Congratulations on the good work you have put forth with Arcadia!
Oof, lots to go through, though! Card dumps are usually pretty intimidating, so I’d expect less traffic here because of it. In my personal opinion, in the future, I’d format the thread following Donald X’s way of showing new expansion cards. Doing little 3-cards preview over the course of a few days, for instance. It gives people time to discuss and ponder about the cards currently being shown too. Just a suggestion!
But enough of that. Let’s check some cards.
Tin: My first reaction was to scout for other Journey token cards in this set… but Tin stands alone using it. This feels a little tacked-on because of it. I think I would’ve slotted an outtake card into the set instead of Tin because of that. Plus, there’s already a very high proportion of +Buys in this set (4/14 → 28,6%). In the end, Tin doesn’t really excite me, I’ll be honest.
Statue: Statue suffers from the same problem as Tin to me. The only +
giver in this set. And the effect is really… boring to me. It’s almost a non-card to me. Sorry!
Sawyer: Now this one is interesting to me! Sawyer might be a little too strong imo. Compared to the same-priced Woodcutter, it surpasses it by a very good amount. This can go nuts. A single copy will provide you all the buys you need in your big engine. It’s almost too easy of a solution! I’d check if maybe the cost condition could be changed to be more restrictive somehow.
Miller: It mills. I’d love for it to cost
so that it may gain itself on an Estate trash, lol.
Cheesemaker: This will Laboratory more times than it won’t, I believe. And so, my initial hypothesis is that this might be too strong. Gotta play with it first to assess it better, though.
Pastoral Village: This seems good as-is. Cute little Village! Maybe a little strong, but not in a bonkers way. I feel like my evaluation could be off though. All in all, I like Pastoral Village.
Cliffside Village: Ah, the classic Copper to hand or Silver to discard choice. I also made a card that has this effect and so did uuuh Mocha I think. Here, it is on a Village though. This is a little counterproductive for the Village, since it just bloats the deck with many stop cards. And you tend to play Villages a lot. So I’d only ever pick this up with some nice trash-for-benefit, such as Salvager or Apprentice.
Potter: First of all, there’s a typo here. It says “+1 Action
s”. The ‘s’ should be removed. Anyway, I believe Grep made a very similar card named Craftsman.
Here it is (scroll down a little). Not sure which one I prefer. Craftsman works only once per turn, but offers more control since it doesn’t have to gain you stuff you didn’t want. Interesting trade-off between these 2 cards. I’d have to play ‘em both to decide which one I’d rather play with.
Redsmith: I don’t really have any strong opinions on that card. Seems very specific about what it does. But y’know, this probably works in practice! Draw is draw, as they say. As always, I’d crack a couple of games with Redsmith to truly know where I stand with it.
Whitesmith: When it comes to draw cards, I believe that Whitesmith offers a more interesting effect than Redsmith. The choice is a good one to take. This might be a little strong in money-centric games though. Still, I must reiterate that I love the choice given here!
Travelling Merchant: I feel like I’d have a hard time giving up my draw card. Especially since it cost me
to invest in it. Cards returning to the Supply should probably be on the cheaper end of things, since the idea is that you want to re-gain them quickly and easily down the line. However, that’s not to say I would never use Travelling Merchant’s returning clause. In desperate times, I might just pull that trigger! And I guess, that sort of is the nice safety net that this card offers. I think overall, I quite like it!
Spinster: This is pretty strong imo.
gainers are pretty strong in general. This one is cheaper than Artisan and Altar and fires off more quickly than Vampire. I think I’m not too hot on Spinster, but this only stems from my personal preferences.
Carpenter: “Buy a card to your hand now”, basically. This has some very nice gain and play implications. I’d definitely buy this card and try to do some crazy stuff with it. Only problem is that it cannot use your Treasures like Black Market would. You need to have some decent Action cards payload to get the better cards via Carpenter. In a pinch, add more Carpenters to your deck (if you have Village support, of course). A cool minigame!
Meadow: I know it’s going to sound harsh and I’m sorry about this, but I straight up do not like this… sorry. I thoroughly dislike scaling Victory cards such as Gardens or Silk Road that can actually decrease in value because A) You didn’t track your deck well and accidently crossed a bad threshold; or B) effects you have no control over made it worse. Meadow falls into the B) category here. You invest a whopping
into some
, only for it to be decreased by other players, something you have almost 0 power against. This uncertainty will probably make players scared to sink a huge opportunity cost into a Meadow war – because if someone gets a huge
boost from a Meadow, you can and probably SHOULD fight it. This is a very feelsbad moment for everyone involved. As such, the pile will probably remain untouched, until a player finishes the game and gains a Meadow on the last moment, adding a massive
boon to their score with everyone else unable to fight back.
As a final quick note: Both Tin and Meadow are missing their expansion icon.