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[orson]

I expect this is not an original idea, but it's my take on a card that takes victory cards from opponents.

Soldiers: Action-Attack. Cost 4
Each other player trashes a Victory card from his hand, or reveals and discards a hand with no Victory cards, and draws back up to the same hand size. You gain the trashed cards, putting them on top of your deck.

Card Mockup:
http://nosro.net/images/soldiers.jpg

I've tried to keep within in the spirit of Dominion, in that it's a non-political attack against all opponents. It's a rough adaptation from the Thief card (and RiotNrrrd helped me past a roadblock with his simple Siege idea: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/426742/card-ideas).

I wish I was able to program this into a simulator to get some accurate data. I vastly underestimated how difficult it would be to make a card for this game. I'm not sure I have it right, yet, but I've tried to test it enough to make it worthwhile to share.

Stealing a Victory card is a brutal attack, which puts you ahead while at the same time hurting your opponent; so gaining even a Duchy swings the game 6 points in your favor. On the other hand, this is basically a dead card if you miss. So it's usually a late game card, best played when you have a reasonable chance of scoring a hit. Timing is the key.

The card is not expensive at 4 coins, but the double penalty of forcing you to gain all trashed Victory cards indiscriminately onto the top your deck is what really limits it. Playing the card early will only help your opponents by taking their Estates, much like trashing their Coppers with the Thief.

The alternate effect of cycling your opponent's deck when they have no Victory cards was a late addition. With this, multiple soldiers will eventually grind through a deck to find those Victory cards. Without it, the card could run into a complete dead end and was much less fun to play.

I expect some people will find the card annoying in a similar way to Smugglers or Possession, in that it allows you to cheaply reap the benefits of other successful decks which have gained their Victory cards the hard way. However, I find the new strategies introduced with this card are interesting, particularly in finding ways to deal with an opponent playing Soldiers. Certain cards synergize with it, like mixed type Victory cards, and others work against it, like VP generators. I have found that no matter what's on the table there are two general strategies which will absolutely defeat a deck built solely around Soldier. I'll let you discover these yourself. I don't think these counter strategies make the card useless, because then the threat of Soldiers to drive your opponent's strategy can also be a useful bluff or feint.

Thanks for your thoughts and please let me know what your experiences playing with it are.
(I've also posted this on BGG - hoping to get as much feedback as possible)

[orson]

I've been looking at this card too long and missed an obvious wording mistake. The intent is to reveal a hand with no Victory cards for the alternate effect (as with Bureaucrat). I'll have to work that in.

[kn1tt3r]

Nice idea, but I think this card won't be much fun: In the beginning far too weak, in the endgame far too strong, and overall far too random.

[Diving Pikachu]

It's just not feasible to have a card solely dependent on whether your opponents have victory cards in their decks. Fortune Teller gives you $ and also targets curses. Bureaucrat gives you a silver. Jester lets you gain other cards if it's not a victory card you turn over. Thief is a terrible card to model something after; I've never even considered touching it unless Platinums or Harems were involved, and it was a 4-player game (which I only play at IRL gatherings). But even Thief has the remote possibility of aiding you and hurting others early in the game by trashing a silver. And if people do start buying this in the endgame, it could be responsible for incredibly large swings purely by chance, which is not in the spirit of Dominion. Being possessed with a Masquerade or Ambassador in your hand, plus a Province or Colony should be the worst-case scenario for this kind of thing, but if you're smart enough you can avoid such a trap. And even if a Saboteur hits a Province, it's only a 3-point swing. But what you propose is a potential 12- or 20-point swing by a $4 attack in 2-player. Couple that with a King's Court and you could make it a 24- or 40-point swing easily (with the believable scenario of hitting, missing, and hitting again). I know you try to mitigate this with the targets themselves choosing the victory card to trash, but it's not enough. In a 4-player game, this would be obscene, with a potential 24-point swing if you hit 3 provinces, or a 40-point swing if you hit 3 colonies. Even the most powerful $6 and $7 cards like Goons, Grand Market, Bank, and King's Court need the right circumstances to help you, and even then, they don't directly affect your score as much as this card would.

[Davio]

I think it is a very deliberate choice by the designers to not have included these kinds of cards up to this point.
Of course, there is always the cruel Possession - Masq/Ambassador combo, but this is something players can prevent.

