Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Dubdubdubdub]

LastFootNote's card Soothsayer won the second challenge.

Soothsayer
Types: Action – Attack
Cost: $4
+2 Cards. Each other player gains a Curse, setting it aside on his Soothsayer mat.
In games using this, at the start of your Buy phase you may discard a Treasure from your hand. If you don't, discard all cards on your mat. Trash the set aside cards at the end of the game.


Challenge #2 - Curser

Objective: Design a card that may cause other players to gain Curses.  It need not always dispense Curses, so long as it does so at least some of the time it is used.  The card text must specifically mention Curses (thus disqualifying Ambassador, which would otherwise qualify).

[Dubdubdubdub]

Good point, will edit.

[Dubdubdubdub]

I playtested Soothsayer yesterday. I was kind of excited about it too, but to be honest it didn't really live up to the expectations.

I played two games with it, I'm afraid I forgot with what kingdoms (it was a long night).

In game 1, Soothsayer was the only curser. Chapel and Fool's Gold were there, which made Soothsayer much stronger (he wrongly trashed almost all his coppers).
I actually had a quite some fun with it as I was attacking; he quickly got 4 curses on his mat, which was exciting for me. I was trying to remember the current score and we very pretty close, meaning that 4VP-swing really mattered. He, on the other hand, didn't have a good time. For one, he had to make a negative choice every single game, without any hope of some forgiveness. You can at least not play a Torturer one turn; the Soothsayer mat will always be there - he called it a 'nagging' feeling. The other problem he had, was that the choice wasn't interesting. He was never going to let those curses in, ever. He'd rather discard his only Gold, unless he could buy the last province and gain a 2VP lead.

In game 2, I was the victim, and the feeling was quite different. There were 2 more curses in the Kingdom (Young Witch and Mountebank). I went for Mountebank, he went for Mountebank and Soothsayer. There was also fishing village, so there were plenty plays of these cards.
With Mountebank dealing out most of the curses, I only got 2 curses on my Soothsayer mat. I didn't really feel the 'nagging' so badly. Probably because FV and Mountebank were giving me at least $5 in most turns.
I definitely agreed with him on the second problem, though: the choice is too 'easy'. It was too obviously the right choice not to let the curses in. Of course, you could accept that and say that Soothsayer just means your opponent has to discard a treasure card every turn. But that's not what I expected.


I didn't dislike the card like my opponent, though I did expect a bit more. He agreed later on that he might have been a bit frustrated in the first game (he had some bad luck, not sure what). I really think we should playtest this more and see what other people's experiences are. After all, this was just 2 games. And I have hated Swindler in many more than that.

[Dubdubdubdub]

I playtested Soothsayer yesterday. I was kind of excited about it too, but to be honest it didn't really live up to the expectations.

Thanks for testing it! It's quite possible that it needs tweaking or even scrapping. Although I'm not yet convinced that discarding the Treasure is the "obvious" choice. If neither of you ever took the Curses, how do you know that the other choice was better? I've seen opponents that refuse to ever take a Curse from Torturer, too. They generally lose.

One possible tweak would be that if the player doesn't discard, they discard a single card from their mat, rather than all of them. Do you think that would help?

You are probably right. I think the early 4 curses on my opponents mat were intimidating enough to make the discarding obvious. In the second game I only had 2, the Curse pile was empty and maybe I even had trashers in my deck. This is a very different case. I doubted my choices several times, when I bought another $5-card instead of a Gold.

I think your solution could work. It kind of goes against what I liked about the card in the first place: it's the only curser that gets nastier as the game goes on. Early curses are the worst of course, but as your Soothsayer mat is filled up, the penalty for not discarding gets worse. I like that. If it works.

[rinkworks]

I have the same question as LastFootnote, particularly hearing that Chapel was in the game.  Who's to say it wouldn't have been greatly more advantageous to let the curses in early and trash them?  You'd still lose tempo that way, but that seems less severe to me than Cutpursing yourself (at minimum) every single turn.

