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[Rush_Clasic]

Lost City (5)
Action
+1 Card
+2 Action
For each card draw, action, and/or buy the next Action card you play this turn would grant you: +$1 instead.

• What unknown wonders will you find in the Lost City? You've got to play one to find out.
• This will be granting +$3 at its usual peak. I don't know if that should make this cost $4 or $5 to purchase.

[Morgrim7]

Horribe for +card engines. This pretty much converts benefits into different benefits. It might be helpful, might not. This should cost $4.

[dondon151]

Question: what counts as "card draw?" Do cards drawn with Library, Scout, Apothecary, Scrying Pool, etc. count?

[Morgrim7]

Question: what counts as "card draw?" Do cards drawn with Library, Scout, Apothecary, Scrying Pool, etc. count?

I think he means strictly +Cards, but I could be wrong.

[ChocophileBenj]

Council room, Festival : give +$5
Conspi+Worker's village : +$4
Shanty town : +$4 or +$2 depending whether you've actions in hand or not.
...
OMG ! Play LC + a cheap card, transform the cheap card into "more than a gold".

And what about duration cards ? If you play wharf after LC, do you get +$3 this turn and the next ? And if you play LC+Throne Room, +king's court, does it apply to the card you play twice ? (yes, I think it rather applies to Throne room and it gives $0...)

[rinkworks]

Library?  Farming Village?  You don't know how many cards you'll draw until you actually draw them.  Minion -- do other players get +$4 too?  I'm sure you can come up with answers for these and whatever other questions I might pose, but the problem is that I have to ask in the first place.  This is a rules nightmare.  Even if you manage to make it work somehow with the current cards, it's easy to imagine perfectly reasonable future cards that it wouldn't be able to untangle.

[Rush_Clasic]

So... I tried to work around what felt like awkward wording and came up with a funky scenario instead. Let's peel through this.

Question: what counts as "card draw?" Do cards drawn with Library, Scout, Apothecary, Scrying Pool, etc. count?

Library: This interaction was intended to work, but it just doesn't since you aren't drawing a set amount of cards. First big reason to change my card.
Scout: Scout doesn't allow you to draw cards at all, so it isn't a problem. The +1 Action is still replaced.
Apothecary: Same as Scout, except for the initial +1 Card, +1 Action.
Scrying Pool: Same as Scout.

Council room, Festival : give +$5
Conspi+Worker's village : +$4
Shanty town : +$4 or +$2 depending whether you've actions in hand or not.
...
OMG ! Play LC + a cheap card, transform the cheap card into "more than a gold".

And what about duration cards ? If you play wharf after LC, do you get +$3 this turn and the next ? And if you play LC+Throne Room, +king's court, does it apply to the card you play twice ? (yes, I think it rather applies to Throne room and it gives $0...)

Duration: If I recall correctly, the rules say a Duration card gets played this turn and your next turn. That's why it can work with Conspirator on the next turn. If that's true, Lost City + Duration only replaces the events the first time.
King's Court: If you King's Court a Lost City, you'll end up with +1 Card, +2 Actions, and +$6. The first replaces events on the second, and the second on the third. You'd also get coins from the next Action card you play.

Library?  Farming Village?  You don't know how many cards you'll draw until you actually draw them.  Minion -- do other players get +$4 too?  I'm sure you can come up with answers for these and whatever other questions I might pose, but the problem is that I have to ask in the first place.  This is a rules nightmare.  Even if you manage to make it work somehow with the current cards, it's easy to imagine perfectly reasonable future cards that it wouldn't be able to untangle.

Library: I covered this above. It's the one mechanic that makes me need to change this card.
Farming Village: Same as Scout and all the other examples above. These cards don't "draw" anything. They "put (a card/cards) into your hand." There's a real difference between the two.
Minion: If you choose mode two, you discard 4 cards, then get +$4. Your opponents just draw cards. This is covered by the word "you" on Lost City.



Most of these situations have reasonable answers. The game mechanic of replacing one thing with another can be complicated, but it doesn't have to be. The only real problem posed was the Library issue, which is a real problem since you'd just draw forever in this combination. Here's a new wording (and I welcome help on how best to present it):

Lost City (5)
Action
+1 Card
+2 Actions
Replace each instance of "+ Card", "+ Action", and "+ Buy" on the next Action card you play this turn with an equal amount of "+ $".

