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[Rush_Clasic]

Reserve (4)
Victory
4VP
-----
When you gain this, trash it unless you spent only $ produced by Copper to buy it.

Reserve (4)
Victory
4VP
-----
You can't gain this unless you buy it spending $ produced by Copper and nothing else.

• #38 - Reserve
• I love Copper interactions! It's one of the weakest cards in the game, yet it facilitates so much, and since it's your starting income, it's a great candidate for building cards around.
• This started as "Spend only $ produced by Copper to buy this", but I really didn't want people gaining it through Remodel shenanigans. There were a lot of wordy and ugly ways to write it up, but this way seems succinctly understandable.
• Figuring out the best cost-to-VP ratio was a bit tough on this. At 4VP for $4, it threatens the validity of Duchy a bit, but the drawback seems real enough. If it isn't, raising the cost is a simple fix.
• Is tracking where your coins came from annoying? It can be if a lot of things care about it. One card isn't bad, but multiples could be. I wouldn't expand too much on this mechanical idea.

[Archetype]

Why not change the bottom part to "You cannot buy this if you have Treasure cards in play other than Copper"

[eHalcyon]

I believe the intent is that you can't gain it and you can't use virtual coin; you must use Copper.  That said, I don't think the restriction is phrased well.

What happens if I have 4 Copper and two Festivals in play?  Can I buy two of these?  Am I restricted to just one?  Can I buy none of them?

What if I play 4 Highways?  Can I buy it with 0 Copper?

The thing is, without that restriction, this card is way too cheap for the VP it gives.  And even with it, I wonder if it would be dominant to only buy Copper and this card (and Estates, maybe Duchies for the 3-pile).  Probably not, but I wonder.

[Rush_Clasic]

I believe the intent is that you can't gain it and you can't use virtual coin; you must use Copper.  That said, I don't think the restriction is phrased well.

I would prefer a short and simple phrasing for the card. Treat this as a litmus test for that. If people understand it, the job was well done. You seemed to get it right away, whereas Archetype didn't. So... I'll wait for more responses, or for a better wording (I have plenty of LONG wordings that work, but as I said, short is the goal).

What happens if I have 4 Copper and two Festivals in play?  Can I buy two of these?  Am I restricted to just one?  Can I buy none of them?

You can buy one, using the 4 coins produced by the Coppers. Nothing in the game requires you to track where your coins came from, really (that I know of), but it isn't difficult to do so in this manner, especially since Coppers aren't played until they're actually being used. I don't really see the validity of these particular questions, or rather, I feel most players will find the right answers without outside help.

What if I play 4 Highways?  Can I buy it with 0 Copper?

This is a bit more complicated and perhaps the basis for any wording issues this card might have. Still, since you spent 0 Copper on the card, it says you trash it. I'm eager to know what most people think would happen in this scenario.

The thing is, without that restriction, this card is way too cheap for the VP it gives.  And even with it, I wonder if it would be dominant to only buy Copper and this card (and Estates, maybe Duchies for the 3-pile).  Probably not, but I wonder.

If you pile rush estates and this, it becomes very much like a Gardens rush, except you can't use the aid of Workshop.

[eHalcyon]

What if I play 4 Highways?  Can I buy it with 0 Copper?

This is a bit more complicated and perhaps the basis for any wording issues this card might have. Still, since you spent 0 Copper on the card, it says you trash it. I'm eager to know what most people think would happen in this scenario.

But you can argue it both ways.  Your argument is that you have to have spent Copper on it.  But the card says that you trash it unless you spend only Copper, i.e. trash it if you spend anything else (namely non-Copper Treasure and virtual coin).  Well, spending 0 Copper is still nothing other than Copper!

I don't think the rule works because it conflicts with established Dominion convention.  You don't spend Treasures at all.  You spend coin, and Treasures produce coin.  Copper produces $1 (Coppersmith notwithstanding), Silver produces $2.  You can think of them as non-terminal Actions that you play in the Buy phase.  This is why Grand Market says you can't buy it if Copper is in play, rather than saying that you can't spend Copper on it.  It's also why you can use Copper and still buy GM if you remove the Copper from play first, e.g. with Counterfeit, or by buying Mandarin or Mint (with +Buy) first.

A possible way to get the effect you want is by adding a restriction that 4 Copper must be in play to gain it, and then you discard 4 Copper from play when you do so.

[Rush_Clasic]

My card isn't saying to "spend Copper", but "spend $ produced by Copper." Coppersmith already uses a bit of this terminology, and there's reason to believe it can work here. Grand Market has a similar but altogether different drawback, and while they're comparable, it's existence doesn't suggest this terminology shouldn't exist.

Your first point is salient, though. I don't read it that way, but I suppose it could easily be read that way. I could try:

• Spend only $ produced by Copper to buy this. When you gain this without spending $ produced by Copper to buy it, trash it.
• You can't gain this unless you have at least 4 Copper in play.
• You can't gain this unless $ produced by Copper and nothing else was spent to buy it.

I hate the first one. It's so crowded. The second (per your suggestion) isn't bad at all, though it changes the functionality. The question there is if that lost functionality is bad for the way the card plays. I'm not sure that it is, though the card loses some nuance. But it might be the best route. Right now, the third is my solution.

[yudantaiteki]

If you play a coppersmith and 4 coppers, can you buy 2?

[Rush_Clasic]

If you play a coppersmith and 4 coppers, can you buy 2?

Provided you have an additional buy, sure. Coppersmith specifically states that the Coppers themselves are producing the extra coins. Moneylender, on the other hand, won't help you buy this at all.

[Jack Rudd]

Yay, I get to Swindle my opponents' Caravans into nothing! This might not be a feature of the card you want to keep.

