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[Glooble]

Action - $6

When you play this card, choose any action card in the supply costing five or less. Until the end of your next turn, this card acts as that card.

What do people think of this idea? The "until the end of your next turn" was so it could be used as a duration card. I think on the one hand, you're spending six on a five, but on the other hand you've got an amazing amount of versatility. Limiting it to cards that cost less than five reduces the potential for abuse, I think (unless you play it with a bridge, I suppose.) What do you guys think?

[DG]

You might want to clarify "acts as this card". Does the master of guise take the same name, the same card text, the same card cost?


You also need some very clear rules how it behaves when played by a throne or king's court. You might also need some way of tracking what is going on when there are multiple copies of this card in play.

[rinkworks]

That's a really interesting idea, and I think you're right about making it more expensive than the cards it can emulate.  I don't think it can really be abused, even in emulating a Bridge.  If you can emulate a Bridge, that means Bridge is in the supply, in which case you could have just bought Bridge instead and done no worse.

I'm not so sure about the "next turn" wording, though.  Suppose it's played, cleaned-up from play, and then drawn into your hand for your next turn.  Is it now not allowed to be something different than it was the previous turn, or is its power gone since it was cleaned up from play?  Simpler would be just to say, "While this is in play..."  That covers the duration case without introducing additional ambiguity.

[rinkworks]

Thinking about it a little more, you might even want to bump it up to $7.  I'm thinking about the different engines you can build and how easy it would be to use this card to get them going.  One of the problems with engines, especially before they're fully mature, is that you don't always draw the specific cards you need to kick it off.  So imagine these engines:

1. +Actions/+Draw engine:  If you draw nothing but Smithies, you make it a Village.  If you get nothing but Villages, you make it a Smithy.  If you have the similar Village/Torturer engine, you can pull the same trick to more devastating effect.

2. Goons engine:  Your card can't become a Goons, but it can certainly become a Village to make those multiple Goons you drew playable.

3. Conspirator engine:  If you draw some Conspirators without enough non-terminals to kick off the chain, you can fill in the gap.  Similarly, if you draw starter cards without enough Conspirators, you can fill in that gap instead.

4. Minion/X:  If you draw a hand without a Minion, it becomes a Minion.  If you draw a hand with a Minion, it becomes a Conspirator, a Festival, a Bazaar, a Market, a Worker's Village, or any other non-terminal that would provide you +Buys or +Coins as you're cycling through your deck with the Minions.

5. Cursing attacks.  Not an engine, per se, but if, for example, Witch was on the board, you'd rather have your card instead if you could get it soon enough.  Because Cursing attacks are already incredibly powerful, despite being balanced by the fact that the Curses do run out eventually and become dead or weak cards afterwards.  But your card could be a Witch until the Curses run out, then suddenly be a Fishing Village or a Laboratory or something, without missing a beat.  That's huge.

So I'm suspecting that this is going to be a lot more powerful than it first sounded to me.  It's a neat idea, so I hope it's not still broken at 7.  I'm pretty sure it's usually going to be preferable to Bank, Expand, and maybe Forge.  But the nice thing is that it IS still situational.  On boards with weaker kingdoms, especially if there are no great 5-cost cards, it's probably not worth going for.  However powerful it might be sometimes, it's not always a must-buy, and that's a good thing.

[WanderingWinder]

I doubt it will be broken at 7. I don't even think it will be good at 6 so often. The problem is that you don't want to make a card that's terrible 80% of the time and nearly brokenly good the other 20%, which is what this has the potential to be. But I don't think it's so unreasonable, so would go ahead and playtest it, perhaps changing the numbers on both its cost and the cost of the card it can duplicate until you get the best fit.

[rinkworks]

Most amusing use of this card:  a 0 VP Island.

[Davio]

This card needs a lot of work, rulewise.

If you decide it's a Duchy and your opponent ends the game the next turn, do you get 3 VP?
Likewise for any other VP card.

About "the end of your next turn", how does it deal with Outpost and Possession?

If you trash it for benefit, does it count the cost of the card you choose (< $5) or the cost of the actual card ($6)?

How does it deal with Ambassador? You decide it's an Estate, pass it back to the supply, does your opponent gain this card or an Estate?

