For week 14, we'll be exploring Asper's
Season cardsSeason cards are cards whose abilities change as the game proceeds.
When one or more Season cards are in the Supply, use the Season mat. The Season Mat has 20 spaces on it that go in a circle, and shows the 4 Seasons. A token is used to track the current time of year, starting the game on space 1, the first of Spring. After each full round (that is, after the last player in turn order took their turn) the token is moved forward one space. After each 5 turns a new Season begins. Summer starts with turn 6, Fall with turn 11, and Winter with 16. After turn 20 it is Spring again, and so on. Season cards check the current Season and do different things depending on it.
EDIT: For the purposes of this contest, Asper's original rules will be modified. The "year" will be 12 turns, with each season being 3. This means that it'll be quite common to return back to spring later in the game. If you want to keep the original 20-turn system, just specify that in your entry
For practical purposes, it's probably advisable to have whichever player goes last be the one to move the token at the end of their turn, to best ensure that it not get forgotten
A Season card does not have to have exactly four different functions, just as long as there's at least two, which depend on the season. Several of Asper's cards have one function in Spring and Summer and another in Fall and Winter, for example, and there have the same in-play effect, but different on-gain effects depending on season. That would qualify as well. Basically, as long as there's any differences that relate to Seasons, it will qualify. All cards would include Season as a type. While all but one of Asper's examples are Actions (with the remaining being a Victory card), they could be any type, so Night or Treasure would also qualify. Traveller and Split piles (unless only the top is a Season card) are excluded, because by the time you get to the later cards in a Traveller line, or the bottom half of a Split pile, you're likely to be pretty late in the game. It should also be an actual supply card, and not a landscape or a non-supply card
Judging will be based on how balanced the cards are, and how thematically appropriate the season connection is and/or how well the different functions work in the early game vs the late game Baliff, for example, starts out as a trasher that becomes a gainer. Trashing is particularly useful in the early game, but often becomes less useful later in the game once all the junk has been trashed, while gaining up to $5 is useful late in the game where you may want to go for Duchies, and it could also be seen as thematically appropriate, i.e., spring cleaning and fattening up in the Fall
For the card generator, we'll use the Way color for Seasons
The deadline will be 12:00 AM my time (CDT), Saturday July 10, that's 1:00 AM July 10 forum time, and I will give a 24-hour warning