at all that 0/2 is better than 1/1.  The main reason why 1/1 is worse than 2/0 is that the card is more likely to miss the shuffle.

[Xen3k]

Regarding Hops, perhaps if it gave you +1 Buy at the start of your next turn and gave you the option to get +$2 the turn you play it or the following turn, it would give it that slight buff. It would remain in play due to the buy it grants the following turn, but give you the option to get the +$2 either the turn played or the turn with the extra Buy.

I really like Stray Cat, but would have to try it out to gauge how strong it is.

[X-tra]

Nice stuff! Pretty exotic expansion overall.
Minor wording issue: I don't think that you need the "you may" on Gambler.

Thank you very much! You are correct. There is no reason for the "you may" to be there. I don't know why it slid there in the first place. I'll post the edited version of Dice Games alongside the rest of the cards in the "epilogue" in 3 days or so.

Hops could get a small buff, maybe a buy on the turn you play it?
Stray Cat could also return to supply instead of self-trashing.

A +Buy on Hops would be pretty nifty. Although, there are 2 reasons why I avoided doing that in the first place. First, I’d have to add a “When you play this […]” before the +Buy, as is with any other existing Treasures that do something else than giving on the turn you play them. I think that extra wording would take away from the elegance of the card. Second, it’s because… well, as I’ll mention in the “epilogue”, there are several cards in Urbanisation with +Buy already. It’s an actual subtheme of the set, although I don’t really want to push the envelope too far.

As for Stray Cat, I kinda want its pile to be depletable for those who want to 3 piles.

Not too big on those three. I think Hops is too close to Fishing Village and Lighthouse to be worthwhile. Lighthouse in particular, why would you want 0/2$ instead of 1$/1$ when the latter also protects you?

And Stray Cat seems busted. You pay 2$ and a buy for +1 card in a future turn (Ride) or 3$ and a buy for +2 cards in a future turn (experiment). This is 4$ and a buy for +3 cards in a future turn, and you can control it much better, which is a definite plus.

For Hops, the / VS / battle ain’t too much of an issue for me. I mean, you get the same amount of resources, just split differently. It’s different, that’s all. Lighthouse has the protection from Attacks over Hops, but Hops as the “cannot be drawn dead” propriety over Lighthouse. In a Supply where no Attacks can be found with Hops and Lighthouse in the Kingdom, I’d argue that Hops trumps Lighthouse. It’s a matter of context, as is with any Dominion cards, really.

Stray Cat seems fine to me. The slowness of putting that sucker down on your Tavern mat for a Moat effect (which costs ) makes up for the big draw. Sometimes, you’ll need to sacrifice your terminal Action to put it on your Tavern mat just so you can draw better later. It’s flexible, but it’s also annoying to get there. And it’s a one shot too. If your +3 Cards didn’t yield anything good, well, tough luck buddy. Try again with another Stray Cat you’ll have to plop on your mat once again!

[silverspawn]

In a Supply where no Attacks can be found with Hops and Lighthouse in the Kingdom, I’d argue that Hops trumps Lighthouse.

I certainly agree, but if we agree that the 0/2 vs. 1/1 distinction is minor, then it's just about giving a non-terminal the 'can't be drawn dead' property, and that seems like it fails the novelty threshold for a new card. Arid village, to name one of your own designs, is significantly more novel.

[segura]

Hops is too bland and significantly worse than Lighthouse as it is a Treasure.
There was already a lengthy discussion about this when Ducat (vs. Candlestick Maker) came out.

Stray Cat is likely a $3 although most gainers do of course not care about this difference.

[X-tra]

Dominion: Urbanisation

Kingdom cards

cost cards:


cost cards:


cost cards:


cost cards:


cost cards:


cost cards:


cost cards:


Stallions:

Out-of-Supply cards

Successor Traveller line:

Other components

Die face for the “Dice Games” card (also comes with 20 Tracker tokens; 10 with a face up “+1 Action” and a face down “+1 Card” and 10 with a face up “+” and a face down “+1 Buy”):

Shop mat for the “Specialty Shop” card:





Overall theming of the set:

• Lots of +Buys. Out of 30 cards, 7 gives you a +Buy (albeit, the one on Dice Games is random, but it still counts dammit!)
  
  
• Victory cards. If we include cards found in the Stallion pile, we have 6 different Victory cards in this set! That’s a good amount of ‘em.
  
