This is someone else's attack card idea. Try as I might, I can't find the post for the original card, so whoever did it, feel free to chime in and take credit.
Anyway, I wanted to say that I played with the idea in a real game, and it played really really well. The variation I used is a little different from the original. I named the card Matador, and specifically it did this:
Matador
$4 - Action/Attack
+2 Cards.
You may choose a card from your hand and either discard it or place it on top of your deck.
Each other player with at least 5 cards in hand must choose a card from his hand and reveal it. You choose whether the player discards it or places it on top of his deck.
The attack portion is what isn't mine. I thought it was a really clever variation on the hand-size reduction attack, as it allows the victim to decide what card gets removed from his hand, but does not allow him to choose where it goes. Given that neither the attacker nor the victim can determine the full effect of the attack, it may be that either or both makes a suboptimal decision. So there is room for strategizing on both sides. One drawback is it will inevitably result in AP now and again, but, perhaps surprisingly, this was not at all a factor in our test game.
The way I conceived of the rest of the card was the result of trying to differentiate it from other similar attack cards. With +$2, it's too similar to Militia. With +2 Cards, it's too similar to Ghost Ship. And no other combination of vanilla bonuses seemed sensible or satisfying. So I took the Spy/Minion idea of having the attack work on you too. With that modification, +2 Cards synergizes better than +$2 does, which was convenient, since the basic hand-size reducer on its price level (Militia, rather than Ghost Ship) had +$2.
The optional self-attack is going to work differently on different boards. With the test game I played, it was great with Native Village, because I could decide which card got set aside on the mat. (It was an action-rich game, so it was easy getting around Matador being a terminal.) On other boards, I could have activated a Tunnel with it, fueled a Scrying Pool or Apothecary, thinned my hand for Library/Watchtower, or done any number of other things. In the absence of combos, the discard option is probably useless, but you might still be able to use the "top of deck" option to smooth out your draws in the way Courtyard and Mandarin allow.
Anyway, this seemed to be a very fine card, both fun and balanced.
