I refined most of this a lot, so I made a new topic as it is vastly different. You can find the new topic here: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=2910.0
Thanks to everyone who helped me with things. 
Good news everyone! I developed a new fan card expansion for your favourite board game.
The theme:The theme of this expansion is hard to describe. One person in our playing group once stated that he'd like to lengthen the game somehow. I initially thought that this might be a very bad idea, as longer games will often mean even less fun and longer raging for the people who are losing, while the fun that the person who is winning is having will basically stay the same. Too many games are decided early on in Dominion for this. That's why it is very hard to artificially prolong the game while keeping it fun without watering it down to a state where luck plays a far greater factor than decisions.
So I took a quite different approach. I developed some cards that will somewhat prolong the game - be it either through things like curses or through additional kingdom piles - and some cards that can shorten the game, sometimes even radically. As a side effect of this there are quite a few trashers in this set. That's why I do not recommend using the majority of these cards in a game. You should use them in completely randomized games or - if you really really like them - randomly select three or four cards of this set and mix them with seven (or six) other randomly selected cards from the official (or fan) expansions.
So the theme can be described as "changing the timing in games".
That's why I (at least temporarily) call it Lapse. Until I come up with a better name.
New rule(s) and what this topic actually is about:Before I'll show you the cards, there is a new rule for the game when you use cards from this expansions: As soon as there are at least 12 Kingdom card piles the winning condition regarding empty piles is 4 empty piles. There are four cards in this set that add additional piles to the Kingdom (just like Young Witch, which too adds an additional pile to the Kingdom). All four of these are treated like Prosperity cards, so if you use them they will increase the chance of Colonies and Platinum being used in the game.
A "Curse card" is any card that has "Curse" on the bottom line. This set includes an additional "Action - Curse" card called Blasphemy. If a card says "Curse" it means only the standard Curse. So when someone plays a Mountebank you can not discard a Blasphemy. But some cards in this set refer to "Curse cards", just like cards in official Dominion expansions refer to "Action cards" or "Treasure cards".
When a card says "play an Action card" it lets you play the Action card for free. Take Throne Room as an example. You do not have to pay one of your Actions for the Action card you play twice with the help of Throne Room, you only have to pay the initial Action for your Throne Room.
Apart from that this is a debugging topic. It is not about showing you 16 perfectly balanced cards. I playtested most of them in solo games and I will (probably) test them this weekend in real games, but there are so much combinations that I can not possibly think of all of them. So there might be some poor interactions you can tell me about.
Besides that you could help me with the wording on some cards. As you might have noticed I am not a native speaker and as a result some wording on the cards might be overdone and could be expressed in fewer words. At first some of the cards may seem utterly complicated, but actually they are not harder to grasp than the "Jack of all Trades" and I just feel like I have used to much words for some of them. As a result it may be the case that you can't read the wording on some cards with lots of text, so just click them to get to a higher resolution version of them.
edit: Recent card changes are hidden in the discussion in this topic. I marked every recently changed card in this posts in blue and will update this post and the pictures as soon as the changes solidify a bit.The Cards: (finally!)
Baldachin: This is the newest card in the set, so it has not yet received much playtesting. I decided to include a 2$ card and this is what I came up with. As the name suggest it is a Throne Room variant. I included a choice for a (mostly bad) Cellar-like effect so it is not completely useless in Kingdoms without any villages.
It can also be comboed with Hourglass (another card from this set) to achieve a pseudo Scheme effect, even without any +Actions in the Kingdom.
edit: Will receive "(except Baldachins)" as an addition to the pickup action, because of possible infinite combos. (Thanks heron)Will receive changes to make it easier to keep track of which cards you picked up.
Drunkard: The Potion card of the set. Ever had the Potion pile run out? Now you can. Obviously this is a card that can speed up games in the right circumstances. Profits hugely from slim decks and kind of removes the "that potion could have been a silver" rule. The first version let you gain the Potion before you drew cards, but that turned out to be ridiculously strong in very slim decks.
Comboes well with villages and card drawers.
edit: Might receive a buff.
Polycephaly: What happens if you combine an early game trasher that can trash up to 4 cards in a five card hand with a non-terminal silver for 3$? Overpowered. But what if you gave the trashing a rule that most likely makes the card a dead card afterwards?