Your card can only be countered (aside from the obvious Reaction cards + Lighthouse) by a pure VP token strategy, which may not always be available.

People hate Saboteur and Swindler as much as it is, we don't need a card like this to increase players' agony.

Players like to build up their own deck and enjoy the benefits of their play, not have one player take advantage of all their hard work. Possession has this spot already and it costs $6P or roughly $8.5!
Besides, it scales extremely bad to multiplayer, you could gain 3 Provinces! KC this and gain up to 9 Provinces! Ouch!

[def]

In a setup with this, KC and Council Room, you would need a soldier to protect yourself from your opponent's rage...

[Kirian]

Change it so that the players who lose green cards gain equivalent VP tokens, but make the card gain optional.  You're now always making their deck better and usually making yours worse, but with the trade-off of a good chance of inflating your score rapidly.  I'd make the text:

----

Each player, including yourself, trashes a Victory card from their hands, or reveals a hand with no Victory cards.  If any cards were trashed, you may gain any or all of the trashed cards and place them on top of your deck.

If any player trashes a card in this manner, they receive +VP equal to the VP value of the trashed card, and draw a card.  If the card has a variable VP value, they receive VP equal to the cost of the trashed card, +2 if there is a potion in the cost.

[Thisisnotasmile]

Change it so that the players who lose green cards gain equivalent VP tokens, but make the card gain optional.  You're now always making their deck better and usually making yours worse, but with the trade-off of a good chance of inflating your score rapidly.  I'd make the text:

----

Each player, including yourself, trashes a Victory card from their hands, or reveals a hand with no Victory cards.  If any cards were trashed, you may gain any or all of the trashed cards and place them on top of your deck.

If any player trashes a card in this manner, they receive +VP equal to the VP value of the trashed card, and draw a card.  If the card has a variable VP value, they receive VP equal to the cost of the trashed card, +2 if there is a potion in the cost.

Deck of: Chapel, Village, Fairgrounds (or any VP card), Soldiers, Soldiers.

Play Village. Play Soldiers and trash Fairgrounds gaining 6VP, choose to regain the trashed Fairgrounds on top of your deck. Draw a card because you trashed a card to the Soldiers. Play Soldiers and trash Fairgrounds gaining 6VP, choose to regain the trashed Fairgrounds on top of your deck. Draw a card because you trashed a card to the Soldiers.

Rinse. Repeat. Gain 12VP every turn for the rest of forever.

(I chose Fairgrounds because it is cheaper than Province and gives the same number of VP. Obviously Colony would be better but it would take a bit longer to get up to $11 and then trash your deck to pull this off. You could just use any VP card you want (one of your starting Estates) and choose to regain a different card whenever an opponent trashes anything worth more VPs and just trade your way up...)

[minced]

First off, props on the card artwork, which is really good. As for the card itself, as you've probably noticed from the replies, it is nigh-impossible to balance a trashing card. Saboteur is balanced because it warps the game but ultimately doesn't provide that much benefit unless you can A) play it constantly and B) have plenty of +cards/+actions to spare. Thief and pirate ship are balanced because treasures are really easy to replace, you can fill your deck with cantrips (+1 card/+1 action) or action/victory cards to defend against their effects, and thief trashing opposing coppers *helps* your opponent.


To balance Soldiers, you'll need to understand the problems with trashers. From Donald X's thoughts on Saboteur:

"Saboteur: This is one end result in the quest for a working version of "each other player trashes the top card of their deck." That concept, as I have previously mentioned, has three problems: 1) it's often weak, trashing Coppers and Estates; 2) it's too random, sometimes trashing one player's Copper and another's Province; 3) it can lead to a weird game state in which everyone only has 5 cards left and can't get anywhere, which is cool if it just happens once ever, but bad if it happens every time a particular card is on the table.

Saboteur solves all of those problems. It can't hit Coppers or Estates; it has a much more even effect on your opponents; and the weird game state is much harder to achieve. And all it took was lots of tiny text!"

This card suffers from 1 and 2 in all suggested iterations. Sometimes it trashes estates, sometimes it trashes provinces. It's also possession + ambassador - level swingy as previously mentioned. Those problems need to be solved before the card is printable.