I'm not sure if I should put a variable in there or not. I was also thinking about making each instance a "may"; that is, if I play Worker's Village, I could replace three things with +$ and leave an Action or Buy left over. Normally, I like forcing players into working as best they can within a card's confines, but this seems like a good situation to cut some slack and allow craftsmanship to take over.

[AJD]

Duration: If I recall correctly, the rules say a Duration card gets played this turn and your next turn. That's why it can work with Conspirator on the next turn.

They don't, and it can't. You play a Duration card, it remains in play till your next turn, and the fact that you played it before triggers the events on your next turn. It doesn't count as a played card on your next turn, and it can't contribute to activating Conspirator on your next turn.

[rinkworks]

That's an improvement on the wording, but I think you'll find it's just too crazy a card.  The combos are just too weird and unintuitive.  I'm sure there are clever combos, but more by random chance -- a card that by random chance works well in a Lost City deck both as itself and when its bonuses are converted into coins -- than design.  And in many of those cases, they're likely to be crazy overpowered.  Festival being worth $5 pretty much necessitates a Festival/Lost City race as probably the only viable strategy on such a board.  (Play a Festival naturally first, if desired, for +Buy, to help spend all that cash.)

What I'm getting at is a problem of variance.  The combo potential ranges randomly from zero to insane.  By random chance, some of those combos will be strong and interesting but balanced, but the others will all be silly in one direction or another.  Playtesting would make this fairly self-evident, I believe.  Trying to create a card a day is an impressive ambition, but most of these cards have serious balance or variance issues.  I can't help but think it would be ultimately more productive and rewarding to put a lot of that energy toward balancing and perfecting the best of your ideas than doing half the job on a bunch of them.

[zahlman]

I think the concept is just too meta to work right, honestly.

[RiemannZetaJones]

Duration: If I recall correctly, the rules say a Duration card gets played this turn and your next turn. That's why it can work with Conspirator on the next turn.

They don't, and it can't. You play a Duration card, it remains in play till your next turn, and the fact that you played it before triggers the events on your next turn. It doesn't count as a played card on your next turn, and it can't contribute to activating Conspirator on your next turn.

I believe the Duration card stays in play until the last turn on which it has an effect. This mostly affects a second consecutive Outlook, which has no effect, and therefore goes out of play during the clean-up of the turn on which it was played, and does not subsequently count towards effects (such as the cost of Peddler) which count the number of cards in play.

[Rush_Clasic]

Duration: If I recall correctly, the rules say a Duration card gets played this turn and your next turn. That's why it can work with Conspirator on the next turn.

They don't, and it can't. You play a Duration card, it remains in play till your next turn, and the fact that you played it before triggers the events on your next turn. It doesn't count as a played card on your next turn, and it can't contribute to activating Conspirator on your next turn.

I stand corrected, then. I remember looking through the Seaside rulebook and it stating that they're played both turns (with only the minor effect happening the second time) which I thought was weird. Good to have one misconception settled.

That's an improvement on the wording, but I think you'll find it's just too crazy a card.  The combos are just too weird and unintuitive.  I'm sure there are clever combos, but more by random chance -- a card that by random chance works well in a Lost City deck both as itself and when its bonuses are converted into coins -- than design.  And in many of those cases, they're likely to be crazy overpowered.  Festival being worth $5 pretty much necessitates a Festival/Lost City race as probably the only viable strategy on such a board.  (Play a Festival naturally first, if desired, for +Buy, to help spend all that cash.)

What I'm getting at is a problem of variance.  The combo potential ranges randomly from zero to insane.  By random chance, some of those combos will be strong and interesting but balanced, but the others will all be silly in one direction or another.  Playtesting would make this fairly self-evident, I believe.

I have my doubts about how powerful an effect this creates compared to many of the combos that crop up. There's a chance I'd want to cut off a +Action from it. I can't see the variance being as enormous of an issue as you present it to be, at least, no greater than the general variance of other cards that go from great to average. I'm not entirely sure what you find unintuitive about this card; the exchange is even more understandable now than before.