  
• Attacks be plenty. 6 of them. Renaissance’s 2 Attack cards are looking pale in comparison.
  
  
• Variety and weird hybrid card types. We have Horses, Night cards, Reserve cards, Debt stuff, a Traveller line, a mixed pile, a Command card, etc. Hops, Secret Path, Mobsters and Tithe are made of 2 card types that cannot be seen paired together in official Dominion expansions.
  
  
• Small cost cards have a significant presence here. 8 cards cost or less (Dice Games does cost Debt).
  
  

Overall cohesion shortcomings:

• Appraiser is the only card dealing with tokens. This is not very cohesive with the rest of the set and looks like it was just slapped on out of nowhere. This card could be better saved for another set. Although, its trashing abilities are probably required in this set, otherwise trashing in Urbanisation would be weaker than it already is.
  
  
• There are not enough cards that makes you draw in this set. +Cards are tough to come by here. Yet, there are plenty of Villages, some of which don’t even draw (House, Junk Village). And then Arid Village and Market Town are like, a knife in the wound. So building a draw Engine seemed tougher than usual in games only using Urbanisation cards.
  
  

Anyway, thanks for those who have stayed to leave a comment or two. It’s really appreciated and helped me tweak some cards, even if it was just to change the wording for the best. If you scrounge around the list above, you'll notice how some stuff have changed since the time I posted them in the sets of 3 cards, most notably Lease and Overwork. Other cards have been reworded as per suggestions from some users here, such as with Hoarder and Dice Games. I’m still putting off the whole printing idea which was the genesis of this thread. I really want Urbanisation to be worthy of being printed and I’m still insecure about this prospect, so patience is a virtue that’ll pay off I suppose. Thank you all once again.

← Previous set of 3 cards

[LibraryAdventurer]

Don't spend a lot of money to print the cards. Just print them on plain paper and put them in front of official cards in the sleeve.
- If you play Dominion (the physical version) often, you should be sleeving your cards anyway.
- A lot of times it takes several games playing with a card to realize that it needs a change.
- save money!

[silverspawn]

I've Home printed cards and had them professionally printed. The latter looked much nicer.

Nonetheless, I agree that you should just go ahead and print them. If you've tested them a bunch (and realized that your traveler line needs a  buff ;P), you can still print them to look nice.

And don't worry about too many buys. Games without +buy are dumb.

[Carline]

As I interpret the wording, the trashed card still costs more this turn after being placed in the trash, am I right?

I think there's a problem with changing cost of individual copies of a card, it could lead to awkward tracking issues.

If you use Artwork and trash a Gold, for instance, this Gold would cost and you can't gain it from trash with a Rogue. However, if there's other copy of Gold in the trash from previous turns, it cost and you can gain it with Rogue. It seems strange and confusing to me.

Other situation: You trash, for instance, a Village with Overwork and gain it in the same turn with Rogue. That copy of Village in your deck would cost more than the others you have? If you shuffle this turn and draw a Village, how would you know which copy is?

If, on the other hand, your intention is to the card to go back to original cost right after being trashed, I think it has to be said in the card. However, it would be the same as don't change its cost and remodel by .

[X-tra]

As I interpret the wording, the trashed card still costs more this turn after being placed in the trash, am I right?

I think there's a problem with changing cost of individual copies of a card, it could lead to awkward tracking issues.

If you use Artwork and trash a Gold, for instance, this Gold would cost and you can't gain it from trash with a Rogue. However, if there's other copy of Gold in the trash from previous turns, it cost and you can gain it with Rogue. It seems strange and confusing to me.

Other situation: You trash, for instance, a Village with Overwork and gain it in the same turn with Rogue. That copy of Village in your deck would cost more than the others you have? If you shuffle this turn and draw a Village, how would you know which copy is?

If, on the other hand, your intention is to the card to go back to original cost right after being trashed, I think it has to be said in the card. However, it would be the same as don't change its cost and remodel by

Hehe, good questioning. Indeed, the cost only momentarily increases when using Overwork. The cost rises up during the process in which a card is trashed this turn. Normally, this won't change a thing. However, some trash for benefit cards can enjoy that bonus, Overwork itself for instance. As it is worded though, it won't work with Remodel, because the gaining happens after the card has been trash, not during. This is problematic because this is not the intended purpose of Overwork. As it is, this card is probably more of an outtake than anything. Since I've posted this thread, Overwork has been removed and replaced with something more streamlined and simple.