Some possible remedies:

1. Place all opposing victory cards back on the deck instead of trashing them, making this card an uber-bureaucrat with no player benefit.
2. Divide victory cards into smaller victory cards by allowing (requiring?) the opponent to gain two victory cards of cost at least $3 less than the original. Province -> two duchies, duchy -> two estates, colony -> two provinces, estate -> nothing. Soldiers "dividing" an opponent's territory into smaller territories is acceptable flavor. This way soldiers helps players when it reveals estates (by trashing them), it's horrible in colony games unless it can be played very, very often, and it balances itself by running out piles, allowing an opponent who is ahead in VP to end the game before opposing soldiers render his deck unusable.

Sadly, I don't think Kirian's solution works, because as previously mentioned it allows perpetual VP gain.

[Censure]

Nice card artwork. How'd you fit the art behind the little swirly pieces of paper on the sides? I'm using GIMP and I'm a noob at it 

[Kirian]

Hrm, yes, the perpetual VP gain would be a little bit ridiculous I guess.  Easy enough to change it to "every other player" trashes a green.  To balance this in multiplayer, it might be best to make it "you may gain one of the trashed cards."

(I do want to note that perpetual motion chains are already available with the available cards--hey sounds like a puzzle!!)

On Donald's points:  I find the hitting Coppers and Estates criterion interesting, as Swindler, for instance, has no problem hitting them, nor does Thief, etc.  Obviously this card would suck in the early game, but like Saboteur would have its uses later on.  As far as swinginess... I think I'd have to play it to find out.

[rinkworks]

On Donald's points:  I find the hitting Coppers and Estates criterion interesting, as Swindler, for instance, has no problem hitting them, nor does Thief, etc.

But, like Saboteur, the damage Swindler does is proportionate to the card it hits.  It can turn a Copper into a Curse but not a Grand Market into a Curse.  Those have to become, say, a Gold or a Goons.

Thief does have this imbalance, though, you're right.  But it somehow doesn't seem so bad when it only treasure is affected.

[Kirian]

No, Swindler has a gigantic swinginess in terms of score, much larger than Sab.  Consider the serious differences between having a Copper turned into a Curse, an Estate turned into an Estate, and a Province turned into a Peddler.  The worst Sab can do to your score is turn a Colony into a Province.

[orson]

Thank you all for great comments and ideas.

I have playtested it mostly solitaire (which isn't a great test, I know). The early group playtests were not successful because the card was too complex in it's early forms. By your responses it is flawed, but perhaps fixable. I'm going to keep working on it.

It is a swingy card, there is no doubt about it. It is both an attacking Trasher and a Tournament-like, or Treasure Map like, gambler. I can't defend it against that charge. What I can say is that it plays more tamely than I expected:

I've played it against Big Money Ultimate many times and the Soldier based deck has a very slight edge, and only if played correctly. Big Money can gain victory fast enough that the Soldier can barely turn the tables in time. The only strategy I found that worked was what I called Standing Army. The Standing Army strategy would buy Soldiers when possible, but otherwise go Big Money. It would never play them until 5 Provinces were left and then it would begin to attack and also occasionally buy Estates or Duchies. The game would usually end with 3 Supply piles depleted - Duchies, Estates and Soldiers. The VP difference was less than 6 points usually.

BMU with a slight alteration would crush Standing Army. Simply by delaying buying Provinces somewhat, it could build up enough buying power to cruise through the Provinces in a short run, while Standing Army, much the poorer, laden with the all Soldiers it had bought, could only try to catch up. It's very simple - if the victory cards are gained before the shuffle there is no way they can be stolen.

It's more complex in a multi-player game, and it does seem to swing in the Soldiers favor. A good defense against the Soldier is the Soldier itself, which leads to a group-think downward spiral. A dynamic I found amusing was that playing Soldiers immediately after being attacked with them could gain you back your lost Victory card (which felt thematic).

I like both the idea of gaining VP tokens, and particularly the idea of breaking a Victory card into two smaller Victory cards. I will try these variants, and report back.

By the way, the card was made using a Photoshop template that is available on Board Game Geek (there are several, I think I used this one: http://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/57516/adobe-photoshop-cs3-custom-blank-card-template-eng). It allows you to put the image behind the scrollwork, and has all the card types set up. The artwork is by Graham Turner (http://www.studio88.co.uk/acatalog/Graham_Turner.html), which I don't have any rights to. It was just for personal use to have a nice card to look at.

[WanderingWinder]

I would assume the way to play this is to not buy this until mid to late game, as before that it's dead in your hand.