I can see why you'd worry about this card, but I don't find your examples that compelling. I do find them to be evidence for weakening the card, either costing it higher, reducing its extra stats, or both. But I don't really see why this can't exist, be fun, be powerful at times, and seem fair.

Trying to create a card a day is an impressive ambition, but most of these cards have serious balance or variance issues.  I can't help but think it would be ultimately more productive and rewarding to put a lot of that energy toward balancing and perfecting the best of your ideas than doing half the job on a bunch of them.

The thing about game design in this respect is that the base creation process is great for imagining what is possible. That's much of what I'm doing here: trying to imagine the possibilities. I take some time to think about how each card interacts with other cards, to get some themes and wordings correct, because I want to present a solid idea. But the whole reason I'm posting here isn't to show off my talent; it's to get feedback from other intelligent designers. I don't currently have time I can dedicate to playtesting, but even if I did, sharing ideas here and listening to what seems right and what seems wrong about my designs helps to improve my own skills.

Posting a card a day is keeping my mind active. It gives me a new topic to consider and let's me cover a lot of ground in a reasonable time. A good game requires a community to perfect it. That could be just one other person to playtest with, but I'm fortunate enough to have an entire group here that seem willing to both critique and analyze things with me. Slowing the rate at which I post ideas isn't gonna perfect most of them.

You seem well respected in this community, rinkworks, and I've only been here two weeks! I've appreciated all the commentary and help you've offered, and I've given earnest consideration to your challenges to my designs. I disagree a bit in this case is all.

[eHalcyon]

Duration: If I recall correctly, the rules say a Duration card gets played this turn and your next turn. That's why it can work with Conspirator on the next turn.

They don't, and it can't. You play a Duration card, it remains in play till your next turn, and the fact that you played it before triggers the events on your next turn. It doesn't count as a played card on your next turn, and it can't contribute to activating Conspirator on your next turn.

I believe the Duration card stays in play until the last turn on which it has an effect. This mostly affects a second consecutive Outlook, which has no effect, and therefore goes out of play during the clean-up of the turn on which it was played, and does not subsequently count towards effects (such as the cost of Peddler) which count the number of cards in play.

I believe it also affects Tactician that discards no other cards.  It won't get you the next turn bonus so it gets cleaned up immediately.

[rinkworks]

But the whole reason I'm posting here isn't to show off my talent; it's to get feedback from other intelligent designers. I don't currently have time I can dedicate to playtesting, but even if I did, sharing ideas here and listening to what seems right and what seems wrong about my designs helps to improve my own skills.

Posting for that reason is an awesome reason.  (Also, I don't know if you thought I thought you were posting just to show off, but I absolutely do not think that.)  I think what I'm trying to say is that getting ideas from the community only works up to a point, and I wonder if, based on how these threads have gone, you've reached that point.  Playtesting is a required part of the process and ultimately the definitive one.  I know I can be opinionated about cards sometimes, but I think I've only ever argued with someone who had playtested their cards once, and then only because it was a simple card that could be analyzed more mathematically than most.  Because, while I trust my instincts, I know those instincts have been wrong plenty of times before, as proven by playtesting experiences.   That, in turns, help sharpen the instincts.  But playtesting remains a required step if you want to get better.

And you know how it is around here:  one person is sure a card is too weak, and another is sure the same card is too strong.  Somebody's got to be wrong, but if you don't know who that is -- and you don't -- you kind of can't be a better card designer.  I don't want to denigrate the community here -- there's a brilliant group of people here, and they're the reason I'm a regular at this site.  I just also know the value of playtesting.  Even if you're just playing a solitaire game at home, that tells you something that no amount of conversation can.

Feel free to ignore me.  By no means do I think I even have the right to force the point on you.  And I absolutely don't want to discourage you from floating your ideas here!  But if I'm pressing the point more than common courtesy suggests I should, it's just because I think you have a lot of interesting ideas and aren't managing to prune them down and make the good ones work.

[AJD]

Duration: If I recall correctly, the rules say a Duration card gets played this turn and your next turn. That's why it can work with Conspirator on the next turn.

