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[Nic]

I playtested Landlord (from the Intrigue contest) and I remember it being a lot of fun, but clearly underpowered. It fills a similar niche to Vendor, and merging the two could make a nifty card. Something like 

Vendlord - Action-Victory - $5
+2 Cards
+2 Buys
You may discard a Victory card. If you do, +2 Actions. (Or +1? I dunno)
Worth 1VP per empty Supply pile.

This version of Landlord is almost certainly well-priced, considering how weak the original was. It has one of the components needed to force a 3-pile, but not without a strong deck to back it up.  I don't know how you feel about using other people's cards in your expansion, but I really think that this card (or something close) would work really well in it. I didn't mention it earlier because I didn't know that you also wanted to replace Vendor.

To my eye, Vendlord seems to lack focus. Maybe if I played with it I'd feel differently. But you usually don't mind discarding Victory cards, so it's weird to be rewarded for doing it. It is itself a Victory card, so you can discard one to another, but probably that feels bad. Like, I tried a card that was [+1 Card; +1 Action; +$1 | When you discard this other than during Clean-up, you may set it aside, putting it into your hand at the start of your next turn]. But it rarely felt good to do that trick because often enough you'd rather play it this turn instead.

Anyway, sorry to be so down on it. I'll think about it more. And I'll think about other possibilities for an Action-Victory card for the set. It might be interesting to have one that you could use as a one-shot, but was worth VP if you kept it around. But maybe that's not interesting. Hmm…

I don't think it's meant to be an opportunity for a tactical decision so much as a gate: you either played a Moat or a Lab, depending on whether you have a green card in hand. The reason it was too weak originally was that you need to be actively rewarded for having junk in your deck, rather than just punished less. (I guess it would be more correct to say that Landlord's niche was more like Baron or Stables; it's more that its vanilla bonuses overlapped with Vendor.) From what HeavyD wrote in the Intrigue thread, the meat of the card is below the line and the top can be any machinery that makes you a credible threat for pulling off a quick three-pile. What I wrote was just an attempt to get the appropriate power level.

I actually just meant that I'd remove the comma, but perhaps I should go back to the old "If you do" wording for consistency. I've softened quite a bit on using new phrasings, though. The important thing is that it's unambiguous, which "You may spend a token to do X" is.

Ah, I see. Without the comma it'd be okay. If there are some cards that need the space, then use the succinct version for all of them but Jubilee. Now that you mention abbreviations, didn't you say that in this expansion the words 'in any order' would be implicit every time you topdeck something? I thought those words were removed from Guide for that reason.

EDIT 2:

Canton
Types: Action - Victory
Cost: $5 or $6
Trash this and discard a Gold. If you did, gain a Province.
Worth 2 VP.

Too similar to Farmland, and looks really bad in comparison. Colliding Farmland with $6 is a lot cleaner and less onerous than a Gold and 1 Action, even without discarding the Gold.

EDIT 3: You guys think Auction could cost $2? Probably it could cost $2.

Now that you mention it, yeah. It'll probably be worth $0 on occasion if you buy it too early, and there won't be any benefit in buying more than two or three. I'll be printing out a bunch of cards in the next few days, so if you mock up a version with the new price, I'll use it. (Is there a step-by-step guide for formatting the .pdf to get the cards the right size?)

[silverspawn]

Too similar to Farmland, and looks really bad in comparison. Colliding Farmland with $6 is a lot cleaner and less onerous than a Gold and 1 Action, even without discarding the Gold.

I didn't see this, but it's an excellent point, and I agree.

[dondon151]

How about making Canton at $4 as a Duchy-gainer with a similar collision requirement? Or something of the sort.

[LastFootnote]

I don't think it's meant to be an opportunity for a tactical decision so much as a gate: you either played a Moat or a Lab, depending on whether you have a green card in hand. The reason it was too weak originally was that you need to be actively rewarded for having junk in your deck, rather than just punished less. (I guess it would be more correct to say that Landlord's niche was more like Baron or Stables; it's more that its vanilla bonuses overlapped with Vendor.) From what HeavyD wrote in the Intrigue thread, the meat of the card is below the line and the top can be any machinery that makes you a credible threat for pulling off a quick three-pile. What I wrote was just an attempt to get the appropriate power level.

Ah, gotcha. Now that I've gone back and reviewed Landlord, I see what you did there. Uh, hmm… I'll think about this kind of self-synergizing Action/Victory card.

