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Author Topic: Fan Card Mechanics Week 24: Heritage Cards  (Read 4221 times)

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emtzalex

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Re: Fan Card Mechanics Week 24: Heritage Cards
« Reply #25 on: December 23, 2021, 06:03:28 pm »
+1

Heritage Cards!

Given that some of the mechanics I have chosen in the past have been, shall we say, controversial, I wanted to choose a relatively straightforward option that doesn't stray too far from the official game. Heritage cards were an obvious choice: not only do they share a lot with official Heirloom cards (both have a Kingdom card that, when present in the game, replaces a card from the player's starting deck), but another official mechanic--Shelters--already creates the possibility of replacing a player's Estates. It is also fairly flexible and versatile.

In the OP I said that Heritage cards "don't technically even have to be Victory cards, but I think making them non-Victory cards should only be done with a lot of careful thought about the impact it would have." In retrospect, that was clearly wrong. Turning an Estate into a non-scoring card impacts all of the players equally, so there is no major upset in the game. The only meaningful effect is that by reducing the VP value of the player's starting deck, trashers (and especially strong trashers) become slightly more beneficial. In a game with 3 Estates in a starting deck, a player choosing a strategy involving buying a trasher and trashing their starting deck needs that increased efficiency to yield an advantage of at least 4VP over a player who chose a non-trashing strategy. If you turn one of those Estates into a non-scoring Action card (as NoMoreFun did), there is less of a points differential to make up (of course, if the Action - Heritage is useful, then it is also one fewer dead card, and the benefit of the trashing is similarly diminished). Perhaps this is why the top 3 submissions used trashers? And, again, this already happens when playing with Shelter cards (which reduce the starting deck to 0VP).

This does create some additional, interesting design possibilities. For example, replacing one Estate with a non-VP card reducing a player's starting VP by 1. But there is no reason it could not be adjusted further by, for example, turning that 1VP Estate into a negative VP curse. This makes trashers significantly more useful. If the Kingdom card were an otherwise-questionable trasher, it could make for an interesting combo (of course, if there is another trasher in the Kingdom, players can choose that instead):




Quote
Doomed Village • $4 • Action
+1 Card
+2 Actions
You may trash this and your hand.
[Heritage: Hereditary Curse]

Hereditary Curse • $0 • Curse - Heritage
-3VP


On the other hand, one could actually increase the starting deck's VP (as Aquila did). When that happens, trashing becomes less desirable. Instead of pairing it with a trasher, I thought it would be interesting to pair it with a card that benefits from a thinned deck: here, a card that is reliant on collisions:


 

Quote
Believer • $4 • Action
+2 Cards
Reveal your hand. +1 Villager per Believer revealed.
[Heritage: Utopian Community]

Utopian Community • $6 • Victory - Heritage
4VP


Believer is a softer take on Cultist. They don't attack, and instead of chaining (and thus providing a limited, conditional +Action), when they collide they provide Villagers (potentially more than one).



I thought of a couple of other potential design areas that didn't really get explored much in the submissions. One was to use the Heritage card as a source of tokens or non-Supply cards that the Kingdom card could interact with. This provides a way for all players to have access to the needed tokens/cards without the Kingdom card itself providing them. Week 12's Supplier mechanic works well for this, although it could work as a Reaction or even an Action card (and this could work just as well as an Heirloom):


 

Quote
Farrier • $5 • Action
+3 Cards
You may play a Horse from your hand.
[Heritage: Equestrian Estate]

Equestrian Estate • $2 • Supplier - Victory - Heritage
$2: Gain a Horse. Once per turn, +1 Buy.
----------
Worth 2VP if you have at least 3 Horses (otherwise worth 0VP).


Farrier is somewhat similar to NoMoreFun's Historian, in that it is a $5 that gives +3 Cards and is conditionally non-terminal. But while Historian could (potentially) use the Heritage card itself, Farrier is a degree removed, requiring the players to buy Horses that can then be played by the Farrier.

The other design area I saw for Heritage cards was making them into Alt-VP cards. This makes them very similar to official Landmarks, except that they take up a space in your deck, and if you choose to trash them--or if they get trashed by a trashing attack card--you lose those potential victory points. The advantage over Landmarks is that they are paired with a Kingdom card that can help the player accomplish the side-quest. Timinou's Graveyard was very similar to this idea, the effect mirroring Tomb and being paired with a trasher so it can actually be used. (A number of times I have been excite to see Tomb, then disappointed to realizer there are no trashers in the game). It is an additional step removed from a Landmark, in that putting the effect in a Reaction both requires it to be present in your hand for the trashing and limits it to 1VP per trashing action (even when you trash multiple cards with Chapel or Donate).

I haven't actually come up with a great idea for this. I revisited my submission for Week 7 (Kin cards), which was originally an Action - Victory - Kin card that provided both the +Cards and potential to play another Kin card with a Keep-style VP bonus (per copy) for having the most of a Kin card. In the redesign, Palazzo di Famiglia becomes the Heritage card that only gives out VP, while the Kingdom card is Gondola, a cantrip with the potential to turn into a village:


 

Quote
Gondola • $2 • Action - Kin
+1 Card
+1 Action
You may play an Action - Kin card from your hand.
[Heritage: Palazzo di Famiglia]

Palazzo di Famiglia • $4 • Victory - Heritage
Worth 3VP per differently named Kin you have, that you have more copies of than each other player, or tied for most.


Again, I don't love this particular design, but I do think there is some interesting potential for what is effectively a Landmark paired with a Kingdom card. For example, there are things that you couldn't do with a Landmark alone, like giving points for cards in Exile. With a Heritage card, you can pair it with a Kingdom card that Exiles. Here is another, less than stellar example:


 

Quote
Kokiri Trickster • $3 • Action
+1 Action
+1 Buy
Exile a card from your hand. If it costs $3 or more, +$2. Otherwise, +$1.
[Heritage: Lost Woods]

Lost Woods • $5 • Victory - Heritage
Worth 1% for every 3 cards you have in Exile (round down).


I don't love either the concept or the execution, but I think there is the potential for some very cool designs combining an Alt-VP Heritage with a Kingdom card that enables it.
« Last Edit: December 23, 2021, 06:24:47 pm by emtzalex »
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Thanks to Shard of Honor for his Extended Version of the Dominion Card Image Generator, which I use to mock up my fan cards, and to Violet CLM, who made the original.
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