[rod-]

1) Making a card a duration effect is supposed to reduce the cost (see caravan vs lab)
2) The duration on this seems.....unnecessary

[Glooble]

Ok, another try at the wording.

Master of Disguise - Action $7

Name an action card in the supply costing five or less. While this card is in play, it functions identically to that action card. Any given copy of this card can only emulate one card per turn.

[WanderingWinder]

I would probably try
"Master of Disguise - Action $6"
Choose an action card in the supply costing $5 or less. Play a copy of that action.
Alternatively, you could not have it be restricted to actions and have something like
"Master of Disguise - Action $6"
Choose an card in the supply costing $5 or less. Play a copy of that card. (Only action and victory cards may be played).
The reminder is on there to clear up that you couldn't play, say, an estate as a card. Or maybe you could let them do that, but they just don't do anything. I don't know, but I don't really think it's all that necessary or confusing. Actually I don't see this concept as being too hard to fit in the rules at all - certainly much cleaner than possession.

[Davio]

It's not hard to understand what this card is about and what it's supposed to do.
The wording just needs to be carefully chosen to encompass all edge cases and not need a page long FAQ like Possession, although it probably will...

I like "play a copy of that action" or something along those lines.

I guess you can put it on your Island mat with another card?
I guess it doesn't count as a reaction, like when another player plays a Witch and you go: "Hey, I've got a Moat!"
Are you going to allow Duration cards? If so, do you leave the card out? Does it make sense to leave the card out, since there is no text on the card to help you remember?

Can you choose an Action card that is no longer in the supply?

[rinkworks]

If you decide it's a Duchy and your opponent ends the game the next turn, do you get 3 VP?

The text reads "Choose any action card..." which rules out Duchy.  I agree that the rule for, say, Great Hall would need to be clarified.  But with the "While this is in play..." wording, that's taken care of.  At the end of the game, when VPs are being counted, no card is in play.

Almost all of the other issues you raise are not really problems, since the card says, "When you play this...."  You can't use Ambassador on a Master of Disguise in your hand and call it an Estate, because the Master of Disguise was never played.  Etc.

Making a card a duration effect is supposed to reduce the cost (see caravan vs lab)

This is only true if the entirety of the effect is delayed.  Caravan has no impact on the first turn and provides the full benefit on the next turn.  But this card doesn't have a completely delayed effect.  It's more akin to Merchant Ship, which provides its benefit on BOTH turns (assuming you use it to mimic a duration card).  But you wouldn't price Merchant Ship at $2, reasoning that, since its effect is (partially) delayed, it should be cheaper than a Silver.

All this said, I do think it's clearer and less prone to hangups with edge cases if you use WW's "play a copy" wording.  This essentially puts it in the class of Throne Room and King's Court and thus subject to the same edge-case rules that have already been developed for those cards (such as using them on duration cards).

(Unfortunately, this means you could use it as an Island without putting itself out of play for the rest of the game, which I still think is funny.)

[rinkworks]

Thinking more about this, I have some FAQ-type detail to recommend for this card.  Basically you'd want to make sure that clean-up behavior is NOT emulated.  If the Master of Disguise is used as an Herbalist, you don't get to top-deck a treasure from play during clean-up.  If it's a Walled Village, and it's the only action you've played, you don't get to top-deck it.

Why not?  That's more consistent with the "invisible copy" rules for Throne Room and King's Court.  If you Throne an Herbalist, you still only get to top-deck a single treasure, because you're still only discarding a single Herbalist from play.  Likewise, if a Master of Disguise was emulating an Herbalist, you'd still be cleaning up a Master of Disguise at the end, not an Herbalist.

Similarly, Master of Disguise would reduce the cost of Peddler, but the invisible copy of Herbalist would not.  (However, both the Master of Disguise *and* the invisible copy of Herbalist would help activate a Conspirator, which is also consistent with how TR/KC's invisible copies work.)

I suspect, also, that for the same reason the Master of Disguise would not earn you VP tokens per buy if it were to emulate a Goons.  (And it *could* emulate a Goons, if a Bridge were in effect.)  Although Goons earns a VP token per buy "while this is in play," the invisible copy of Goons that Master of Disguise plays for you is not technically in play, because it's not there at all.

