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[silverspawn]

Tip for future time saving: don't do quotes in summary posts. Instead, right click on the image, Copy image location, and place that in [img] tags. Takes a few more seconds but doesn't require fixing, so it should stay within a few minutes total.

You know, for when you win the next contest 

[fika monster]

Results

Hello everyone! I've tried to give this Judging business my best effort. Credit to Gubump for the Judge format here.

Snow Queen -- Carline	[/img]	A snow attacker. I think its fine, but it just doesnt interest me much.
Wintery woods -- Spineflu		A haunted woods variant. i mostly like its attack, but i feel like in a lot of kingdoms it just wouldn't come up a lot. If there is no source of +2 actions, bam, it just doesnt attack! I might also be reading it wrong, but it doesnt attack cards like bustling village or snowy village, since those cards says +3 or +4 actions. i want to emphasize that i like its attack, i just think its too narrow.
Snowball -- infangthief	Snowball $4 Action +3 Cards Gain a Snow. You may play a Snow from your hand	A simple lab variant. The fact that you first draw, then gain the snow and THEN play a snow from your hand means that you can't spam these easilly. This is still a really good 4$, but it feels like an appropiate price. good job.
Eismager/Ice Mage -- Meta		Translation: ------------------------- Ice Mage Choose one: Play an Action card other than Ice Mage from your hand twice; or +3 Cards and +1 Buy; or +2$ and each other player gains 2 Snows. ------ When you gain a card, you may discard this, to exchange it for a card costing exactly 2$ more than it. 7$  Action - Reaction - Attack ------------------------	This one Feels kinda cluttered. All of the choices are pretty dang good, but i dont feel like they interact meaningfully enought to warrant all the options and the complexity that comes with it. I do like its reaction: It means that you want to gain snow in some situations. But overall, i just don't like this card that much.
Ice castle -- anordinaryman		A nifty Sacrafice variant. It's pretty cool how it let's you turn snows into horses, but only if you have the spare actions. Its Copper trashing is good enough even if you don't have village support.
Builder -- Segura		An overlord variant. The fact that it lets you play tresure cards is pretty cool: I imagine that it loves Capital boards. It's snow drawback feels about right, since its flexibility is amazing.
Artic base -- X-tra		Another Lab variant. I like this one as well, but i just like snowball more. sorry!
Snow Drift -- Aquila	Snowdrift - Action Attack Duration, $4 cost. At the start of your next turn, + $2. Until then, when another player trashes a card other than a Snow, they gain a Snow. - When you gain this, you may play it.	Its pretty neat attack, but suffers from the same problem as winter woods, in that it's attack might just not come up in a lot of games. Otherwise it's about the right strength.
Frozen Crevace -- pubby		A Sorta smithy trasher. Pretty neat. Drawing 3 cards AND trashing a card from hand is really strong, so gaining a snow unto deck is an appropriate drawback. It interacts meaningfully With quite alot of cards like sacrafice that might really want junk cards. Good job.
Winter Retreat -- Xen3k		Winter retreat is sorta like if Imp and Island had a baby: And since imp is a good card, its approprieatly priced 5 and you gain a snow unless you played a snow, but if that's what you did, this card is just net neutral lab (though it exiles). It works well in a kingdom without other snow cards, and it works well with other snow cards as well. The VP and the alt vp is also perfect in my opinion. Good job.
Abominable snowman -- Library adventurer	Abominable Snowman $4 - Action - Attack +$2. Each other player discards the top card of their deck, then gains a Snow on top of their deck.	Its sea hag but with snow! I think its fine attack. The vanilla benefit is about right, and its attack is weaker than sea hags, but works throughout the whole game since the snow cards will pretty much always be returned. Overall, this seems a lot more fun to play with then seahag.
SleighMaker -- Mahowrath		A cool card. It lets you turn a future snow into a super lab, which seems really fun! The fact that you get 2 snows when you play it means that you will still get a lot of junk with this, which is what makes it balanced. So if you play this, and then a snow, AND draw a snow, thats a net +1 card size overall in a sense, the same as a lab, but with a lot more setup. Good job making a reserve lab!
Mountain path -- Silverspawn		This is a neat Library variant that i like a lot. With it you can get rid of a terrible hand, but at the cost of getting snowcards. If your next hand is the mountain path with the snows, thats no problem as you can just play the snows first. But you still have to balance how many cards you want to discard, since you really dont want to be discarding estate one shuffle just to draw the snow cards dead. Great card.
Snowy Library -- commodore chuckles		On a similar note, Snowy library is also a library variant, but i dont like this one as much. Its draws a huge amount of cards (+4 cards if its the only action played, which compares to hunting grounds),  and while its draw back cool in how its unique, and it is bad in some decks, like scrying pools or other kingdoms with great draw, i think think most of the time the drawback is neglible, and i would be happy to just play it with big money. The snow use is ok, but i think given how good the draw is, is a neglible drawback. i want to note that i still like it.
Artic passage -- Faust		A really simple project. I really like this one: +buy is a amazing resource to have in any deck, and the +2 money is also really good and it pays itself in 3 turns, All of this is balanced by how you gain a snow whenever you buy a card, which is a cool drawback. On one hand, you can buy a province with just 3 golds or 2 silvers in hand, which is great! but you get 2 dead cards for the price of one. that is a neat problem for both money decks and engines. A thing to note: Originally This project gave you +1buy and +3Money: If it was still that way, i wouldnt like it as much, as then it would be too good. Changing it to +2buy and +2Money makes certain decks explode (like potion games with no buys), but since buying cards gives you Snow, you feel the sting a lot more.  One concern i do have is that its too good with some events that lets you gain cards instead, but that is somewhat minor
Hearth -- Allion8Me		I like this one a lot. +4 cards is really good! but getting 3 snows is really bad, especially if you keep drawing them dead so you can't return them. This means that in almost all kingdoms, getting Hearths is a good but risky move. I do think that the +buy is a little too good, even for a card that costs 7 money or 3 snows, but that may just be me.
Avalanche -- Mochamoko		Ok first off: the painting you used here is really dope! ok, with that out of the way, i like the concept here a lot: its a hireling variant that is good a lot faster and costs 5$ so you get it more often, but you could make your deck a total train wreck when you actually start scoring. I think i would grab this a lot of the time. At first glance i thought it was nuts: but at a second glance i see that its actually somewhat balanced, in that if you have 10 of these in play, sure, you draw 20 extra cards each turn! but if you have them in play for 3 turns, that means that next turn you will get 30 snows in your next shuffle, which is pretty bad. I still think this is too good, but im not sure what to do about it. regardless, i like it a lot.[/sub].
Dogsled -- Timinou		This one is a neat 2 cost card, that COULD be a hunting grounds if you line it up with a snow, but quickly runs out. Gaining 2 snows when gaining Dogsled feels about right. It may be more apropriate as a 3$ card, but i like it more as a 2$ card
Mountaineer -- Somethingsmart		This is pretty nifty: its a Poor House variant, but for every card in your hand. I think its too good however: If you play this with 4 other cards in hand, its basically a terminal gold, and that feels too good at its current price point. i also think its snow drawback is too weak, as the snow actually makes it stronger if you draw them all together. I would either make its +$ benefit a bit weaker (+6$ makes it on par with terminal silvers), or perhaps change its snow interaction: maybe you get a snow when you play it, or you also get -1$ for each snow you returned this turn.