This might need a little rule clarification; you have to trash two of every card from which you have at least two copies in your hand. So in a hand with Copper/Copper/Estate/Estate/Polycephaly you trash both Coppers and both Estates. In a hand with Estate/Copper/Copper/Copper/Polycephaly you have to trash two Coppers and nothing else. In a hand with 4 Coppers and Polycephaly you have to trash exactly 2 Coppers, not 4.
As soon as you draw this with two Silvers/Golds (or two identical Actions that you wanna keep) you will probably not play this as you'd have to trash your Silvers/Golds or Actions.
I will not lie to you, this is a very strong trasher, and in the right Kingdoms (where you can get rid of it in some way afterwards or it does not hurt you as you will draw your whole deck anyways) this is nearly as much of a gamechanger as Chapel.
I think the card needs better wording in english though.
edit: Receives a change in phrasing to make it easier to understand. Current idea is "Reveal your hand. Trash exactly two copies of every card you revealed at least two copies of."Tell me if you can find better words for it.
Troll: The idea behind the card is that the Troll is raiding the villages. Started out as an attack card that let you take Treasure cards from other players hands who revealed villages, however it was to reliant on villages being in the Kingdom and was either too strong or far to weak. It also lead to not buying villages at all. If no player can reveal a village or other cards that give +2 Actions the Troll gets mad so you have to trash it. This makes it useful in Kingdoms without any villages as it basically makes it a one-shot village with +3 Actions and a little $ bonus.
Acts well in Kingdoms with expensive villages and in Kingdoms without any villages. Comboes with Hanging Gardens (another card from this set).
edit: Will be simplified.
Vize Chancellor: The "village" of the set. Does not let you draw any cards though. Comboes well with cards that let you see the top cards of your deck, cards that leave junk at the top of your deck and cards that act on your discard pile (a.E. Inn or Excorcist (another card from this set)). Also lets you hit the shuffle faster, but does not do it as good as the "real" Chancellor.
edit: Will receive a choice to discard the cards without looking at them. "You may discard the top four cards of your deck."
(click to see full resolution image)Carpenter: The reaction card of the set. The normal action is more or less a non-terminal copper. The reaction part either lets you play an Action card you gain immediately (and without costing an Action) in your turn or lets you play three Action cards in your next turn if it is not your turn (the one you gained and set aside, the Carpenter you set aside and another one from your hand because you played a Carpenter). Also note that Blasphemy (the special Curse card in this set) is an Action card and you can get rid of it in the turn after you get it without costing you an Action and play another Action card for free. Other situations where you gain Action cards outside of your turn can occur with cards like Swindler, Saboteur or Ambassador. It used to let you play Action cards you gained in your buy phase but that led to some complicated behaviour with a few cards (like Peddler) and was ridiculously strong in some situations.
However, the card might receive a buff and get +2$ on it instead of +1$. Needs further testing.
Comboes well with Remodel-variants, Workshop, Ironworks, Peddler (as you can have at least two Actions in play while only paying one Action for the Carpenter), Swindler, Saboteur, Minion (with the right deck constellation giving you +3$ per Minion played for +2$ and +1$ per Minion played for new cards), Accurst and a lot more.
The most notable combination however is with itself. If you have a hand of Carpenter/Carpenter/Carpenter/Carpenter/Militia you can simply play the Carpenters with Carpenters and end the chain with the Militia and buy a Gold. Awesome card.
edit: Will receive +$2 and +1Action instead of play another card. The reaction part will be simplified a bit.
Excorcist: A trash for benefit card. You have to trash at least 1 card from your discard pile (unless you do not have a discard pile) and can trash 4 at most. The other card in Dominion that can trash for VP (the Bishop) has the downside of letting other players trash cards. This one has several downsides too. The most important one is that it is quite a bad early game trasher. While it gives you VP you can either only trash 1 card or get a curse and trash the Excorcist. And then you'll need to buy another Excorcist. It shines in the endgame where you can get 5 VP or even 6 VP at once (6 when the Curse pile is empty). It also shines when you gain Curses through other cards. The other downside is that you can only trash from your discard pile and not from your hand.