By the same token (ha ha, get it?), if the Master of Disguise were able to emulate a Princess -- and it can't, because Princess is never in the supply, but if it could -- all it would do for you is give you +1 Buy.  Because the cost-reducing wording of Princess, unlike Bridge, is a "while this is in play" thing that doesn't carry over to TR/KC copies.

Like I said, these are details that probably wouldn't go in the card text but are important edge cases to work out if you're going to use the card in a real game.

[rinkworks]

Another odd trick:

Village-Village-Bridge-Bridge-Master of Disguise

Now Master of Disguise can play an invisible copy of Master of Disguise.  Which can play an invisible copy of Master of Disguise.  Which can play an invisible copy of Master of Disguise.  Which can play an invisible copy of Master of Disguise.

I don't think pursuing this infinite loop is worthwhile to the player, which is why revealing the same copy of Secret Chamber a million times is, while possible, not normally a problem.  The invisible copies wouldn't lower the cost of Peddler, but even if they did, Peddler is at $0 before the loop starts.  Likewise, Conspirator has long since been activated.  Still, possibly it's worth saying "other than Master of Disguise" on the card text, even though that's going to look really weird since normally it's priced out of range anyhow.  Actually, it's probably unnecessary, but it's worth thinking about.

Thankfully, Master of Disguise can never mimic a Golem no matter how many Bridges you play, or you could have a problem with playing Golems that bring up Masters of Disguise, which emulate other Golems, etc.  That wouldn't be an infinite loop, but the Golem card precludes the possibility of nested Golems for good reason:  it could get extremely confusing!

[Deadlock39]

You could restrict MoD to play only cards that cost $1 (or $2 if it costs $7) less than MoD, which keeps Bridge from altering its ability.  This would have the negative effect of preventing it from working at all if you played enough bridges to get it to $0. 

Of course, if you just played 6 or 7 Bridges, you probably just won the game.

[Kirian]

I think the "invisible copy" idea may make things a bit crazy, and I disagree with rinkworks on how some of those effects should work.  Here's a different thought:

Master of Disguise -- Action, $6

When you play this card, take an action card costing at most $5 from the supply and immediately play it.  For all purposes, these two cards count as one action card.  If an action would affect the extra card, it instead affects this card, and the extra card is returned to the supply.  When you discard the extra card from play, instead return it to the supply and discard this card.

----

This takes care of a few things:

The interaction with TR/KC becomes more obvious--take two/three cards from the supply and play them.  This still counts as only two actions in play (TR/MoD).  The extra card from MoD doesn't count for Peddler.

"When you discard" actions and "while in play" actions count.  A Treasury can put MoD on the deck (unless a victory card was purchased); if it can play Goons, VP tokens would be gained.  Otherwise why use it to play a Goons?

If you use MoD to play Island or Feast, you lose the MoD--probably not a good idea.

In addition, it prevents MoD from emulating cards that have run out.  If you lost the Minion race 4/6, you can't use MoD to have extra Minions.

----

As far as rinkworks's thoughts on using it as a super-engine card, I think that's fair at $6.  We already have a card that does that at $6: Nobles.  Nobles comes with 2 VP and can emulate Smithy or a subpar Village; MoD has no VP but can emulate many different cards (though only the ones on the table).  I guess I don't see this as brokenly awesome at $6; it will shine on some boards, and be useful but not amazing on others.  Pricing it at $6 puts it out of the range of initial buys, and only rarely a second-shuffle buy; if MoD and Witch are both in the supply, you'll no longer want to buy Witch at $6, but you surely won't want to pass it up at $5 and get behind in the Curse race.

[WanderingWinder]

Kirian, I don't see how your suggestion is at all simpler or clearer or even better in the rules than making it a copy a la KC or TR

[rinkworks]

If you're going to physically borrow a card from the supply and play it, then return it to the supply on clean-up, it ought to count as a separate action from the MoD.  It's simpler, and I can't think of any reason not to.  You don't wind up with any of the weirdness of Feast trashing a card besides itself, or Island stowing away something besides itself.  It doesn't complicate the counting of actions in play for Peddler, or played actions for Conspirator.