[rinkworks]

No, Swindler has a gigantic swinginess in terms of score, much larger than Sab.  Consider the serious differences between having a Copper turned into a Curse, an Estate turned into an Estate, and a Province turned into a Peddler.  The worst Sab can do to your score is turn a Colony into a Province.

You're right, of course, that the *potential* for swinginess is there.  But Swindling Provinces into Peddlers is an edge case, and a defensible one at that.  When Peddler and Swindler are out, I'm not buying early Provinces, and I'm possibly rushing Peddlers (popular cards anyway) as a Swindler deterrent.

Technically, Saboteur can be as swingy:  if the Duchies are out, the Provinces become much less.  Also an edge case, but the point of my post was not to contrast Saboteur and Swindler, or to defend their moderation in ALL cases, but to point out how *both* of these cards deal commensurate damage in the usual case.

Contrast with the kind of card Donald was talking about -- of which Soldiers is one -- which is swingy pretty much all the time, and in a way you can't really defend against either.

[Epoch]

What if you took minced's "splitting the VP card" idea but split the resulting VP between players?

"Each other player reveals the top 2 cards of his deck. If they revealed any Victory cards, they trash one of them that you choose.  If they trashed a card, both they and you gain a Victory card with a cost at most $3 less than the trashed card.  Discard any remaining revealed cards."

So, your soldier marches into their Province, gain half of it -- you get a Duchy, they're left with a Duchy.  Feels on-flavor.

If it proves a bit too strong, they can optionally gain the card while you must gain the card, or you gain the card on top of your deck while they gain the card in their discard pile.  Note that you're sort of reverse-Bureaucratting them anyhow, taking green cards they were about to draw away from their next hand.

Could potentially do them a favor (trashes their Estate).  Is a Thief-like "attack that doesn't necessarily do anything and is a terminal action."  Is that enough to balance the potential benefit of: trash your opponent's Colony, they gain a Province (-4 VP for them), you gain a Province (+6 VP for you)?  Total gain for you: 10 VP swing.  Ouch.  But not super likely.  Hmmm, it's probably still too good.

EDIT:  How about this?

"Each other player reveals the top 2 cards of his deck. If they revealed any Victory cards, they trash one of them that you choose.  If they trashed a card, you gain a Victory card that costs at most $3 less than the trashed card.  If you gained a Victory card, they gain a number of VP tokens that matches the value of the card you gained.  Discard any remaining revealed cards."

EDIT 2:  Or this?

"Each other player reveals the top 2 cards of his deck.  If they revealed any Victory cards, they trash one of them that you choose.  If they trashed a card, they gain a Victory card that costs at most $3 less than the trashed card.  If they gained a Victory card, you gain a Victory card that costs at most $3 less than the card they gained.  Discard any remaining revealed cards."

Worst case scenario: they trash a Colony (-10 VP them), gain a Province (+6 VP them), you gain a Duchy (+3 VP you).  Net VP swing: 7 points, and you get a Duchy rather than a game-ending card.  Also, you've un-bureaucrated them, and it's a relatively rare case.

EDIT 3:  Or this?

"Each other player reveals the top 2 cards of his deck.  If they revealed any Victory cards, they trash one of them that you choose.  If they trashed a card, first they and then you gain a Victory card costing at most $3 less than the trashed card.  If you gained a Victory card, you also gain a Curse.  Discard any remaining revealed cards."

[kazztawdal]

I'm generally of the opinion that, the less text your card has, the better the card is.

I'd suggest a total revamp:
---
Soldiers
$5 - Action/Attack

Each other player discards all Victory cards from their hands.  If they discarded any Victory cards this way, they gain a Curse.

For each Victory card discarded, you gain +1 VP token.
---

The very idea of taking someone's Colony is madness.  If an Action card allowed you to do it, it should cost around $7, or have a crippling disadvantage.

If we're married to the concept, maybe something like this:

---
Soldiers
$6 - Action/Attack/Duration

At the start of your next turn, each other Player reveals the top 2 cards of their deck.  If they revealed any Victory cards, they trash one of them that you choose.  You may gain any or all of the trashed cards.  They discard the other revealed cards.

While Soldiers is in play, any other player may discard 4 cards, or 1 Soldiers card, from their hand.  If anyone does, discard Soldiers immediately.