Besides the usefulness for VP in the endgame there are quite a few combos that let you set up an Excorcist "engine" that can be a valid alternative strategy for winning the game, especially if the other players rely on Curse givers. An exceedingly exciting combo can be achieved when Blasphemy (the special Curse card in this set) is in the Kingdom. Just think of the fact that you have to put a Blasphemy into your hand when you trash it (and discard it at the end of your turn, so it is in your discard pile again).
edit: Will be changed to
"and trash up to 4 cards from it"
Hourglass: A Silver for $4 that lets you put unplayed Action cards back onto your deck. "Ideally, you do not have unplayed Action cards" is what you might want to say. But even when you play (and shuffle) ideally, there are situations where you're not playing an Action card although you could. Like when you would hit a reshuffle with a card drawer. It can also be comboed with Baldachin (another card from this set) to form a pseudo Scheme. It has the downside of forcing you to put back an Action card when you have one though, so it is not always the better choice to pick this instead of a Silver for 4$.
Another good use for this card is to force combos. Just never play your Goons and set them back to the top of your deck so you'll draw them with your King's Court. There are also three cards in this set that profit hugely from being comboed with specific other cards. Like when you put back played Action cards with Scheme, this has the downside that you'll discard it and not have it in your next turn (unless you can put it back with another card, like Herbalist). However it has the upside that it is basically still a Silver.
This card started with a cost of 5$, but I soon noticed that it is not that strong. It is still very useful though, especially if you want to increase your chance of hitting a specific Action combo in the Kingdom.
(click to see full resolution image)Librarian: Here we are. The first of four cards in this set that force an additional Kingdom pile and also the most complicated card in the set. -1 Action means literally that: minus 1 Action. It does not mean that you can not play this card when you only have one Action, but it does mean that you'll have no Actions left if you play this while having two Actions (and one Action left when you play this while having three Actions, etc.). This card was at 5$ first, but felt weak, because the combo with Library was harder to achieve. It then went to 4$ but felt too strong in engine decks. So I just gave it -1 Action so it is nerfed down in engine decks while staying the same in other circumstances.
Without a Library this is just a better Cellar (that distracts an Action from you) but if you trash a Library it gains you a Gold and has a Library like effect (without being able to set aside Action cards) that occurs twice if you trash cards inbetween. The Cellar like effect helps you with getting a Library to trash into your hand. It also lets you put good cards under your deck (so you can draw them with the Library effect) or bad cards under your deck (so you can trash them after drawing them) and anything inbetween. You can put two Gold and two Copper under your deck, draw the Copper with the Library effect, trash them, and then draw your Gold with the second Library effect.
Please note that everything after "You may trash a Library" only occurs if you trash a Library. Also note that this card is handled like a Prosperity card, so it increases the chance that you play with Colonies and Platinum.
edit: Will be reworked. Current version is:"Librarian - Action - $4
Reveal any number of cards from your hand and put them below your deck. Draw until you have 4 cards in hand.
You may discard a Library from your hand. If you do: Reveal cards from your deck until you revealed 4 cards that are not Victory cards. Put them into your hand and discard the other cards."
Sawmill: The second card that forces an additional Kingdom Pile. It is very simple. It is just a cantrip that either lets you play a Woodcutter for free or lets you gain a Woodcutter for free. I just felt Woodcutters could receive some sort of buff and this makes them nearly cantrips or silvers with +Buy.
Comboes well with Gardens, Hanging Gardens, ending games early and everything that profits from lots of +Buys.
This card is handled like a Prosperity card too, so it increases the chance that you play with Colonies and Platinum.
(click to see full resolution image)Turncoat: The third card that forces an additional Kingdom pile. Somewhat special because it can be an Attack card that you can not protect against, but the attack itself is somewhat weak. Has been playtested very little, but feels relatively fine although it has very little benefit without a Council Room. If a player draws a face up Turncoat outside of the turn where it has been placed nothing happens. It will simply be his own card then.
As said, needs further playtesting, might need some changes (maybe it will become a cantrip). But I really like the concept.
Like the other cards that add additional Kingdom piles, this too is handled like a Prosperity card.
edit: The cards image is missing the line "Your left neighbour draws a card." at the end of the top part.Will either be scrapped or completely reworked.
