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[Rush_Clasic]

Senator (5)
Action - Attack
+3 Cards
Each other player in turn order names a set-aside Randomizer card and puts it on their senator mat. If a player can't, they name one from your senator mat instead.
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Setup: For each card in the Supply, start the game with its Randomizer card set aside. Players can't buy cards that share a name with any card on their senator mat.

Senator #2 (5)
Action - Attack
+3 Cards
Each other player in turn order names a set-aside Randomizer card and puts it on their senator mat. If a player can't, they name one from your senator mat instead.
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Setup: For each card in the Supply, start the game with its Randomizer card set aside. Cards that share a name with any card on a player's senator mat cost that player $2 more to buy.

• Legislation: often more of a hindrance than a boon!
• This card came about from a bit of analytic work. I was thinking about the nature of attack cards overall. Because they're played on your turn, there has been a limit of what they can do: discard, deck, and curse. Donald X. has been good about expanding these areas and making cards that feel very different from each other, and he's even found some cards that live a bit outside of those described realms (Ambassador, Jester, and the new looters being the most interesting examples). This is my attempt to live outside those confines as well, turning Contraband into an attack.
• Every game of Dominion starts with at least 17 different cards in the supply, meaning this attack in a 4 player game will have to be played 6 times to hand out all the Randomizer cards. That seemed a bit quick to me in regards to shutting down a player from Provinces, so I added the escape clause to ensure a way to get rid of cards on a player's mat. For this reason, I also limited it to buying rather than gaining. (The curse card is gonna be the first taken, anyway; no need to add a benefit to that fact.) EDIT: This isn't as big a concern with the new "taxing" version, but the pass effect still has nice nuances.
• I've gone through a lot of wordings on this. There are a myriad of ways to approach it. I come from the technical background of Magic, which makes me prone to not overuse short-cuts, but if you see a prettier way to word this, let me know,

[eHalcyon]

In a 2p game this has very little effect unless you can build an engine to play this repeatedly.  Even then, it's probably too slow to make much of a difference.

With more players, it escalates really quickly.  Then, whoever gets stuck with the key cards is locked out from buying them.  The escape clause doesn't help much, especially if you get locked out of Senator itself.  The other players buy more and you keep getting loaded with the Randomizers.  Maybe you managed to get one or two before being locked out, but you can't keep pace.  Pretty soon you can't buy anything at all.  It's like losing the Ambassador war except there is no way to recover.

[Captain_Frisk]

Rush - I really think that instead of posting a new card every day - we might be better off if you cut down the frequency - design your card a day - and pick the best one to post on monday or something.  Some of these cards just have problems - and right now you have 1/2 of the topics on the first page of the variants forum.

-- Specific card feedback --

#1 - Typically you don't have randomizer cards for the basic items.  For example - I'm not sure if Plat / Colony have them - in reality you have 10 randomizers
#2 - While this may not be OP in a 1 on 1 game in which 1 player ignores it... (I mean you could play Senator / Big Money) pretty easily, and the senator is only likely to get played 4-6 times in the game - it is a HUGE problem in a 4 player game - the player sitting to the left of the senator has a significantly better decision than the player sitting to the right, and it only takes 4 plays of the card in a 3 or 4 player game for every card to get locked down from at least 1 player - and some players are going to get an uneven # of cards banned - even if only 1 player plays the senator.  The first 2 or 3 senators actions are effectively useless - you rarely use all 10 kingdoms, but the remaining could be crippling - and there's no way to get out of it.  At least with embargo you can still buy the pieces you want - at a price.  This just potentially cripples the game for some players.

[razorborne]

the basic cards don't have randomizers, do they? like, there's no Gold randomizer, so this can't prohibit gold. that means it only takes four senators in a four-player game to hand out all the kingdom card randomizers. unless I'm wrong about that, but I don't see that there would be a purpose in a gold randomizer since they are in every game.

wouldn't it be simpler to have it just say to set aside an "extra copy" of each card? you can use the randomizers to accomplish that anyway.

also this seems really bad in most two-player games, because unless we both go for it, if I'm going for a strategy that only uses, say, 3 kingdom cards, you have to play your senator 8 times before it does anything to me. if you use a version that includes the basic cards, that goes up to 10, since it's likely I can take curse and copper without hurting myself in the least. maybe if you can put together some +cards/+action engine with a couple of these and shut me off from multiple cards per turn, but that sounds really slow to set up. in a larger game it can get there faster, since more people are taking cards, but if your opponents are going for different strategies, they can all dodge it by taking each other's cards.

also, that introduces some politics, in that when you play Senator, and there's two left, neither of which affect me but one of which affects the guy downstream, I can choose whether I want to help him or screw him over. but I don't think it's worse than some existing options in that regard so I would not worry about that.

[Rush_Clasic]

In a 2p game this has very little effect unless you can build an engine to play this repeatedly.  Even then, it's probably too slow to make much of a difference.

With more players, it escalates really quickly.  Then, whoever gets stuck with the key cards is locked out from buying them.  The escape clause doesn't help much, especially if you get locked out of Senator itself.  The other players buy more and you keep getting loaded with the Randomizers.  Maybe you managed to get one or two before being locked out, but you can't keep pace.  Pretty soon you can't buy anything at all.  It's like losing the Ambassador war except there is no way to recover.

The options were: (1) This escape clause; (2) another escape clause; (3) an outside source that could aid the escape; or (4) no escape clause. Each has their benefits and drawbacks. The current version just doesn't feel as debilitating as claimed. However, it is a bit unfun to disallow players to play with cards. One thing I didn't consider (which is odd, since part of this design started there), was taxing the cards rather than disallowing the purchase. I think that's more interesting overall.

Rush - I really think that instead of posting a new card every day - we might be better off if you cut down the frequency - design your card a day - and pick the best one to post on monday or something.  Some of these cards just have problems - and right now you have 1/2 of the topics on the first page of the variants forum.

I did say that I'd slow down if a constant flow of threads was annoying people. If you feel this is indeed happening, I have a solution ready to implement. Whether its overbearing or not is highly dependent on the forum activity; I actually only have 13 of the 50 threads on the front page, and 2 of those were bumped by others when the full Dark Ages spoiler was released. As for the card errors--I don't have much of a problem posting ideas that aren't perfect. I've done my share of thinking them through; I don't currently have the time to playtest, but the cards I post are generally unfamiliar ideas anyway, and posting them is more about seeing what others like than displaying a finished product. I'm making a set right now; when that's completed, it will be tested and functional.

-- Specific card feedback --

#1 - Typically you don't have randomizer cards for the basic items.  For example - I'm not sure if Plat / Colony have them - in reality you have 10 randomizers

I have Randomizer cards for everything but promos and the prizes, I believe. I know I have them for the basic Treasures and Victories.

#2 - While this may not be OP in a 1 on 1 game in which 1 player ignores it... (I mean you could play Senator / Big Money) pretty easily, and the senator is only likely to get played 4-6 times in the game - it is a HUGE problem in a 4 player game - the player sitting to the left of the senator has a significantly better decision than the player sitting to the right, and it only takes 4 plays of the card in a 3 or 4 player game for every card to get locked down from at least 1 player - and some players are going to get an uneven # of cards banned - even if only 1 player plays the senator.  The first 2 or 3 senators actions are effectively useless - you rarely use all 10 kingdoms, but the remaining could be crippling - and there's no way to get out of it.  At least with embargo you can still buy the pieces you want - at a price.  This just potentially cripples the game for some players.

This is a good point. I didn't want to make the game unplayable or unfun. If you see my comments above, I'm changing the card to tax rather than ban. I just don't know if I should tax people $1 or $2.