I'm not so psyched about this formula, honestly, because chances are you're not getting it above 3 VP in most games. I think that makes it less exciting than the other forumla VP cards. Domain has this issue too, but at least it has the added thrill of trying to steal them from your opponents for a big VP swing. I guess it could be 2 VP per empty pile, but then that's probably the whole card. It has to be expensive just for that formula and tacking on an Action would increase its power (and cost) further. The only VP formula card that has another ability is Feodum, and that ability requires you to trash the Feodum itself, so it's kind of self-limiting.

Ah, I see. Without the comma it'd be okay. If there are some cards that need the space, then use the succinct version for all of them but Jubilee. Now that you mention abbreviations, didn't you say that in this expansion the words 'in any order' would be implicit every time you topdeck something? I thought those words were removed from Guide for that reason.

Yeah, but then everybody kept complaining about it. And it turns out that it fits on Dignitary after all, which was the most cramped card that needed it. So I've backpedaled on that.

EDIT 2:

Canton
Types: Action - Victory
Cost: $5 or $6
Trash this and discard a Gold. If you did, gain a Province.
Worth 2 VP.

Too similar to Farmland, and looks really bad in comparison. Colliding Farmland with $6 is a lot cleaner and less onerous than a Gold and 1 Action, even without discarding the Gold.

You are correct. I probably won't bother testing Canton and I'll try to think of another card.

EDIT 3: You guys think Auction could cost $2? Probably it could cost $2.

Now that you mention it, yeah. It'll probably be worth $0 on occasion if you buy it too early, and there won't be any benefit in buying more than two or three. I'll be printing out a bunch of cards in the next few days, so if you mock up a version with the new price, I'll use it. (Is there a step-by-step guide for formatting the .pdf to get the cards the right size?)

The whole point of the pdf format was that I thought it would automatically print the right size. Then I found out from someone that the cards were being printed smaller on their computer/printer. Thanks for nothing, PDF!

I print my cards directly from GIMP, which is the image editing program I use to create the card images. I have step-by-step instructions for using that, if you're interested. IN FACT, if you have GIMP I can just give you .xcf documents to print and you won't even need the step-by-step instructions.

How about making Canton at $4 as a Duchy-gainer with a similar collision requirement? Or something of the sort.

Well, at that point it wouldn't want to be a one-shot, right? A $4 card that conditionally gains a Duchy isn't that strong. And the Duchies run out eventually. I like the idea in general and I'll think more about it. But right now I'm leaning back toward a one-shot that doesn't gain VP but instead has some other powerful but conditional effect. Probably a $5 worth 2 VP again. Again, the VP here is just a consolation prize in case you never manage to activate the card. But unfortunately I can't think of anything better right now.

Wait, what if you had to collide two Cantons together and trash them to gain a Province? Or trash just one and gain a Province? Or maybe a Province and some other bonus?

[Fragasnap]

For what it is worth, I find the the cramped version of Dignitary looks a lot better just because the wording is more accurate. Regardless, cramped wording is not much of an issue on a semantically simple card: One does not have to read Dignitary more than a couple of times to remember what it does.

The vanilla benefit of a $4 Barracks would have to be better than +$2 to make not hunting for Conscripts worthwhile which would be too strong for a $4 card. Fair enough.

Hmm. In general, I try to subscribe to the philosophy of "one concept per card" where possible. Sometimes that's not exciting enough and combining with another concept is just what is needed. But I want to at least try the really simple version first.

Counting Provinces feels a lot like Duke to me. And as Donald said, you already want Provinces in most games, so it's not pushing in a new direction, which formula VP cards generally should. That doesn't mean I won't try any formula, though, if it turns out the cards needs to be more exciting.

The concept of a one-shot Victory card is "which is more valuable: my victory points or my one-shot?"
Canton answers, "my one-shot, 100% of the time."
Canton is not currently pushing in a new direction, Canton is better in a deck with lots of Golds (which you want already) and gives you Provinces (which you want already). The interesting idea to further is to make using its one-shot, even where available, questionable. A $6 Canton worth VP per Province might be worth trying to keep even with the option to throw it out for a Province depending upon what other players are doing.

[LastFootnote]

The concept of a one-shot Victory card is "which is more valuable: my victory points or my one-shot?"
Canton answers, "my one-shot, 100% of the time."
Canton is not currently pushing in a new direction, Canton is better in a deck with lots of Golds (which you want already) and gives you Provinces (which you want already). The interesting idea to further is to make using its one-shot, even where available, questionable. A $6 Canton worth VP per Province might be worth trying to keep even with the option to throw it out for a Province depending upon what other players are doing.

Good points. So what you're suggesting is something like this:

Canton
Types: Action – Victory
Cost: $6
You may trash this and discard a Gold from your hand. If you do, gain a Province.
Worth 1 VP per Province in your deck.

