CONTEST 145 RESULTS
Hunnng… Hangover from the contest! W-what happened yesterday night, did I drink too much? Well we have 20 ways of spiraling down debauchery below, so let’s check ‘em out and figure out what caused my killer headache this morning!
Jokes aside, the entries are incredible; as such, it’s borderline impossible to judge, once again. I wish I was back in pre-2016 (ish), people are just too competent at making cards nowadays.
Bacchanal (Night)
Do each of the following, in any order: trash a card from your hand; discard a card; put a card from your hand onto your deck; Exile a card from your hand.
Whoa, this does a lot! I suspect that this is potentially too strong. I first eyed how this offers an efficient way of dealing with greening, not unlike Bounty Hunter, via Exiling. This also thins your deck and gives you a Way of the Frog. Finally, it is a good Village Green enabler. You can do all of that at once. This sounds utopian enough, but in reality, you’ll probably do less effects than the 4 that are prescribed – and this is to your advantage. Sometimes you don’t want to top deck a green card; Exile it! And then, oops, your hand’s empty, haha, guess you don’t have to topdeck a crappy card no more!
Anyway. Where I’m getting at is that this sounds a little nuts, at least at first glance. Perhaps I’m wrong here? Anyway, the effect is pretty funny, so here here!
Bacchus (Action – Attack – Duration)
+3 Cards
Until your next turn, whenever each other player plays a card that gives +Actions, they get +
and +1 Villager instead.
Oenochoe (Treasure – Heirloom)
+1 Villager
You may return to your Action phase.
This is hard to parse. It took me a couple of re-readings to comprehend the card well. So if, say, you play a Village under Bacchus’ attack, you’d net: +1 Card, +
and +1 Villager. Correct? Does this work on cantrips? Bacchus says Action
s, that’s a plural right there. Man, I’m just no sure now. This seems too rules heavy. Plus, sometimes, this will be beneficial to your opponent. Okay, some Attack cards can already do that, like Haunted Woods. But here, it’s even more pronounced! Imagine a Squire that, instead, gives +
and +1 Villager. For a card costing
, I say: Yes sir!
Oenochoe is really interesting and I wish it was its own Supply pile! I’d make it cost a little more, perhaps. But it is a very sexy card and, in a vacuum, sounds super interesting!
Barrel (Reserve)
When you gain this, put it on your Tavern mat.
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The first time you shuffle each turn, choose one: Add 1
to this, or call this to take the from this.
A pure Reserve card! I tried to make one of these before. It’s not a simple task, but it is definitely not impossible! So how does Barrel fare in the light of that? I think it has a very interesting scoring minigame for sure! Involving shuffles to rack up
has been done before I think, but this does so in a very intuitive and elegant way.
However. I have a little fear that this might create an “endless golden deck” situation. If you have a perfectly thinned deck and a couple of Barrels on your Tavern mat, your winning ticked could be endlessly shuffling to score more and more and more. And what if your opponent does so as well? Maybe there’s a stalemate scenario here.
Still, I really like the idea that you wind up adding a junk card to your deck when you pull the trigger. It’s as if you delayed an Estate, Duchy, or more. But, it’s even better, because you can trash it without affecting your score. Pretty neat!
Bartender (Action)
+2 Cards
Trash a card from your hand. You may put your -1 Card token onto your deck for +1 Action.
So, as far as drawing and trashing goes, the thing we know about it is the following: It’s strong. Masquerade and Recruiter are both top tier cards thanks to that. And henceforth arises a small problem. This, to me, seems strictly weaker than the aforementioned Recruiter. Recruiter not only gives you that Action without a penalty, but it can give you more than one. And they’re Action tokens too, so it’s even stronger! If Recruiter wasn’t a thing however, I’d advocate for Bartender to take its place (if Adventures tokens were in Renaissance, let’s imagine), because Recruiter is way too much of a power creep anyway.
Bartender (Action)
+2 Cards
You may put an Action card from your hand on your Tavern mat. If you did (and it isn’t already a Reserve card), at the start of your turn, you may call that card to play it.
Truthfully and personally, I would’ve much preferred the “in games using this”. This way, you can drop the parenthesis bit. It’d be more elegant too I believe. But I digress.
This has some very Native Village-ish implications. But it’s a much stronger effect, of course. You get to draw and have a bigger search space as to what you want to pseudo-Exile. And it’s not mandatory, so cards already on your Tavern mat can safely remain dormant. You can stack them to pull off a big mega turn (aka, play everything and screw needing Actions to do so), or you can stack utility cards for a very consistent deck. For instance, sticking a weak Pearl Diver you bought on a crappy
hand so that you have a guaranteed Village to avoid duding.