If you remove the "these two cards count as one action" stipulation, I could then agree that borrowing the card from the supply simplifies things.  I'm not sure if I *like* it better, but it does avoid the weirdness of not being able to replicate "while in play" behavior.

(I thought of another confusing "while in play" issue, by the way:  Lighthouse.  I would contend that an invisible copy of Lighthouse would not provide immunity from attacks.  Like all "While in play" clauses -- and *anything* written below a horizontal dividing line -- they don't apply to invisible TR/KC copies, nor should they to an invisible copy version of MoD.)

One cute thing I like about your version is it allows you to temporarily -- for the rest of your turn only -- upgrade the Cities.

Regarding cost, it's entirely possible it's not broken at $6.  But I would point out that Nobles makes a poor draw engine on its own -- two Nobles together are just a single Laboratory and WORSE than a Village/Smithy, which itself is inferior to Smithy+Big Money.  Having a card that can be Bazaar/Council Room/Laboratory/Minion/Torturer as needed -- as opposed to merely Partial Village/Smithy -- is worth a whole lot more than Nobles' 2 VP.

But maybe you're right -- maybe the situationality of MoD means the $6 price is okay.  No way to know without playtesting, I guess.

[kazztawdal]

Doppelganger
$6
Action

Choose an Action card with a cost lower than the cost of Doppelganger from the supply.  Play that card.
(Place the chosen card in front of you until the end of the turn.  Return it to the Supply during your Clean-up phase.)


edit: funny interaction, if you play too many Bridges or Talismans, you can't play any cards with Doppelganger
also Duration cards don't work well with it because they must go back to the supply

[DsnowMan]

I think you want Durations to stay out a turn, so I'd rephrase Doppelganger as:
( ... When you remove that card from play during your Clean-up phase, return it to the supply)

[kazztawdal]

I think you want Durations to stay out a turn, so I'd rephrase Doppelganger as:
( ... When you remove that card from play during your Clean-up phase, return it to the supply)

Depends on which is more balanced.  I don't mind Durations being nerfed by the effect.

[rinkworks]

I personally think it's more aesthetically right to keep it working on durations.  But there's a rule complication.  What if you borrow a card that causes the third supply pile to be depleted?  If it's a non-duration, it's probably okay:  when your turn ends, that borrowed card is returned to the supply, and the game can continue.  If it's a duration, it stays out of the supply pile for longer.  So does the game end at that point, or does it not count towards depleting the third pile?  If not, it's a little weird that the next player cannot buy the last card in that non-empty empty supply pile to end the game on purpose.  It's just kind of a mess at that point.

So it does seem like you have to nerf the next-turn portion of duration cards.  That being the case, I'd personally rather nerf the "while in play" clauses and go back to the invisible copy version.

[HockeyHippo]

Doppelganger
$6
Action

Choose an Action card with a cost lower than the cost of Doppelganger from the supply.  Play that card.
(Place the chosen card in front of you until the end of the turn.  Return it to the Supply during your Clean-up phase.)


edit: funny interaction, if you play too many Bridges or Talismans, you can't play any cards with Doppelganger
also Duration cards don't work well with it because they must go back to the supply

I believe you Quarries, even though you cannot play treasure cards during the Buy phase, unless of course you use Black Market.

[HockeyHippo]

Magic Mirror
Action $6

Choose an action card from the supply costing at least 1 less than Magic Mirror. Play this card as if it were the chosen card.


I really don't think you can make this card a duration card because it would be a horrible card in that case. Firstly you would need two copies of this card for it to do anything. Secondly you would have to play them in subsequent turns in order for it to have any use.

[kazztawdal]

Doppelganger
$6
Action

Choose an Action card with a cost lower than the cost of Doppelganger from the supply.  Play that card.
(Place the chosen card in front of you until the end of the turn.  Return it to the Supply during your Clean-up phase.)


edit: funny interaction, if you play too many Bridges or Talismans, you can't play any cards with Doppelganger
also Duration cards don't work well with it because they must go back to the supply

I believe you Quarries, even though you cannot play treasure cards during the Buy phase, unless of course you use Black Market.

ah, yea, correct on both counts