That still pushes Gold, which is less than ideal, so what about this:

Canton
Types: Action – Victory
Cost: $6
You may trash a Canton from your hand. If you do, gain a Province.
Worth 1 VP per Province in your deck.

If the goal is to make you decide whether or not to do the one-shot, I don't think either of these works. The only time you're not doing it is when you have 7 or more Provinces, in which case you've probably already won the game. I don't think that's really the interesting concept, though. I'm not certain there's an interesting concept to be had in the space of "one-shot Victory card", but "Do I want to play this" is usually a bad concept in general. Not playing your Action cards generally isn't fun. I guess this could be fixed by having another on-play option. Like, "Choose one: +$2; or trash this and discard X to gain Province".

But maybe I'm misunderstanding your suggestion. I get the formula part, though again, probably by the time you get this up to 5 VP you've won the game.

[Fragasnap]

That still pushes Gold, which is less than ideal

I do not think pushing Gold is necessarily a bad thing. There are games were Gold is more available than others (like Soothsayer and Hoard games), so I think building around cards at that competing price point might be interesting. While cards costing less than Gold would be boring if they encouraged buying Gold, cards that cost as much as Gold are more interesting simply because they compete with it while encouraging it. Not that the trigger for Canton is perfect, but I would not discount interacting with Gold so quickly.

I don't think that's really the interesting concept, though. I'm not certain there's an interesting concept to be had in the space of "one-shot Victory card", but "Do I want to play this" is usually a bad concept in general. Not playing your Action cards generally isn't fun. I guess this could be fixed by having another on-play option. Like, "Choose one: +$2; or trash this and discard X to gain Province".

While "Do I want to play this?" is a concept that leaves bad feelings, a one-shot Victory card needs to be able to function as a Victory card, and sometimes that means it is only a Victory card. You have to shift your perspective since this is more a Victory card that has an Action rather than an Action that is also worth Victory points.

But maybe I'm misunderstanding your suggestion. I get the formula part, though again, probably by the time you get this up to 5 VP you've won the game.

I had not thought of the formula precisely.
I agree that neither of the presented would work. The formula needs to be greater than 1:1 for the reason you point out: get 5 Provinces and you already have more than your share of them. A value of 2VP:1 Province is almost certainly too great, so I was left thinking of 3VP:2 Provinces. However, because Provinces are hard to acquire, we want every Province to be counted, so we have to split the formula into two parts to count both individual Provinces (1VP per Province) as well as every 2 Provinces (plus 1VP per 2 Provinces). Then we hit one further snag, if we round down, even numbered Provinces are value thresholds for Canton. That means that my fourth Province is worth more to me than my third or fifth Province which is a problem when four is the standard fair share, so we must round up rather than down.

Canton
Types: Action, Victory
Cost: $6
You may <do something which involves trashing a Canton>. If you do, gain a Province.Worth 1VP per Province in your deck and 1VP more for every 2 Provinces in your deck, rounded up.

The semantic complexity of both the formula and rounding up I think is manageable if the card is at all an interesting idea since it is only evaluated once at the end of the game. I've been by myself all day though, so maybe I am simply hemorrhaging numbers as I tend to.

I believe that any concept of this card that functions is going to be part of the winning strategy on nearly every board upon which it appears. As I've said before though, this is not a bad thing if Canton-games are an interesting variation from those games which do not use Canton, just as Goons and Ill-Gotten Gains often create fun games despite being so dominant.

I am optimistic that an idea shaped like this could work and create an interesting game state, but I have a hard time envisioning how it would ultimately function, so I struggle to suggest specifics to the card without being able to test it.

[GendoIkari]

You have to shift your perspective since this is more a Victory card that has an Action rather than an Action that is also worth Victory points.

I'm not clear on what you mean by this, but to me it seems more like an action that has a "runner-up prize" of 2 VP when it fails to do the thing you wanted to do with it.

[Fragasnap]

You have to shift your perspective since this is more a Victory card that has an Action rather than an Action that is also worth Victory points.

I'm not clear on what you mean by this, but to me it seems more like an action that has a "runner-up prize" of 2 VP when it fails to do the thing you wanted to do with it.

My post is unclear because the highlighted "this" is unclear. I'm referring to the concept of a one-shot Victory card rather than the Canton presented. I give my apologies; that was poor writing on my part.

LastFootnote points out that being forced to not to play your Actions is boring and makes players feel bad. Those feelings do occur. existing Action-Victory cards are designed to be Action cards that give Victory points: notably, they are designed to be Actions first.
I suggest that a one-shot Victory card needs to be designed as a Victory card first in order to make it compelling. If the card is a Victory card first, players will not have those same bad feelings elicited by being unable to play the Action since they are making an active choice that the Victory points are worth more than the Action, thereby treating the card as a Victory card (and we don't play Victory cards) rather than an Action. Making its Victory points valuable will also mitigate the negative feelings from when its Action cannot be triggered.