It's premature to suggest this, because if indeed it really IS an easy choice to keep the Curses on the mat every time it won't make sense to weaken the cost of doing so.  But if it turns out that taking the Curses is more advantageous after all, it occurred to me that the penalty could be changed to allow the discarding of ANY card rather than simply a Treasure.  The advantage here is that it would allow a Soothsayer victim to construct his deck in such a way as to be more resilient to it, e.g., greening earlier than usual, perhaps.  (With or without this change, Soothsayering a Tactician player will sure sting.)  This is just a top of my head thought here, not necessarily something I'm advocating.

[LastFootnote]

I have the same question as LastFootnote, particularly hearing that Chapel was in the game.  Who's to say it wouldn't have been greatly more advantageous to let the curses in early and trash them?  You'd still lose tempo that way, but that seems less severe to me than Cutpursing yourself (at minimum) every single turn.

It's premature to suggest this, because if indeed it really IS an easy choice to keep the Curses on the mat every time it won't make sense to weaken the cost of doing so.  But if it turns out that taking the Curses is more advantageous after all, it occurred to me that the penalty could be changed to allow the discarding of ANY card rather than simply a Treasure.  The advantage here is that it would allow a Soothsayer victim to construct his deck in such a way as to be more resilient to it, e.g., greening earlier than usual, perhaps.  (With or without this change, Soothsayering a Tactician player will sure sting.)  This is just a top of my head thought here, not necessarily something I'm advocating.

I like this idea, as well.

[popsofctown]

I think the card should be renamed Loan Shark. 

Gimme some Treasure, or you'll be swimmin with the curses.  And I'll be back next weak.

[shark_bait]

I think the card should be renamed Loan Shark. 

Gimme some Treasure, or you'll be swimmin with the curses.  And I'll be back next weak.

+1 for awesome name suggestion

[popsofctown]

Young Nick and I tested Soothsayer some playing by Skype.  Scheme, Witch, and Develop were on the board.  Young Nick bought Soothsayer and then supported it with multiple Schemes.  I figured I would have so many curses on my mat, my best strategy would be to resign myself to discarding Treasure the rest of the game.  That's what I did, I never gained the three curses on my mat.  He gained 2 or 3 curses from his mat though, I hit him with an infrequent, rarely Schemed Soothsayer.  I won the game, even though I never bought a Witch and I lost the curse split pretty badly. 

My thoughts after that game is that, if you're going to try to play Soothsayer lots and lots, by buying multiples or by Scheming, Treasure discarding for the rest of the game dominates as an answer to that.  This makes me think that you shouldn't play Soothsayer lots and lots, you should stick to an unemphasized copy like I did. 

With TFB on the board I think the card seems guaranteed to be interesting because you can choose to transition out of the card.  I want to test the card in no-trash though because my concern is that even a single opening Soothsayer will be enough to justify discarding treasure for the rest of the game no matter what. 

[Young Nick]

Worth noting is that I hit you early with three SS plays and then developed it into Witch/Scheme, thus giving you Curses the old-fashioned way for the rest of the game. You only kept three on your mat, the rest were from Witch.

[razorborne]

if it's too easy a choice to discard, why not up the discard amount? or make it scale to the number of curses on your mat? that would certainly make it a much tougher decision once you got a couple, and I think it'd play better too because at some point you just have to give, (literally, once you get to 6 you have no choice) which has the bonus of getting rid of the nagging feeling later. yeah, you had to take a four-curse hit. but now you're not discarding any more. would make it play more as intended, even if it is a significant power increase. if you did that, of course, you'd have to drop the treasure clause, which would have the bonus of weakening it early when curses matter most, because they can just drop an estate.

[One Armed Man]

At a certain point, it is less about whether the choice is easy for the player, it is about whether the card changes how you play. Did soothsayer being out play differently than a Sea Hag or Young Witch?

I know I have accused fan card choices of being easy before, but this one won a contest.

[NoMoreFun]

I haven't playtested, but giving it a little bit of thought;

Ignoring the VP loss, let's compare having a curse in your deck to a modified soothsayer with the effect; "put a card on top of your deck". They're roughly similar (the curse is taking up a hand slot that could be filled by another card), the question is how often it comes up per shuffle.