The strength of this card is tough to assess, so I won’t pretend I know what I’m talking about. It sure puts a cool twist as to what kind of deck you want to build if you want to go heavy on the Bartenders. That sounds like a cool way to play Dominion, so I’m all in!
Celebration (Action – Reserve)
+1 Card
+1 Action
Put this on your Tavern mat.
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When you gain a Victory card, you may call this, to exile that card.
First of all, I want to say this: welcome back! We missed you around here!
Second of all, thank you. For crafting such a simple, elegant, useful and beautiful card. I immediately see the uses of this card, and it’s totally worth existing. Perhaps it fares a little poorly next to Sanctuary, but it’s definitely not strictly weaker. If Adventures and Menagerie had a lovechild, this would’ve definitely been it. Good card, I like it!
Distillery (Action)
+1 Card
You may play an Action from your hand. If it’s still in play, play it again, ignoring all text (including dividing lines) that isn’t +Card(s), +Action(s), + and +Buy(s).
This is a weird take on Throne Room. A simple Throne Room with a +1 Card has proven to be too strong at
due to the easy and snowballing chaining ability it provides. So Distillery weakens the Throne aspect in return. This could work I believe. Maybe it’s a little bit unintuitive what would count for Distillery and what wouldn’t. In most cases, I believe it’s easy enough to determine. But it could happen! For instance, I don’t even know what Distillery on Distillery yields. On the second play, do you only get +1 Card, or do you get +2 Cards, +1 Action, +
and +1 Buy? I suspect it’s the former, but I believe that such questions might arise every now and then.
Distillery (Action – Victory)
+1 Action
Discard any number of Victory cards, revealing them. +1 Card per card discarded.
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1
Brothel (Treasure – Victory)
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Worth 1 for each differently named Victory card of which you have at least 3 copies.
I see Distillery as a way weaker Shepherd, seeing as it only works on Victory cards as well. Unlike Shepherd, this cannot increase your handsize; it merely sifts. In fact, it decreases your handsize. This is very weak, in my opinion. Sifters as such are best used in games where it can serve as your “pseudo trashing”, like Warehouse. Even then, this does so in a very poor way. As such, I do not expect Brothel to surface in many many games. Perhaps Battle Plan can help, lol. Speaking of Brothel, it doesn’t differ much more than Harem to excite me all that much, I’d say. Sure, the pile itself can feed it a bit, but again, who wants any Distilleries?
Drunkard (Night – Reserve)
Put this on your Tavern mat.
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At the beginning of your turn, you may call this, to play an Action card from your hand three times and then trash it.
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This is gained to your hand (instead of to your discard pile).
Hey, an unseen “Night – Reserve” card, neat! First, just wording wise, it should say: “At the start of your turn”, but that’s quite alright.
So, there’s a lot of text here. I pity the tiny font! Also, two dividing lines is one too many, imo. To get around the idea, why not making Drunkard a Night – Duration card instead, like the other existing Night cards? You gain it to hand, then you play it (or don’t, whatever floats your boat), and at the start of your next turn, you do the one-shot King’s Court thingy. I don’t know about the whole Tavern mat shebang, it seems to me like it’s making this more needlessly complex than it needs to be. Sure, you have more control over what you’re willing to lose from your deck, but maybe Drunkard can benefit from this shot-in-the dark aspect? It might even have a “may” if you’re not willing to go through with it.
As for the effect itself? It’s ok, I suppose. At least it does not chain like King’s Court can, so that’s a thumbs up from me! There’s a bit of a tracking issue with Duration cards, since you lose them from play. Drunkard would still sit out to track the lost Duration card though, so it’s manageable, at least. But if you have multiple Drunkards on the table though, that might prove more difficult. Maybe a “non-Duration” clause is needed here.
Eggnog (Treasure)
Choose one: +; or +
Well, there’s not much that I can say here. It’s extremely straight forward. It has a weird unintuitive setup clause. I’d add it on some kind of bottom-line on the card (“In games using this, replace this if […]”), or something. Otherwise, the effect is fine. It’s just kind of tough to see where this fits within Dominion.
Hops (Treasure)
+1 Buy
+ per Action card you have in play. Trash this.
Oh I get it! Hops are consumed so it’s a one-shot card. And it gives more flavour the more, uh, stuff you have in play! Pretty nifty theming here!