[Nic]

The whole point of the pdf format was that I thought it would automatically print the right size. Then I found out from someone that the cards were being printed smaller on their computer/printer. Thanks for nothing, PDF!

I print my cards directly from GIMP, which is the image editing program I use to create the card images. I have step-by-step instructions for using that, if you're interested. IN FACT, if you have GIMP I can just give you .xcf documents to print and you won't even need the step-by-step instructions.

I do have GIMP, but no printer. I would be getting these done at Kinko's, and I doubt they'd be happy with that format.

Now that I stop to think about it, I could compile my own .pdfs in TeX without any trouble, if I knew the exact dimensions of the image. Either millimeters and pixels would be fine; if I had that, I wouldn't have to bug you for anything but the updated Auction. 

[LastFootnote]

Now that I stop to think about it, I could compile my own .pdfs in TeX without any trouble, if I knew the exact dimensions of the image. Either millimeters and pixels would be fine; if I had that, I wouldn't have to bug you for anything but the updated Auction.

Sounds good. Whatever works best for you. I will try to post a zip file with the latest high-resolution images as soon as possible. Each card image is 696px × 1074px. If you arrange them in a 4 × 2 grid (landscape-style), it's a total of 2784px × 2148px. But the actual printing size that you want to scale it to is 236mm × 182mm.

In other news, I thought of a different Trade token-getting mechanic last night. "When you buy this, take a Trade token per Silver you have in play." At first I was thinking of trying it on Cathedral, but I know from past experience that unless a token trasher provides a way to get more tokens later, players will just buy them out for the trashing alone. But it could work perfectly on Barter. Barter's token gaining is already on-buy, and it's a card that you'd sometimes be willing to buy without Trade tokens, but you'd also like to have several (I guess that last part goes for all Trade token cards). To top it off, Silvers make really excellent Barter targets, gaining you $5 cards into your hand. So…

Barter
Types: Action
Cost: $5
+1 Action. Trash a card from your hand. Gain a card costing up to $2 more than it. You may pay a Trade token to put the gained card into your hand.
When you buy this, take a Trade token per Silver you have in play.

Getting pretty wordy (one more line of text), but probably still manageable. What do you guys think?

[pacovf]

What kind of deck does barter help? I haven't tested it, but if it encourages engines, making the trade-gain require silvers may not be the best idea, since engines generally avoid them.

Maybe lodge would be a better fit?

I do like the idea, though!

[LastFootnote]

What kind of deck does barter help? I haven't tested it, but if it encourages engines, making the trade-gain require silvers may not be the best idea, since engines generally avoid them.

Maybe lodge would be a better fit?

I do like the idea, though!

Well, I could resurrect Lodge for this idea. Auction is currently filling my discard-for-coins needs in a more unique way.

It's good to have cards that alter the way you build your deck. It provides new experiences. For this reason, I find "do I want this in the standard engine deck I already build?" to be a poor metric of card quality. If this version of Barter works out, it will be because Barter itself will make you want a few more Silvers in your engine deck.

I do understand what you're saying, though. It's possible that getting those Trade tokens isn't enough of an incentive to pick up another Silver or two. But it's worth testing, is what I'm saying. Ideally you have a deck that can get at least 2 Silvers in your hand at once, then you buy a Barter and maybe cash those Silvers in for some sweet $5 engine pieces.

[pacovf]

Yeah, sorry I went by the card list in the OP, instead of the latest list two pages ago, and I didn't remember lodge was scrapped.

I see what you mean with trying to make a card that pushes new deck archetypes... but I am not sure Barter is achieving that. Of course, I can't know without testing, so my opinion isn't worth much.

IMHO, the "When you buy this, take a Trade token per Silver you have in play" seems conducive to a sort of mega-turn approach, in which you first get "tons" of trade tokens, and then spend them all in one go. Otherwise, it is not really different from a straight "When you buy this, take a Trade token". And Trade-powered Barter doesn't seem to have a big enough payoff in a deck filled with silver, compared to a basic Barter in a more usual sort of engine deck.

Maybe convoy fits it better then?

[silverspawn]

powerlevel aside, it looks like a neat idea. I don't think the silver <-> engine contradiction is a bad thing. but does the card really need a buff? it seems plenty strong already.

[LastFootnote]

Yeah, sorry I went by the card list in the OP, instead of the latest list two pages ago, and I didn't remember lodge was scrapped.

