Print

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

[Dsell]

Observatory Village
$5 - Action
+4 Cards
+2 Actions
Put 4 cards on top of your deck in any order.

A version of this card was actually in two challenges: a 5-card version was in the deck improver challenge and this one was in the village challenge. I realized that the original version was probably too strong, but then this version was criticized for being too weak! *sigh*

But I really think this card has a lot of potential as a combo-maker. It's designed to anti-stack, but if it's well-timed, it can put 2 or 3-card combos together like few other cards can. It'll help treasure map, tournament, baron, fool's gold, trash-for-benefit cards and KC+pretty much anything. It combos brilliantly with tactician, which can take advantage of good cards on top of your deck, and it has cool interactions with weak cards that can take advantage or mitigate the damage of bad cards on top of your deck, i.e. harvest, scout, adventurer, even chancellor!

Some people said this could be cheaper and others said putting the cards back on the deck hampered the card too much. I disagree! Well maybe it could be cheaper, it originally looked at 5 cards! But I think that it's such a great helper for engines and IMO it's interesting strategic design space. Even when you're not running an amazing engine, you can give yourself a good and a bad turn, which is usually going to be better than 2 mediocre turns.

Anyway I'd love to hear more thoughts on this card! I think especially in the second challenge, a lot of people may have just looked at it as a recycled idea that's redundant with the winner of the deck-improver challenge. But maybe I'm wrong about it. In that case, tell me how you think it can be improved!

[FishingVillage]

I think the fact that Observatory Village makes no progress is something that is very detrimental. By itself (with no trashing and no draw cards), it doesn't seem very useful because I have to deal with the bad cards at some point. Sure I can make one turn much better at the expense of another, but I think that's really not optimal either. Consider Inn or Warehouse, which let me push through my deck to find things and doesn't leave cards on top. I won't exactly avoid bad cards if I'm going to reshuffle, but at least I also have a chance of drawing a good card I got before the reshuffle. If I had Observatory Village instead, it seems like I'd be guaranteed to sit through a bad turn.

[rinkworks]

Agree with Fishing Village, and I also worry about AP as well.  Cards like Cartographer, Scout, and Apothecary can put back up to 4 cards in any order, but this has a lot more options, since the 4 cards you draw are mixed into the rest of your hand first.  So there are potentially lots of ways to choose 4 cards and then different ways to order them.  The fact that you could easily play multiples in a turn exacerbates the problem.

You might think Warehouse suffers from a similar problem, but the AP is reduced in two ways:  One, it's easier to figure out the three weakest cards and get rid of them, whereas if you're putting cards on your deck it's not necessarily the case that you'd just automatically pick the weakest ones to return; and two, the discard order with Warehouse doesn't matter.

My first fan card, after I finished tweaking it:

Architect
$3 - Action
+3 Cards
+$2
Put 3 cards from your hand on top of your deck.

That's only 3 cards, and it's terminal (so harder to stack).  Acceptably playable for me, but I have noticed through playtesting that it's got more AP than any official card has.

But other than the AP issue, there's nothing that jumps out at me as broken.  The fact that it doesn't progress through your deck and that it reduces your handsize makes me think $4 is a more appropriate cost, though.

[Polk5440]

I just thought this card was better as a deck improver than village, as well. I don't know that I worry about the power so much. Deck reordering is sneaky powerful sometimes -- especially if you are trying to consistently line up combos. Yes Cartographer lets you reorder and discard, but it needs help to move that Bridge you need into your hand, and this card does not. That seems to be an acceptable tradeoff to me.

 I also agree it would slow play.

[Dsell]

Yeah, I had thought about the AP that would go with this card, it's definitely work than sifters because you are often essentially choosing this hand and your next. However, I don't think it seems worse than like counting your deck and discard with P stone (don't own alchemy so I don't know for sure, but I dread the day when I first play with it IRL). I also don't think that possible AP issues should hinder a good idea. Perhaps there are ideas to make it better, but I do feel like this is really cool concept that I (as a lover of wacky combos and cool engines) would use. It's got enough of a drawback that it is a high-skill card that will not benefit every deck, but it's versatile to be useful in a host of situations.

I had thought about $4, but the original card seemed too strong at $5 drawing $5, and I didn't want to make the same mistake again. I imagine only playtesting will be able to really find out. Speaking of, I am going to be back at school and with my normal gaming group soon and will probably be able to actually test this out! At this point it is much more of a personal thing than about the contests, but if it works perhaps I will post something here too. Thanks for the feedback, guys!

[Loschmidt]

I had thought about $4, but the original card seemed too strong at $5 drawing $5, and I didn't want to make the same mistake again.

Donald always says that he makes cards as cheap as they can be. At first this card seems like it would not be too powerful if you opened with it (?), so it can afford to be a $4.

In fact surely a lot of the appeal would be in increasing the chance of playing your $3 card on turn 3? You could also use it to try and get $6 on turn 4 (moving your silver together with all of the coppers), trying to get a gold into the 2nd reshuffle, but doing so would completely tank your 3rd turn. An interesting card

[Dsell]

I had thought about $4, but the original card seemed too strong at $5 drawing $5, and I didn't want to make the same mistake again.

Donald always says that he makes cards as cheap as they can be. At first this card seems like it would not be too powerful if you opened with it (?), so it can afford to be a $4.

In fact surely a lot of the appeal would be in increasing the chance of playing your $3 card on turn 3? You could also use it to try and get $6 on turn 4 (moving your silver together with all of the coppers), trying to get a gold into the 2nd reshuffle, but doing so would completely tank your 3rd turn. An interesting card

Thanks! That's a convincing argument for why it should cost $4. The Draw 5 version was universally criticized for being too strong at $5, and I agreed, but then the Draw 4 version was considered too weak, with some people saying it could cost $3. I worry a bit that it might be too good at $4 with all its ability to put together combos so well...but that is probably a good price to start playtesting it at.