Unfortunatly, I think this has the potential to explode to undesirable proportions, to the point where it can act as a single card payload. Get a couple of these and it becomes highly centralizing. The +Buy certainly enables all sorts of craziness too. Rare will be the games where this yields less than +
, aka, a single-card-Province-ticket. Horn of Plenty had its days.
Intoxicate (Action)
+1 Buys
Each player drinks one of their shots.
-
Setup: Pour 3 shots per player.
Short story? I love this.
Okay, we all know this is no Dominion jargon. And this is trying to do something Dominion doesn’t want to be. I usually care about staying by-the-book, but I love this too much to give it some flak. Man, I’d add a +
to this. Give Herbalist some competition! Cheap +Buys can exist and have before; Intoxicate also adds some funny debauchery in there!
Pint (Action – Reserve)
+1 Action
+
Gain a Pint to your Tavern mat.
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At the start of your turn, you may call this for +1 Buy and + and to discard a card from your hand.
Very nice! Interesting minigame as well! And man, thematically spot on! Once someone adds a Pint to their deck, I expect the Pint Supply pile to empty at some point during the game. Perhaps a little slower than Magpies would, but still. Until you’ve drank so much, the bar has no more to often, heh.
It’s tough to say what kind of build order a Pint deck requires. Probably you need deck control first, trashing and getting your draw figured out. Then, there must be a ratio of “Pints in my deck VS. Pints staying on my Tavern mat” you have to figure out, checking how much your deck can handle. And how much
you want to yield during your megaturn. And how many Pints are left in the Supply. And this can all be hindered by your opponents going for Pints as well. Man! I gotta try that one out, lol.
Edit: I accidently added a + to the on-play effect. This should not be there! That mistake did not affect my judging though, thankfully! Round of Shots (Action – Duration)
Reveal your hand. +1 Card per revealed Silver. At the start of your next turn, +2 Actions. Until then, when any player (including you) plays a Round of Shots, they gain a Silver.
If we’re talking about the theme, for me, I see the Silver as the silverware gentlemen are drinking from. Who says we can’t have fancy cups?
As crazy as it sounds, the on-play effect for me makes the card. +1 Card per Silver is such an interesting concept, I can hardly believe this has not been done before. Sure, it might be weak, but there definitely some Silver-heavy Kingdoms. The start of turn effect is nice also. I think that’s pretty strong, starting off with 3 Actions. The way it affects other players is… okay. I don’t think that’s all that interesting, but hey! Rest of the card gets a thumbs up from me! And thankfully, it also affects yourself, so that’s more mitigable.
Small suggestion: The top part could be: “Reveal any number of Silvers from your hand for +1 Card each.” That way, if you don’t have any Silvers in hand, you won’t have to uselessly expose your hand.
Tab (Project)
The first card you buy each turn, you may buy as though you do not have 
. The card’s cost may be replaced with that much .
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At the end of the game, -1 per 
you have.
Um, this is a little complicated for a Project, in my opinion. I feel like I have to grind my gears to understand how this works, and to figure out the gameplay implications of it. From what I’m understanding, this exists so that you can buy cards willy-nilly without a care of their cost, but you suffer a huge
loss at the end if you stack it up too much. I have difficulty seeing how I’d be using this, whereas with other existing Projects I immediately go: “Ah-ha! Got it.” But this is Variant land, so we can get wacky all we want, fortunately. And this Project certainly has that wackiness going for it!
Tavern (Action)
+1 Card
+3 Actions
+1 Buy
If you have another Tavern in play, take Tipsy.
Tipsy (State)
The next time you play a card that gives at least +2 Actions, get +1 Card and +1 Action less and return this.
Well, a tavern is definitely invocative of alcohol! I suppose the name is a little too close to the Tavern mat, but this is hardly a concern.
Tavern is reminiscent of Snowy Village, but it does less and costs more. Therefore, I expect the downside to be more lenient than that card. It gives you a penalty State. It’ll typically affect your next conventional village played, reducing it to a Ruined Village. I don’t think this is as bad as Snowy Village, so hurray! Plus, there are ways to mitigate the downside. Farming Village and Squire, for instance, remove that floating “-1 Card” token you have without sacrificing a card draw in the process!
There are a couple of rules weirdness with the Tipsy State. I won’t look for the right off the bat, but I’m pretty positive it’s there. Way of the Chameleon anyone? Enchantress? The rulebook should cover these edge cases. All in all, while a little convoluted, I think there’s an interesting take on Snowy Village here.