I see what you mean with trying to make a card that pushes new deck archetypes... but I am not sure Barter is achieving that. Of course, I can't know without testing, so my opinion isn't worth much.

IMHO, the "When you buy this, take a Trade token per Silver you have in play" seems conducive to a sort of mega-turn approach, in which you first get "tons" of trade tokens, and then spend them all in one go. Otherwise, it is not really different from a straight "When you buy this, take a Trade token". And Trade-powered Barter doesn't seem to have a big enough payoff in a deck filled with silver, compared to a basic Barter in a more usual sort of engine deck.

Maybe convoy fits it better then?

If it doesn't work on Barter, I agree that Convoy is another promising place to try it. The biggest advantage of putting it on Barter is that its token gaining already has to be on-buy. And even if players don't notice that it's on-buy instead of on-gain, it won't matter as often. Technically, this new trigger could also be on-gain, and you'd only be able to do crazy things with a combination of Black Market, Fortress, and Exchange. And that would be acceptable. So that's an alternative advantage; it would allow Barter's token gaining to be on-gain.

I don't think you have to be building a megaturn to make this version of Barter worthwhile. Probably you don't want a ton of Barters, which is part of the reason I want to try this; it should make it easier to get more tokens with fewer Barters in your deck. I know from experience that one token is enough to make a Barter decent. Two tokens is probably enough to make it quite a good deal. I mean you only use it to gain Actions and Treasures so many times before the endgame rolls around and you're gaining Victory cards instead. And usually you don't care about putting those into your deck.

The whole point of using tokens on Barter is to keep it from going too nuts. If you've already built a deck that overdraws itself every turn, then the proportion of times you play Barter without getting the token boost goes way up. And that's good. At that point you can maybe draw the cards you're gaining with Barter in the same turn anyway; you don't need Barter to do it for you.

[LastFootnote]

powerlevel aside, it looks like a neat idea. I don't think the silver <-> engine contradiction is a bad thing. but does the card really need a buff? it seems plenty strong already.

The one-token version has been decently strong. Maybe the two-token version would be too strong; I hadn't been able to test it yet. The Silver-token version makes opening with Barter worse, but makes it potentially stronger if you can get more than one token. More than strength, this change is about adding an interesting token-gaining mechanic and helping you remember that Barter's token gaining isn't the same as the other Trade token cards (for Fortress reasons).

[Nic]

Sounds good. Whatever works best for you. I will try to post a zip file with the latest high-resolution images as soon as possible. Each card image is 696px × 1074px. If you arrange them in a 4 × 2 grid (landscape-style), it's a total of 2784px × 2148px. But the actual printing size that you want to scale it to is 236mm × 182mm.

Perfect. I was planning on printing out . Will the $2 Auction be in the .zip file?

In other news, I thought of a different Trade token-getting mechanic last night. "When you buy this, take a Trade token per Silver you have in play." At first I was thinking of trying it on Cathedral, but I know from past experience that unless a token trasher provides a way to get more tokens later, players will just buy them out for the trashing alone. But it could work perfectly on Barter. Barter's token gaining is already on-buy, and it's a card that you'd sometimes be willing to buy without Trade tokens, but you'd also like to have several (I guess that last part goes for all Trade token cards). To top it off, Silvers make really excellent Barter targets, gaining you $5 cards into your hand. So…

Barter
Types: Action
Cost: $5
+1 Action. Trash a card from your hand. Gain a card costing up to $2 more than it. You may pay a Trade token to put the gained card into your hand.
When you buy this, take a Trade token per Silver you have in play.

Getting pretty wordy (one more line of text), but probably still manageable. What do you guys think?

It's clever, and I certainly don't think it's a buff compared to a flat 2 tokens. But that extra line comes at a cost, and it's best to be wary about taking a card that's already fine and merging it with an unrelated idea. If the playtesters really don't get the difference between 'buy' and 'gain', then this could be a good fix. Otherwise, leave it as it is.

[Co0kieL0rd]

It's great to see that you keep working on your set and came up with tweaks and new ideas. Alas, I couldn't contribute as much as I wanted to because I have little time. Any every time I look into this thread and something comes to my mind, there have been tons of new posts I need to read to keep track of the discussion. Hopefully I can add something productive:

I like your aesthetic improvements. The new cards look nice and shiny!