Copper Smelt: When I first presented this card the reaction was pretty much more or less like "WTF!?".
On the first glance this card looks like overpriced junk that benefits you once or twice in a game. But besides obvious (and rare) combinations like with Copper Smith, Gardens and Hanging Gardens (another card from this set) this card has a lot of uses. It can slim your deck and trash your coppers without hurting your buying power at that turn. It can be used to gain Copper when you need that extra 3$ in buying power for the price of spamming your deck with Coppers. In that case it brings you 4$, which (for the moment) is better than a Gold in your hand. But it also can be chained with itself. Two Copper Smelts in your hand are actually a Platinum for the price of 2x5$. You play the first one, take three Coppers and use the second one to trash the three Coppers you just gained. With three Copper Smelts in your hand you can take six coppers and then trash them, for a whopping 9$ of buying power without them spamming your deck.
It can be quite a strong Treasure card. But it can also backfire. Copper can run out and as soon as you take three Copper because you need the buying power (or you have to take three Copper because you have no Copper to trash in your hand) you slim the chances of drawing your Copper Smelts together.
I playtested this quite a bit and have yet to encounter a game where this card is not worth 5$ or it is worth far more than 5$. Feels really balanced on the one hand, but I still fear there are some far too strong interactions with other cards that I have not encountered or thought of yet.
edit: Might be nerfed down a bit. Not sure yet how.
Galvanize: This started as a non-duration card that forced Spies as an additional Kingom pile and made spies produce 1$ more per turn. It felt boring and dull and I figured that it would lead to annoying real-life games where several players start to play a Spy engine and think for half of the game if they should discard this or that card or put it back. So I just let it die. A few days ago I realized that this set had no duration card so I reanimated the concept of that Spy card. The first version of the duration card was basically the same, but it missed the part in brackets that forces you to name the same card if you play it more than once per turn. In solo games I lost track of which specific cards where named by specific players with which Galvanize. My first thought was forcing a player to put a card from his hand onto the Galvanize but that would be too much of a nerf. So I just limited each player to only name one card. You can easily keep track of this by just turning the head of the Kingdom pile of the named card to the player who named it.
Note that this is not an Attack card. You can not block it with Moat or play your Secret Chamber if someone plays this. This is mainly for the sake of simplicity, but with the limit of only naming one card per round per player, the attack part often is not really that big of a deal.
I personally love this card as it opens a lot of engine strategies, especially in Kingdoms without strong villages and drawers, while also being able to worsen a lot of engine strategies for the other players.
Has not been playtested a lot yet.
edit: Will be reworked. Current version:
Galvanize - Duration - $5
+1 Action
Gain an Action card from the supply and put it onto this card. While this is in play, the Action on this card produces 1$ more when played.
----------
At the beginning of your next turn: +$2, discard this card and put the gained Action card back into the supply.
(click to see full resolution image)Hanging Gardens: If you look closely at the picture and the name of the card you'll get what this is about. Yeah, that's right, it is literally Gardens with a twist.
This was one of my first card ideas I ever had, without the active however. I always thought it was strange that many Dominion expansions came with a Garden variant, but none of them reacted to Treasure cards. When making this set and thinking about a VP card I could include this became the prominent choice. Not because it has fun and good interactions and synergies with some other cards in this set. It chose it because it is like Gardens: It can either prolong a game by a great amount or shorten a game quite a bit.
edit: Will receive another and more simple active function
(click to see full resolution image)Accurst: Accurst is the fourth card that forces an additional Kingdom pile. It is the only one of those cards that has its own pile (Blasphemy). It is also the only real Attack card in the set.
It is a card that looks like it is overpowered, and it indeed is a card with a huge amount of potential, but it also can backfire quite a lot. I recently gave it +3$ instead of +2$ because it felt too weak.
Sure, you can use it as a terminal Gold with a Which like effect without never trashing anything until the curses are empty. But if the others players just choose to never use the Blasphemies you'll have nothing but a terminal Gold after a few turns. So you basically have to empty the Curse pile by trashing Copper or Curse cards if you want this card to become strong. Then there is another problem: As soon as the Curse pile is empty you can not trash anymore with Accurst, so you either need another trasher or you have to live with the fact that Accurst makes only slightly up for it by feeding you some Gold.