Tavern (Action – Duration – Reaction)
Either now or at the start of your next turn, +.
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When another player gains a Treasure, you may play this from your hand.
What I said about the name of the previously judged Tavern also applies here, I suppose. So, let’s not dwell too much on that.
Well as far as cheap cards go, this is pretty nice. You’ll pick this up every now and then. It’s seriously a middle of the pack card, so I don’t know what else I can say about it. Orange and blue cards often have interesting gameplay applications to them, and this here Tavern is no different. I seriously would’ve loved if it could react to your own Treasure gains. Otherwise, it’s too much of a gamble. If terminal space is tough to come by, I would’ve happily overstretched it with Taverns if I could make it react on my own. Anyway, something to consider!
Trappist (Action – Reserve)
If you don’t have a token on your Trappist Mat, place one on the “Trash a card from your hand” spot. Put this on your Tavern Mat.
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At the start of your turn, you may call this to take your bonus from the Trappist Mat. If you don’t, choose one: Advance your Trappist tokens; or add a Trappist token.
Okay, well. This is
really complicated. Even before jumping in to analyse the card, I can tell you this: this one Kingdom card involves 2 mats at once. This is too much, in my opinion. The idea of upgrading tokens sounds cute, but it’d be better off as its own mechanism instead of trying to cram all rules onto one card. For instance, what does “advancing” a Trappist token mean? Does it mean moving it one space to the right on your mat? I expect that this is the case. Okay so one question down, second question about this one Kingdom card: Do you get all of the left bonuses from the position of your Trappist token when you remove it from the Trappist mat? Anyway, I could go on. Point is, while fun, this is a little too much. I’d rather see such a minigame expanded and bounded by global rules instead of having one card seizing it all for itself.
And shoot, right after writing this, I just noticed that you added some rules clarifications under your post. Well, by the sheer amount of text used to clarify Trappist, surely it can become good friends with Possession.
Way of the Drunk (Way)
+1 Action
Turn your deck over so it is face up and shuffle your discard pile then place it face down. Your deck is now your discard pile and your discard pile is now your deck.
Wacky! I tried to make such a concept work for a long time before promptly giving up. So much text for something so un-Dominion-y! Here though, I believe you have found a pretty wise solution. You certainly feel like a drunk, mistaking your deck for your discard pile! Thematically pretty on-point here, I’d say.
Hooooowever. As crazy fun as this sounds, I think that the +1 Action is working against the idea here. Suppose you want to do some gain and play with, say, Ironworks. Or something else. In a well-oiled engine, you’d be able to use this Way often in one turn. And it’s not like it wouldn’t be efficient to do so either. You drew deck so your deck is full at start of turn. You gain a card in your Action phase. You use this Way; now that gained card
is your deck. Draw it. Use the way to create a new deck to isolate a newly gained card again. Rince and repeat. This sounds so cool to pull off! But… it might create a lot of shuffling. Lots and lots of shuffling! Online, it might be less of an issue, though.
Wine Snob (Action)
+
+1 Buy
This turn, Treasures costing or less do nothing when played.
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You can’t buy this if you have any Coppers in play.
This is a pretty generous payload card once you get past the Grand Market restriction. And, not unlike Grand Market, winners win more. By that I mean, it’s easier to add these big Payload cards to your deck, because you can use the ones you bought/gained to help you get there. The Treasures costing less clause is hardly a concern in my opinion, since to get a Wine Snob, you do not want Coppers anyway. Or… a payload in the form of Treasures, for that matter. Maybe you’ll float a Gold or two (to help you get that first/second Wine Snob), but I wouldn’t go beyond that. And even then, Golds are unaffected. I will admit that I am not the biggest Grand Market fan, but Wine Snob feels less bad than it. I prefer this than that frustrating Prosperity card for sure!
Semifinialist: Bacchanal; Barrel; Intoxicate; Round of Shots; Tavern & Tipsy [
Augie279]; Tavern [
Gubump]
Finalists: Celebration; Pint
Winner: Bartender [
LibraryAdventurer]
That’s all she wrote! We might be hedonistic; we might be sinful. It’s all a big party and our lustful desires brings us closer as we clang our ale-filled mugs together – but in the end, it’s the bartender that wins. He/She reels in the night’s profit, and smugly smirks as patrons slowly and sloppily exit his/her establishment. Fitting!
Congrats to LibraryAdventurer, and thank you very much everyone else for participating! See you on the next contest!
Author
Topic: Weekly Design Contest #145: Down the hatch! (Read 6291 times)