Auction: At first glance a few months ago, I said I liked Auction. It's interesting enough to be worth trying. But I can hardly think of any case where it's worth buying, especially multiple copies of it. It doesn't fit in engines because you want to play all the actions and trash the other cards. It doesn't help Big Money more than Silver because with a high treasure density in your deck, especially with Golds, you don't want to discard them all to a "Secret Chamber that can't be drawn dead". Secret Chamber is a bad card. But Auction benefits very little from being a treasure because having multiples in one hand doesn’t help you at all. I would be sad if Auction was the only source of +Buy in a kingdom. It might be okay in a slog-ish game with decent drawing potential and viable Alt-VP. Auction can be a little better than Silver when you open with it, provided you draw it with Estates, but IMO it is outclassed by many $3-cost cards and possibly even by Silver. It might be acceptable at $2.

Convoy: I like Convoy or Guide either way. Stick to what you like best. I prefer the rephrasing “You may pay a Trade token to do X” but would also advice to scratch the comma. This isn’t Magic The Gathering where every punctuation mark matters. Here it just looks misplaced.

Gambler and Vendor: I can definitely see Fragasnap‘s point in that Gambler and Vendor perform similar actions when trashed but I comply with the popular opinion that Gambler is the more interesting card although it mostly provides non-decisions and can be frustrating. Opening double Gambler seems pretty strong; If you directly draw your other Gambler with the +1 Card, you end up with 5 cards in hand and trashed 2 from your deck. Even if you reveal your other Gambler and put it into your hand, you end up with 6 cards in hand and trashed 1 from your deck. It seems a touch too powerful for a $3-cost card, so you should at least test it at $4.
Vendor isn’t bad or anything… it’s not even that similar to Gambler due to the significant cost gap and the fact that Vendor wants treasures in your deck. But it’s similar to Stables, as you mentioned, and not very exciting overall. If you want to scratch one of these two, I suggest go with Vendor.

Refurbish: It’s off-theme and that might be reason enough to replace it. But it’s totally an interesting concept that could hopefully be implemented somewhere else, if not in this set.

Committee: I always loved Committee because it’s so innovative. Yet, similarly to Gambler, most times you play it, it’s a non-decision which card to choose and what to do with the chosen card. It’s those few other times where the decision is non-trivial that makes the card really interesting! Also it seems adequately priced.

Dignitary: This is another card I always liked. It seems pretty useful and innovative. Yes, technically it needs the line “Put the rest back in any order” but you can assume some common sense in players, at least when making a fan expansion. I’m working on a set myself and sometimes feel the need to add more text just to exclude unwanted wonkiness in some edge cases. But it’s a fine line between making things clear and presuming that all players are morons. For the sake of brevity of card texts (which I know you like), just stick with the version on page 28.

Barrister: By now, I made friends with the new version (I liked the old one, too). I just wish that Domains were associated with at least one other card additionally because I think they’re cool
I have a question (now I hope that I don’t seem like a moron): Do you put the treasure from the trash into your hand, too, or just in case you choose the Silver?

Barter: With the 2 Trade Tokens gained on-buy unconditionally, it seems really pretty strong to me. Even with no other sources of TT around, gaining and playing a powerful action card in the same turn can be a big boost. But I’m not sure if gaining 1 TT (or 1 TT per Silver you have in play) when you buy it are optimal. This should be tested carefully.

Conclave: I liked the old name more but, as I said, do whatever you like best. The change in wording is very elegant, in my opinion! Seems a good card to me.

General: You decided to change the wording a little so that forgetting to top-deck the card isn’t considered cheating. This a tough case to me because on one side, you want to avoid situations like that. On the other side, this makes General a little more powerful if we assume that good players deliberately choose the better option. The old version of General forced you to seed your next hand with the one-shot you played twice this turn, enticing you to play it again and ultimately losing it then (if you don’t have another General). The new version makes it easier to keep your one-shots. But maybe this is the boost General needed to become sufficiently better than Throne Room in order to justify the significant jump from $4 to $5. In general, General a good card and a clever addition to the set =)

Conscripts: There’s so much discussion going on about Conscripts and Barracks and Recruiter that I can hardly follow which are the current tendencies for each of these cards to become. The old Conscripts that just gave out Curses were definitely too strong with Recruiter, with Barracks I’m not sure. Now they seem adequate with Barracks but perhaps a little weak with Recruiter. Again I’m not sure here. They should be tested thoroughly. I feel that theorizing about it won’t help to assess how the cards ultimately play out.

I print my cards directly from GIMP, which is the image editing program I use to create the card images. I have step-by-step instructions for using that, if you're interested. IN FACT, if you have GIMP I can just give you .xcf documents to print and you won't even need the step-by-step instructions.

I would very much like the step-by-step instructions and the .xcf documents Could you upload them somewhere?