There is a reason the card is called Accurst: it is accursed.
Like the other three cards that add additional Kingdom piles, this too is handled like a Prosperity card.
edit: Play another Action card from your hand will become +1 Action. Other changes might occur.
Blasphemy: This is a Curse card and an Action card. Every card that refers to "Curses" means Curses, every card that refers to "Curse cards" means either Curses or Blasphemies (everything with "Curse" in the bottom line) and every card that refers to "Blasphemies" means this card. As this is combined card, if a card points you to do something with an Action card (a.E. Shanty Town: "If you have no Action cards in hand, +2 Cards" or Library: "You may set aside any Action cards drawn this way") it reacts to this card. You can not draw cards with Shanty Town when you have a Blasphemy in your hand. You may set aside Blasphemies with the Library.
On the one hand it is worse than a standard Curse, because you can not immediately trash it when you draw it. You have to play it to get rid of it (costing you an Action in the process, like any other Action card) and then you can choose between gaining four Coppers, gaining a Curse or gaining two Curses and trashing up to two cards from your hand. And then it even does not get trashed at all, it goes back to it's Kingdom pile so you may get it back by another Accurst in the next turn.
On the other hand it is better than a standard Curse, because you do not need a trasher to get rid of it and there are far less Blasphemies in the game than Curses. You can simply take the Coppers (you may even profit from it, depending on the Kingdom and your strategy) and come clean. Or you gain a Curse when you draw it with your Watchtower and trash the Curse. A Watchtower can basically protect you from the Blasphemy: Your enemy plays Accurst, you gain the Blasphemy, show your Watchtower to trash it, gain a Curse, show your Watchtower to trash the Curse, gain the Blasphemy in your hand (because you trashed it); then you can simply play the Blasphemy in your next turn, trash whatever you get and even trash up to two cards from your hand if you want to by taking two Curses and trashing them. Once the Curse pile is empty Blasphemy basically become a renewable Curse with a self trashing action.
Because of the "gain a Curse and put this card back into your hand when you trash it" rule Blasphemy has a lot of fun and tricky interactions with a lot of cards, especially when the Curse pile is empty. I already stated the Excorcist combo. I recently stumbled upon Accurst and Farmland in the same Kingdom while solo testing and one the players had a strong engine with +Buys running. He could end and win the game by buying several Farmlands in one turn while having a Blasphemy as his only card in hand left, trashing it repeatedly for Estates.
The Blasphemy pile acts like any other pile in the Kingdom, so it does count to the 3 (or 4) empty piles rule. You can buy a Blasphemy for 0$ if you want to. For two players the pile contains 4 Blasphemy cards, for three players it contains 7 Blasphemy cards and for four players it contains 10 Blasphemy cards.
The amount might be changed to 5 Blasphemy cards for two players in the future, but other than that I think the card is really fine. Far better than I expected. Might even get -2 VP on it because it plays out so fine in some situations and I fell like Accurst needs another slight buff.
Closing comments and disclaimer:So that's 16 cards. What do you think of them? Can you spot any poor interactions (especially with official cards) that might turn out wonky or are harshly overpowered? Have you got any questions regarding how a specific card functions? Do you want a high resolution image of specific cards because you can't read the phrasing (or because you want to print them)? (Please note that the cards with small text open up a high resolution image when you click them, says so beneath the cards where I uploaded it.)
How would you improve the phrasing? Do you think some cards are too complicated? Do you have any suggestions for (public domain) artwork for the cards Hanging Gardens, Carpenter and Vize Chancellor?
Besides that: Thank you for reading this post. I hope you'll have as much fun evaluating my cards and reading this post as I had making the cards.
I'm sorry if you happen to find bad grammar or poor choice of words in my post, as I said I am not a native speaker.
The artwork is only temporarily. Every used picture is either by me or public domain with the following exceptions:[/color]
- All card backgrounds are from Rio Grande Games
- Hanging Gardens use an edited version of the Gardens Dominion card with edited artwork
- Vize Chancellor use an edited version of the Chancellor Dominion card with edited artwork
- Carpenter uses an edited screenshot depicting the character "Buddy Christ" from the movie Dogma
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Topic: Dominion: Lapse (fan card expansion debugging topic) (Read 9359 times)