So many of these suggestions would make Dominion a worse game. The general theme seems to be taking out what's inconvenient about various cards. But if cards don't have any drawbacks, where is the opportunity to strategize? The game is all about trying to figure out ways to use balanced cards in contexts where the strengths matter and the drawbacks don't. But if all the cards cater to your whims in every way, who cares?
The suggestions also tend to add complexity to the game, which is not unworkable, but the really simple cards that are nevertheless interesting have a certain charm that a bunch of niggling exceptions and clarifications destroy.
cool.
Moneylender - Add following text: "Reveal hand if you have no copper. You may then trash this card."
The inability for a trasher to self-trash is a much more interesting tension than if they always cleaned up after themselves. Having a dead card around later is usually well-worth the ability to get rid of a bunch of Coppers.
Moat - Change "+2 cards" to "+1 card, +1 action" (cantrip defense, probably a game changer)
Yup, and not in a good way: you'd never buy Attacks, because it would be harmless for someone to load up on Moats, and if you never bought Attacks, why buy Moats? It's way more interesting if defense against Attacks incurs a penalty of some sort, and/or requires you to find a way to make that defense work within the deck you're building.
Spy - Allow it to look at top two cards instead of just one, keeping both or discarding both.
So Oracle?
Upgrade - Change the text to say "You may trash..."
Here again, a change that would be devastating to the strategic component of the game. Upgrade offers powerful trashing. If it's almost never harmful to your deck, there's little strategy required to figure you could use one of these. If it might be a liability sometimes, taking up a slot in your hand when you don't want to upgrade anything, that forces you to think more strategically.
Navigator - add +1 card after the rest of the card's abilities, maybe drop +$2 to +$1
That's probably balanced, but obliterates the aesthetics of the card. The whole point of Navigator is, in a nutshell, "Skip your next turn if you don't like it," not "Pick a card you want to draw if you think the other four cards would make 80% of a good turn next turn, or, alternately, skip all those cards and draw something blind."
Merchant Ship - +1 Buy (Donald X gave it to Wharf instead. Why not both?)
Why both? Why not every card, in fact, so that we never have to worry about accruing +Buys?
There are already lots of cards that offer money in conjunction with +Buy -- Woodcutter, Festival, Horse Traders, and Baron, to name a few. Isn't it more interesting for some cards to lack it -- and other cards to provide it
without providing coins (e.g., Worker's Village) -- so that sometimes the game makes you fit the pieces together in a coherent strategy?
For what it's worth, this isn't a game-breaking change. I could have lived with Merchant Ship getting the +Buy instead of Wharf. But there's an overall balance to strike here, or the game will become less fun rather than more.
Rabble - Reveal four cards instead of three (I just feel it needs to be a little harsher)
Stacked Rabbles can already make you play a 2-card turn, which is more than most attacks can do to you, even when stacked. With four cards, you could make someone play 1-card turns.
Trade Route - "You may trash a card..."
Again, removes strategy. The fact that some specific card doesn't work great in every deck is a feature, not a bug.
Cellar - Add a +1 card to the beginning
If Cellars don't potentially hurt your hand, you just always pick these up when you've got extra Buys, and it won't take very many to ensure you play with your best 5 cards every turn. Much more interesting if there's tension between the benefit and the potential for a drawback.
Golem - "You may play the action cards in either order."
Here, similarly, is a change that would remove strategy from the game. The fact that you tend to have to choose between Golem and, say, Remake, is a
good thing for the game.
Quarry - +1 Buy
A Gold for Action cards isn't good enough for a $4 card already?
--
To be fair, a few suggestions I omitted responding to wouldn't be so very bad, and a couple might arguably be improvements. But overall, it feels like what you're wishing for is a less interesting game. More of a race than a game, since the game would be won by math and shuffle luck more than by thinking about how different cards work well or don't work well together.