Assuming no extra drawing;
With curses it will be the number curses.
With the "soothsayer effect", it will be the number of cards in your deck divided by 4.

This means that it's more than likely better to take curses until they really start to stack up.

The actual effect of soothsayer is roughly similar, since you can't discard "dead" cards, except your deck isn't as slow (divide the number of cards in your deck by 5). This would still tip the balance in favour of taking curses for the first few turns.

I'd then say the heuristic is to compare the average expected handsize to deck size divided number of curses. In big drawing engines/fast decks, you're probably better off doing the discard. The same goes for thin decks, although if you can thin your deck you probably have a way of dealing with the curses. In decks with small handsizes or very thick/slow decks (eg gardens, other people's ghost ships), you'd probably be better off taking the curses (and may very well be forced to).

The VP loss probably tips the balance towards the treasure discarding though. The sorts of decks that will prefer taking the curses will largely be decks that can handle them well anyway. The added choice afforded by discarding (sometimes discarding a copper doesn't hurt at all) is also an advantage towards that option.

Overall it will function similarly in effectiveness to other cursers, but the kind of damage it inflicts will be very different.

[Nic]

I got into a discussion about this card in one of the treasure chest threads, so I figured this is a topic worth resurrecting. Maybe 2/3 of the people here say the optimal strategy is to toss a copper every turn, unless it's the difference between $7 and $8 in the endgame, while the other third say that you shouldn't bother, and just let the curses in and treat it like a witch. I'm in the minority (it's worse than Cutpursing yourself every turn, and sounds almost as bad as always discarding to Torturer), which, if true, would just make this a $4 Witch. Even if the choice does turn out to be obvious, with more playtesting or simulation, it's inherently unfun. We already have Torturer, and it fills that 'much-needed gap' well. Compared to the other $4 cursers (+nothing to you, or +2-2 cards, guaranteed Moat on the board that you probably want anyway) it seems way out of line.

I should actually playtest this before shooting my mouth off, but I wouldn't choose the discard unless I knew it would solve my problem and I wasn't making an open-ended commitment. My first thought was to scale the penalty with the number of curses, but cards on the Soothsayer mat trash themselves after sitting there N turns. I have no idea how to state that on a card, and if I did there would literally be no space for it.

You guys know what happens if people post here without mentioning the edge cases, so I said I'd also discard if it wasn't a hassle and I could make those curses miss the reshuffle. If that turns out to be the appropriate counter to a Soothsayer, we could refocus the card around that.

First draft, didn't change anything above the line:
"At the start of your Buy phase, if you have a Curse on
your Soothsayer mat, you may discard a treasure from
your hand. If you do, discard and reshuffle your deck.

Discard all cards on your Soothsayer mat."

Here, now the cursing is a given, but the effect can be delayed and the victim gets a free reshuffle. If this is still too weak, you could add a +Buy or +$ up top (to work the Loan Shark angle?) I'm worried that its schtick overlaps with the official Soothsayer card, but it's probably a different enough idea.

EDIT: Oh I see why you need the 'in games using this' clause. Maybe it's not necessary now.

Second draft:
"+2 Cards
Every other player may discard a Silver[?] from their hand. If they do, they discard and reshuffle their deck.
Every other player gains a Curse."

[Polk5440]

I think the card should be renamed Loan Shark. 

Gimme some Treasure, or you'll be swimmin with the curses.  And I'll be back next weak.

Bumping this suggested name change.

[eHalcyon]

I think the card should be renamed Loan Shark. 

Gimme some Treasure, or you'll be swimmin with the curses.  And I'll be back next weak.

Bumping this suggested name change.

I'd prefer something along the lines of Soothsayer.  When I created Crystal Ball, it was with Soothsayer in mind.  The image I created for Photoshop actually features the Soothsayer image distorted in the ball.  But it would be up to LF in the end, of course.