[LibraryAdventurer]

In other news, I thought of a different Trade token-getting mechanic last night. "When you buy this, take a Trade token per Silver you have in play." At first I was thinking of trying it on Cathedral, but I know from past experience that unless a token trasher provides a way to get more tokens later, players will just buy them out for the trashing alone. But it could work perfectly on Barter. Barter's token gaining is already on-buy, and it's a card that you'd sometimes be willing to buy without Trade tokens, but you'd also like to have several (I guess that last part goes for all Trade token cards). To top it off, Silvers make really excellent Barter targets, gaining you $5 cards into your hand. So…

Barter
Types: Action
Cost: $5
+1 Action. Trash a card from your hand. Gain a card costing up to $2 more than it. You may pay a Trade token to put the gained card into your hand.
When you buy this, take a Trade token per Silver you have in play.

Getting pretty wordy (one more line of text), but probably still manageable. What do you guys think?

I like it. I thought the card seemed kinda uninteresting before, but this makes it interesting. It could get pretty powerful combined with a silver-gainer (like refurbish) though.

[LastFootnote]

Thanks for the feedback, Co0kieL0rd!

Auction: At first glance a few months ago, I said I liked Auction. It's interesting enough to be worth trying. But I can hardly think of any case where it's worth buying, especially multiple copies of it. It doesn't fit in engines because you want to play all the actions and trash the other cards. It doesn't help Big Money more than Silver because with a high treasure density in your deck, especially with Golds, you don't want to discard them all to a "Secret Chamber that can't be drawn dead". Secret Chamber is a bad card. But Auction benefits very little from being a treasure because having multiples in one hand doesn’t help you at all. I would be sad if Auction was the only source of +Buy in a kingdom. It might be okay in a slog-ish game with decent drawing potential and viable Alt-VP. Auction can be a little better than Silver when you open with it, provided you draw it with Estates, but IMO it is outclassed by many $3-cost cards and possibly even by Silver. It might be acceptable at $2.

I certainly plan to try it at $2 and have (just now) updated the image accordingly. I'm not sure I understand your analysis 100%. You don't have to discard your Golds to Auction. You just play your Golds (and Silvers, etc.) before you play Auction. That's why it can say "discard your hand": under normal circumstances you're not losing anything by playing it last.

The way I look at it is this. For a while Alchemy was going to have [+1 Action; +1 Buy; +$1] for $2. Eventually it came back as Candlestick Maker. Candlestick Maker is obviously a bit stronger than that, but [+1 Action; +1 Buy; +$1] is in the ballpark for $2. As long as you have at least one deal card to discard, Auction is that good. Slightly better because you can't draw it dead, but also worse because you can't stack them. But if you have more than one dead card to discard, it quickly becomes better.

It's definitely possible that Auction is a dud, but I don't think it's obviously awful at $2.

Opening double Gambler seems pretty strong; If you directly draw your other Gambler with the +1 Card, you end up with 5 cards in hand and trashed 2 from your deck. Even if you reveal your other Gambler and put it into your hand, you end up with 6 cards in hand and trashed 1 from your deck. It seems a touch too powerful for a $3-cost card, so you should at least test it at $4.

Well, Gambler's weakness is its unreliability. You can look at Tribute and say, "Look at how ridiculously good this is when you get exactly what you want!" And it is. But it costs $5 despite the fact that it could be [+2 Cards; +2 Actions] or [+2 Cards; +$2] because it's not reliable. It's very possible that Gambler might work at $4, but that's not a good reason to cost it at $4 if it's not too strong at $3. It might be too strong for $3, but I haven't seen evidence that that's actually the case.

Dignitary: This is another card I always liked. It seems pretty useful and innovative. Yes, technically it needs the line “Put the rest back in any order” but you can assume some common sense in players, at least when making a fan expansion. I’m working on a set myself and sometimes feel the need to add more text just to exclude unwanted wonkiness in some edge cases. But it’s a fine line between making things clear and presuming that all players are morons. For the sake of brevity of card texts (which I know you like), just stick with the version on page 28.

I appreciate that, but I've made my peace with the new version that spells it all out. It's what the people want! And at least the card isn't actually any more complex than it was.

Barrister: By now, I made friends with the new version (I liked the old one, too). I just wish that Domains were associated with at least one other card additionally because I think they’re cool
I have a question (now I hope that I don’t seem like a moron): Do you put the treasure from the trash into your hand, too, or just in case you choose the Silver?

You put the gained card into your hand whether it's a Treasure from the trash or a Silver from the Supply. It actually kind of nerfs gaining Domains (compared to the +$2 you get from gaining Silver), but whatcha gonna do. No space on the card to buff that. And probably you want that Domain anyway. It's probably either a 3-point swing for you or the player you stole it from.

Conclave: I liked the old name more but, as I said, do whatever you like best. The change in wording is very elegant, in my opinion! Seems a good card to me.

