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[ednever]

Here's a rule that hasn't been broken yet: All variable-worth victory cards depend only on the contents of your deck; and they never decrease in value from adding more cards to your deck.

Examples of ways a victory card might violate this: (Here, X and Y are numbers.)

If there are 3 or more empty supply piles, worth X victory points. Otherwise, worth Y victory points.  [Or you could do finer distinctions based on how many supply piles are empty.]

Worth 1 victory point for every X cards in the trash.

Worth 1 victory point for every X cards in the deck of the player with the [largest/smallest] deck.

Worth 1 victory point for every X kingdom cards left in the supply.

Worth X victory points, minus 1 for every Y [type of card] in your deck, to a minimum of zero.

Worth 1 victory points for every Y differently-named cards in anyone's deck.

...and so on; I've left out lots of obvious variants on these.

Some of these are probably terrible ideas, but I suspect not all of them are, and so far none have been done.

How about something like:

Worth 1 VP point for any positive number of cards in your deck distracted from 15. (May be expressed weird, I am not a native speaker.)
The idea is that the card gives you 0VP if you have 15 (or more) cards in your deck, 1 VP if you have 14 cards in your deck, 2 VP if you have 13 cards in your deck, 7 VP if you have only 7 cards in your deck and 14 VP if it is the only card in your deck. The number (15) may need some tweaking. 20 would probably be to much, 15 not enough.



Another idea I recently had is a card with a cost of $6 and the addition: "If this is in the supply every player chooses his starting hands and may play them with any number of cards (but never more than 10 cards in total)"
So you can basically start with hands of 7/0, 6/1, 5/2 or 4/3. But as you can choose the amount of cards up to ten you can also start with things 4/0, 4/2, 3/0, 3/2, 2/0 (or 0/0 ) and draw the spare coppers or estates you didn't use guaranteed in the third turn.
The wording is probably poor, but I guess you get the idea of being able to use any number of cards from your ten starting cards in you first two turns. If you choose to start with all 10 cards you do not shuffle after your first turn; you play your second starting hand with 0 cards. If you choose to start with 7 coppers you play your second with three (or two, or one, or none) estates and no other cards. etc.

Easier wording:
Worth 15 VP minus the number of cards in your deck (never worth less than 1VP)

Issue with the card is that it can encourage stalemates where neither player wants to buy any cards and that game never ends.

Ed

[Schlippy]

Issue with the card is that it can encourage stalemates where neither player wants to buy any cards and that game never ends.

Ed

Does it? It is not really hard to beat a strategy that is based on getting some of those cards and trashing some other cards and than doing nothing by just buying a bit of cash and 2 provinces or something.
It is not like you have to fear that the game ends because your opponent suddenly three piles by not buying cards. :>

[jonts26]

Another design rule that we often see in fan cards is the permanently in play card. I think there may be a decent chance Guilds gives us this.

[CaptainNevada]

City does somewhat check how many cards are left in a supply pile. :>

It only checks to see if a pile is empty, and that is done after every single turn automatically.  But I'll rephrase it to say that no card checks how many cards are left in a non-empty supply pile.

[eHalcyon]

City does somewhat check how many cards are left in a supply pile. :>

It only checks to see if a pile is empty, and that is done after every single turn automatically.  But I'll rephrase it to say that no card checks how many cards are left in a non-empty supply pile.

My submission to the Set Design Contest for a trasher did this.

[NoMoreFun]

The strictly better/power creep issue is being played with a bit here

Scavenger is much, much better than Chancellor. It's $4 instead of $3, but since they're both terminals I can't think of many situations where that makes a difference (you never want to open chancellor/chancellor, for example). I'd say it's an even worse example of power creep than Thief/Noble Brigand.

Spy's attack is incredibly weak to the point of not being noticeable (which is why Donald X could throw it onto scrying pool when he thought alchemy was short on attacks), and that's the only thing it has over Ironmonger, which otherwise severely outclasses it.

Procession would be strictly better than throne room if "up to" was in the text, but it isn't, and in many games it will kill your good $5 actions, so yay for that.

[jonts26]

Procession would be strictly better than throne room if "up to" was in the text, but it isn't, and in many games it will kill your good $5 actions, so yay for that.

Procession will play completely differently than TR I would wager. The forced trash really changes what you can do with it.

[jonts26]

So death cart sort of does the gain a curse when you gain this thing, except it's two ruins.

[AJD]

And the "all cards in a Kingdom pile are identical" rule is out the window now too.

[eHalcyon]

So death cart sort of does the gain a curse when you gain this thing, except it's two ruins.