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Throne room -- No more fun

Frozen Throne Action - $5 +1 Card You may play an Action from your hand twice. If you did, and it's still in play, gain a Snow.

A throne room variant. The +1 card is a big deal here, as normally when you draw 2 Throne rooms with, say, 3 coppers, you cant do anything. But with Frozen Throne, you could F-Throne the F-Throne, which nets you +3 cards, which could be the difference between a dead turn and a megaturn. The snow interaction here is also pretty neat: if you play a Snow with the Frozen Throne, it becomes a village. And you are essentially guaranteed that you will have Snows, as really, you want to play your GOOD action cards with Frozen Throne. Good job here.

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Ice cutter -- Fragasnap

A workshop variant. It's pretty dang good: you could always use Ice cutter to gain Gold, which is amazing for a 3$ card, even if you gain 2 snows. Its comparable to leprechain in that way: a cheap gold gainer that can make your deck worse. Its a lot more flexible than that of course. I also like the fact that you want to play a snow before this.

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Artic castle -- Emtzalex

I think this card has a nifty concept. But i still dont really like it. One part is just that, there is so many snow gears card, and some of them just feel a bit pointless? I dont have the expertise or energy to analyse all of it. I would like this more if the snowgear pile was more limited. I also don't really like the attack part: There is already a lot of things going on here with Artic castle, and i dont think it adds to much. i do like the Alt VP here: Making snows a source of vp is neat.

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Runners-up:
(4th place) Snowball by Infangthief
(3rd place) Arctic passage by Faust
(2nd place) Sleighmaker by Mahowrath

Winner: Mountain path by Silverspawn

There was a lot of great cards here! In the end i decided do choose what cards seemed like i would enjoy playing the most, while at the same time making strategic tradeoffs. I think Mountain path By silverspawns fits the bill best here, but on a different day i might have picked any of the finalists. I hope my judgment was okay! It was really hard deciding here.

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On an unrelated note: it took 2 hours for me to learn how to write this post. Thats a lot of time not spent judging, and i think there should be some thread with some formatts like Gubump had, but blank, so that future judges can more easily create there judgement posts.

[silverspawn]

Thanks :-)

Fwiw I agree with your judging in that I like all three runner-ups.

I've long planned to have an Equipment-based contest, but now that we have an extra contest for Fan Card Mechanics, I've decide on another theme.

[Mahowrath]

Thanks for running the contest!
Quite a variety of entries; turns out snow's pretty malleable