Thanks! "Convocation" is just any large meeting or gathering. "Conclave"—a secret meeting—is actually more the concept I was originally going for. Hence the art. And it's half as many syllables. So there's that.

General: You decided to change the wording a little so that forgetting to top-deck the card isn’t considered cheating. This a tough case to me because on one side, you want to avoid situations like that. On the other side, this makes General a little more powerful if we assume that good players deliberately choose the better option. The old version of General forced you to seed your next hand with the one-shot you played twice this turn, enticing you to play it again and ultimately losing it then (if you don’t have another General). The new version makes it easier to keep your one-shots. But maybe this is the boost General needed to become sufficiently better than Throne Room in order to justify the significant jump from $4 to $5. In general, General a good card and a clever addition to the set =)

I think in practice it's not much of a buff. I mean even if you decide not to topdeck your one-shot, that doesn't mean it'll necessarily collide with your General next shuffle. Probably topdecking the card is almost always the best move. And when it's not, I can probably live with that small buff.

I would very much like the step-by-step instructions and the .xcf documents Could you upload them somewhere?

Yes, I will endeavor to get them up (along with the high-res images for Nic) tomorrow evening, though I make no guarantees. Life has been hectic lately!

[Co0kieL0rd]

I certainly plan to try it at $2 and have (just now) updated the image accordingly. I'm not sure I understand your analysis 100%. You don't have to discard your Golds to Auction. You just play your Golds (and Silvers, etc.) before you play Auction. That's why it can say "discard your hand": under normal circumstances you're not losing anything by playing it last.

Oh man, I totally forgot that you can play your treasures in any order Okay, it's still a Secret Chamber with +buy that can't be drawn dead but it's not as awful as I said it was. Its lack of stackability is still not great but at least it's strictly better than SC's action part. But SC is also a (bad) reaction so I don't know if it should be $2 or $3 in comparison to it. I'm also not sure how significant the gap between $2 and $3 is - probably not as significant than from $4 to $5. On the other hand, a cost of $2 means you can open Auction/$5-cost which certainly makes a difference...

[LastFootnote]

OK, here is a .zip file that contains the high-res .png images of the cards. It has the simpler version of Barracks and doesn't have Recruiter, but does have Profiteer.

I will try to get some .xcf grids together soon (assuming they're small enough to post on here). Or you can create printable grids yourself using these images and the dimensions I gave earlier (new document 2784px by 2148px, then print size is 236mm by 182mm).

[mustang255]

Review of the set: http://souvagames.blogspot.ca/2014/10/dominion-enterprise.html

[LastFootnote]

Review of the set: http://souvagames.blogspot.ca/2014/10/dominion-enterprise.html

I can't seem to comment on the review there, so here is my response:


Thanks for the review! Sorry for pulling some of those images out from under you. Auction now costs $2, as you suggest. Convoy, Craftsman, Terrace, and Cathedral are functionally unchanged. They just had an unnecessary comma removed. Dignitary has clearer wording on the top. Exchange now gains a token per Silver you have in play when you buy it, rather than a flat 2 tokens.

Jubilee originally trashed itself. Players liked it this way better because you can actually use it as a reliable village that you have to buy back.

Redistrict: Man, the whole point of the wording is to be clear. The "chosen card" is the one you "choose" at the top of the card. I'm not sure how I could make that more clear. The fact that you can gain a card costing $2 more without gaining one costing $1 more is a side-effect of this wording.

Auction: All Treasure cards that do something on-play say, "When you play this…" Most that are worth varying amounts say, "Worth…"

The exciting part of Convoy is "Play this again". If you have 4 Trade tokens, you can play the same Convoy 5 times in a row.

Committee: "If you did" is necessary to avoid players gaining Provinces (or Colonies in a Colony game) when they have just one kind of card in their deck/discard. If you didn't reveal 2 differently named cards, you don't gain or trash anything.

Recruiter may die. I am trying Profiteer again and I really don't need 3 Conscripts gainers.

Sorry you don't like Axeman! In my experience it's way less harsh than Saboteur or Pillage. There's a lot of strategy in deciding what to trash and replace it with. Say your hand is Copper Copper Copper Gold Village. Trash the Gold and put a Margrave on your deck to draw with your Village!

I'm glad you like Conclave! It's been a divisive card, with some disliking that it's often a better Lab. Sometimes it just draws you a single card, though. I have seen that happen a fair amount.

Simplifying General is not off the table. The "don't remove this from play" is to synergize with the optional one-shots in the set like Conscripts, Gambler, and Vendor. Without that clause, it's a better, simpler card, but not a good fit for this set. Although the clause is awkward, it is nice for tracking purposes.