I think it's worth noting that one of the main issues with that concept is that the card has to be awesome enough to be worth the junk it comes with, and that if there's an easy way to handle the junk (strong trashing, Watchtower, or even just that the junk is all gone) then the card is overpowered.  Death Card solves this by having an on-going penalty.  The card is awesome, but you need to keep trashing actions.  If you fail to do so, you lose the power card.

[jonts26]

Well it also works because the bad cards you gain are exactly the fodder you can use to feed this card. So you might not want to trash them by other means.

[samath]

All cards have at least one type, and no greater than 3 types.  A card with no types makes very little sense, but is theoretically possible.  There likely is no room for more than 3 types, but they could always make the font smaller.

Dame Josephine just broke this one. And yes, it appears they had to make the font smaller and go to two lines.

[Razzishi]

All cards have at least one type, and no greater than 3 types.  A card with no types makes very little sense, but is theoretically possible.  There likely is no room for more than 3 types, but they could always make the font smaller.

Dame Josephine just broke this one. And yes, it appears they had to make the font smaller and go to two lines.

I immediately saw that myself and was outraged at the fact that I couldn't mention it in this thread before anyone else did.   

[zahlman]

All cards have at least one type, and no greater than 3 types.  A card with no types makes very little sense, but is theoretically possible.  There likely is no room for more than 3 types, but they could always make the font smaller.

Dame Josephine just broke this one. And yes, it appears they had to make the font smaller and go to two lines.

Actually she appears to be part of a pile of Knights who all do this.

[axlemn]

No card that trashes only cards up to a particular cost. 
No card that gives other players money.  (I predict this one will be broken in Guilds.)
Nothing that borrows actions or cards from next turn.  i.e. No reversed-duration. 
No card that changes the value of VP cards that other players have.  (Is this politics?  Kingmaking?)
No card that allows you to place a card costing more than 0 that you do not own in another's deck or discard. 
No card that trashes only Curses, Ruins, or Shelters. 

[engineer]

No card that gives other players money.  (I predict this one will be broken in Guilds.)

No card that allows you to place a card costing more than 0 that you do not own in another's deck or discard. 

Embassy does both of these things.  So does Governor.

[ycz6]

I believe by "money" there he means "$", i.e. buying power on the current turn.

[engineer]

I believe by "money" there he means "$", i.e. buying power on the current turn.

Oy, I hope they don't do that.  That would be a pain to keep track of.  I guess you could use tokens.

[NoMoreFun]

I believe by "money" there he means "$", i.e. buying power on the current turn.

Oy, I hope they don't do that.  That would be a pain to keep track of.  I guess you could use tokens.

Still no "each other player gains a copper in hand" attack.

[Dsell]

I believe by "money" there he means "$", i.e. buying power on the current turn.

Oy, I hope they don't do that.  That would be a pain to keep track of.  I guess you could use tokens.

Still no "each other player gains a copper in hand" attack.

The fan expansion is really trying to change this one!

[Donald X.]

Still no "each other player gains a copper in hand" attack.

It will show up in the secret history. One problem is that the copper pile has no definite size, and varies with more players in a poor way.

[NoMoreFun]

I hope you haven't ruled it out. You designed other cards that let other players gain copper indefinitely (ambassador, mountebank, jester, noble brigand), and I don't see why it would be impossible to come up with one more that had the highly interesting (and IIRC, unique) effect of temporarily helping the opponent, but ultimately hurting them.

[Donald X.]

I hope you haven't ruled it out. You designed other cards that let other players gain copper indefinitely (ambassador, mountebank, jester, noble brigand), and I don't see why it would be impossible to come up with one more that had the highly interesting (and IIRC, unique) effect of temporarily helping the opponent, but ultimately hurting them.

Jester and Noble Brigand don't have this problem because they don't give out much Copper really. Ambassador doesn't because you supply some of the Copper. Mountebank does have this issue, but it's a little muted there.

You can temporarily help and ultimately hurt your opponent other ways; it doesn't need to be giving them a Copper in hand.

I gave the mechanic a fair shot. It was in the set from day one and got tried on multiple cards.

[NoMoreFun]

You can temporarily help and ultimately hurt your opponent other ways; it doesn't need to be giving them a Copper in hand.

Are any existing cards meant to do this? I guess you could argue in some cases Governor's Silver Giving and Embassy do that. I know Bishop and Governor's Trashing give the chance to do the opposite.

A council room/witch would of course directly do this, but doesn't have the beautiful simplicity of gaining a copper in hand. Gain a ruins in hand? It's probably too late for that now. There are several fan cards that are when gain everyone else gains a copper in hand (so the supply problem isn't an issue), and I didn't see anything like that in the Hinterlands secret history - was that considered?

[engineer]

Torturer lets you gain a curse in hand, as an option.  So "gain bad stuff in hand" has been touched upon.  I can see why Donald likes that better, since the curse pile scales with the number of people playing.