They don't, and it can't. You play a Duration card, it remains in play till your next turn, and the fact that you played it before triggers the events on your next turn. It doesn't count as a played card on your next turn, and it can't contribute to activating Conspirator on your next turn.

I believe the Duration card stays in play until the last turn on which it has an effect.

Yes, this is correct....

This mostly affects a second consecutive Outlook, which has no effect, and therefore goes out of play during the clean-up of the turn on which it was played,

...but this isn't. For reasons which I'll confess I'm not quite satisfied by, Donald X. has ruled that a second consecutive Outpost stays in play until your next turn anyway. The classic case where a Duration is cleaned up on the turn on which it's played is when Tactician is played with no cards in hand; a rarer case is when Haven is played with no cards in hand (or deck or discard).

[Rush_Clasic]

Posting for that reason is an awesome reason.  (Also, I don't know if you thought I thought you were posting just to show off, but I absolutely do not think that.)

I didn't think that. It just served solid basis of comparison.

I think what I'm trying to say is that getting ideas from the community only works up to a point, and I wonder if, based on how these threads have gone, you've reached that point.  Playtesting is a required part of the process and ultimately the definitive one.  I know I can be opinionated about cards sometimes, but I think I've only ever argued with someone who had playtested their cards once, and then only because it was a simple card that could be analyzed more mathematically than most.  Because, while I trust my instincts, I know those instincts have been wrong plenty of times before, as proven by playtesting experiences.   That, in turns, help sharpen the instincts.  But playtesting remains a required step if you want to get better.

While I've yet to playtest my custom Dominion cards (save that Zombie card I made, which had mixed results), I've playtested plenty of custom Magic cards (and a game of my own that went horribly wrong and requires a ton of fixing). Some ideas require a lot of playtesting, some don't. But I agree that there's a certain feel to games the theorizing can never quite properly map. At the same time, I think it's important to have ideas constantly churning, to write down all the card ideas that come along, to refine them, and to share them, and that the process I just described comes without the need of playtesting (though should it come with playtesting it becomes that much more effective).

And you know how it is around here:  one person is sure a card is too weak, and another is sure the same card is too strong.  Somebody's got to be wrong, but if you don't know who that is -- and you don't -- you kind of can't be a better card designer. I don't want to denigrate the community here -- there's a brilliant group of people here, and they're the reason I'm a regular at this site.  I just also know the value of playtesting.  Even if you're just playing a solitaire game at home, that tells you something that no amount of conversation can.

Fair enough.

Feel free to ignore me.  By no means do I think I even have the right to force the point on you.  And I absolutely don't want to discourage you from floating your ideas here!  But if I'm pressing the point more than common courtesy suggests I should, it's just because I think you have a lot of interesting ideas and aren't managing to prune them down and make the good ones work.

I have zero good reasons to ignore you and a few handful of reasons to listen carefully! I'm not attempting to dismiss your reasoning, just to explain my own. Dominion still has tons of facets to its design I'm not completely grasping, facets I'll either need to converse about or playtest to find. For now, the former is what I'm gonna use. I'd like to use the latter and post results some day soon. Is there a good was for online custom Dominion play? For instance, Magic Workstation was a great way to test all sorts of game, as was Cockatrice. I just don't know if there are any Dominion packs on either.

[PigFiend]

I think the primary problem of this card is that half of players won't get it, and even some savvy ones will screw up carefully thought out turns.
I'm not really sure what this card is supposed to do. That said, it could do some really wild interesting things. The most bland thing it does is make Market a card that gives +$4 and nothing else.

It makes Pawns into +$2. It makes Hamlets possibly into +$4! Mining Villages trash for +$5. Crossroads gives at least +$3 and likely more.

Most notably, it makes the order you put cards back onto your deck with Oracle possibly matter!

[RiemannZetaJones]

...but this isn't. For reasons which I'll confess I'm not quite satisfied by, Donald X. has ruled that a second consecutive Outpost stays in play until your next turn anyway. The classic case where a Duration is cleaned up on the turn on which it's played is when Tactician is played with no cards in hand; a rarer case is when Haven is played with no cards in hand (or deck or discard).

I suppose this sort-of makes sense, but not really. The Outpost doesn't know until later that it is going to prompt a third consecutive turn. It does seem a bit blue-doggish though.