I think some of the nerfs suggested above would be best.  If people feel that discarding every time is best, then make it hurt less not to discard.  If only one Curse were to enter the deck at a time, then people should feel better about not discarding sometimes.  The delay would also make it weaker than Witch, which helps justify the $4 cost.  An additional nerf could be to have the Curse go into the player's hand.  In this case, only having one Curse come in keeps the attack non-trivial.  (If it put all Curses into your hand, Soothsayer would be really weak on a board with strong trashing.)

[popsofctown]

I think the card should be renamed Loan Shark. 

Gimme some Treasure, or you'll be swimmin with the curses.  And I'll be back next weak.

Bumping this suggested name change.

It took me a while to figure out why my suggested name change suddenly seemed more desirable.

It's because there's an official Soothsayer, huh?

[Polk5440]

I think the card should be renamed Loan Shark. 

Gimme some Treasure, or you'll be swimmin with the curses.  And I'll be back next weak.

Bumping this suggested name change.

It took me a while to figure out why my suggested name change suddenly seemed more desirable.

It's because there's an official Soothsayer, huh?

Yes. That's the only reason for me.

[Wrclass]

Soothsayer needs a new name, a buff and a $5 cost. It's strictly worse than Witch yet to strong for $4. Maybe give it +3 Cards instead of +2 Cards?

[LastFootnote]

If I were to try to make this card work today, the first thing I'd do is change it so that failing to discard a Treasure made you gain a single Curse from your mat instead of all of them.

[popsofctown]

Do I get any kind of toldja so points for not voting for it or anything?

[Polk5440]

If I were to try to make this card work today, the first thing I'd do is change it so that failing to discard a Treasure made you gain a single Curse from your mat instead of all of them.

I think this would absolutely improve the card. This probably fixes all the problems and keeps it reasonable for a $4 attack.

Edit: In multiplayer there is an interesting additional effect if multiple people play the card. The curses back up on your mat and enter your deck one at a time if you don't Cutpurse yourself. This is interesting.

[Nic]

If I were to try to make this card work today, the first thing I'd do is change it so that failing to discard a Treasure made you gain a single Curse from your mat instead of all of them.

That's still doable without the 'In games using . . .' clause, I think.

"+2 Cards
Every other player may discard a Treasure from their hand. If they do not, they discard a curse from their Soothsayer mat.
Every other player gains a Curse, setting it aside on his Soothsayer mat."

That may not be what you're looking for: Discarding treasure is harder to do when you have 5 cards than it would be after you Smithy/Soothsayer/whatever, and it would get more powerful in multiplayer rather than less. But as is, that one fix by itself would really make the decision more interesting.

[eHalcyon]

If I were to try to make this card work today, the first thing I'd do is change it so that failing to discard a Treasure made you gain a single Curse from your mat instead of all of them.

That's still doable without the 'In games using . . .' clause, I think.

"+2 Cards
Every other player may discard a Treasure from their hand. If they do not, they discard a curse from their Soothsayer mat.
Every other player gains a Curse, setting it aside on his Soothsayer mat."

That may not be what you're looking for: Discarding treasure is harder to do when you have 5 cards than it would be after you Smithy/Soothsayer/whatever, and it would get more powerful in multiplayer rather than less. But as is, that one fix by itself would really make the decision more interesting.

That removes the persistent threat.  This version is Witch that lets you discard Treasure to Moat it (except for the very first time you play it, which effectively does nothing to opponents).  Not necessarily a bad idea, but certainly much less interesting.

[Nic]

Yeah. Running a check every turn, rather than every time a Soothsayer is played, does seem to be essential to the card. I'm just trying to see how much of the spirit can be retained without the wall of text -- I really don't like the idea of a card that you have to memorize when it's not in play or in your hand. What I like most about Dominion is that the expansions never went down the random events/global rules changes road, and even something this clean-cut and easy to remember still falls in that category. 

My vanilla version may not have captured the feel but there's still persistence, at least for a little while. It would stop putting Curses in your deck when your Soothsayer mat emptied, rather than when the Curse pile did. But like I said, the original card would be more fun, more interesting, and have an appropriate cost with LF's one change, even if it doesn't align with my prejudices.