[AJD]

I want to echo eHalcyon's suggestion—the only way to make the effect you want actually work is "When you gain this, discard 4 coppers from play. If you can't, return this to the supply" (or trash this, whatever). That would have different interactions with some cards—Coppersmith, Mint, Mandarin, Grand Market, and Bridge/Highway/Princess—but basically have the overall effect you want in most cases.

Also, Jack Rudd is totally right about Swindler interactions.

[Rush_Clasic]

Yay, I get to Swindle my opponents' Caravans into nothing! This might not be a feature of the card you want to keep.

The newer wording fixes that. Definitely not an interaction I want.

I want to echo eHalcyon's suggestion—the only way to make the effect you want actually work is "When you gain this, discard 4 coppers from play. If you can't, return this to the supply" (or trash this, whatever). That would have different interactions with some cards—Coppersmith, Mint, Mandarin, Grand Market, and Bridge/Highway/Princess—but basically have the overall effect you want in most cases.

The general idea of tracking where $ comes from isn't a difficult one in small capacities, so it's definitely a mechanism that can work. The exact wording might be tricky to nail down, but the current version clears things up. I'm not disagreeing to disagree; the game shouldn't have a problem knowing where $s come from, in the same way it knows to add more coin for a Coppersmith.

[Jorbles]

I think this card is kinda boring. It only interacts directly with Coppersmith. You can't Remodel to gain it and you can't buy it with virtual money. When is this going to be anything more than an opportunistic buy because of a bad draw? Has this been playtested on a few random boards?

Edit: And to a lesser degree Counting House and Beggar.

[Rush_Clasic]

I think this card is kinda boring. It only interacts directly with Coppersmith. You can't Remodel to gain it and you can't buy it with virtual money. When is this going to be anything more than an opportunistic buy because of a bad draw? Has this been playtested on a few random boards?

Edit: And to a lesser degree Counting House and Beggar.

I haven't playtested it at all. Which brings up another point: I think I finally have the free time to playtest these cards.

It still interacts with Highway and other cost reducers, just not at a cost of $0. It also interacts with most of the cards Coppersmith does, namely things like Apothecary, Cache, Ill-Gotten Gains, Beggar, etc. It is a narrow card, but it follows the same line that most other alt-Victory cards do: it's either a supplement to a Province strategy, or a strategy unto itself you build your deck around.

I don't think it's so boring that people wouldn't want to see it, but I've been wrong about that before.

[AJD]

Reserve (4)
Victory
4VP
-----
You can't gain this unless you buy it spending $ produced by Copper and nothing else.

I play 4 Markets and 4 Coppers. I buy a Caravan and then notice that I have several buys left. Can I buy a Reserve? Why or why not? How can you tell?

[Rush_Clasic]

Reserve (4)
Victory
4VP
-----
You can't gain this unless you buy it spending $ produced by Copper and nothing else.

I play 4 Markets and 4 Coppers. I buy a Caravan and then notice that I have several buys left. Can I buy a Reserve? Why or why not? How can you tell?

If it's casual play, you'd always be able to buy the Reserve unless you have an uptight play-group. If it's something like tournament play, a ruling would have to be issued about how coins are spent in this scenario. You could probably favor either way, but the logical thing would be to always allow that purchase of Reserve. Until an actual rules interaction causes a need for declaring how you're spending your $ (which this doesn't actually cause itself), this isn't an actual problem. And even if that problem were to exist, vocal declarations aren't exactly a new thing to the game. The rules can easily clear this up. Something in the card bio like "If you buy a card other than Reserve, it is assumed that $ from non-Copper sources are spent first."

You can easily over-intellectualize this situation, but I believe most people will arrive at the same answer: if there's no way to tell what they spent, the game gives them the benefit of the doubt.

[LastFootnote]

Add my vote to the idea that the 'This can only be purchased coins generated from Copper' is a needlessly complex concept and a Bad Idea.

I haven't playtested it at all. Which brings up another point: I think I finally have the free time to playtest these cards.

Oh, thank goodness. Please, please, please start playtesting these cards before you post them. Quality over quantity, man.

[Rush_Clasic]

I haven't playtested it at all. Which brings up another point: I think I finally have the free time to playtest these cards.

Oh, thank goodness. Please, please, please start playtesting these cards before you post them. Quality over quantity, man.

That doesn't mean I won't be posting ideas every day. If the intelligent crowd here can help me weed out the bad or uninteresting ideas before they get to play-testing, all the better. My experience with game design is that for every good idea, there are ten bad ones, and for each good idea that play-tests properly, five that don't. Having an open forum to discuss game-design at its rawest stage has always been a boon to me and many of the game designers I know. I'm trying every day to pull out an idea I find interesting to see what others think. That quantity does make my track record sub-par (especially since I'm new to designing Dominion), but it's also given me a ton of information to work with so that when I do start play-testing, the ideas I tackle will be the ones people enjoyed.

[Jorbles]

Add my vote to the idea that the 'This can only be purchased coins generated from Copper' is a needlessly complex concept and a Bad Idea.

I haven't playtested it at all. Which brings up another point: I think I finally have the free time to playtest these cards.

Oh, thank goodness. Please, please, please start playtesting these cards before you post them. Quality over quantity, man.

Yeah, I don't think we should discourage people from posting cards that aren't playtested. I'd rather people took up our time while we debate card ideas than he gets a bunch of his friends together to play cards that have clear flaws in them making an unfun Dominion experience for them.

[theory]

I dunno, I feel the opposite.  It's discouraging to wade through unplaytested, unfiltered ideas.  I pay much more attention to posts where the OP has already playtested and worked through the proposed cards.

[Rush_Clasic]

Metallurgist (5)
Action
+1 Action
Gain a Copper card, putting it in your hand. Then reveal cards from the top of your deck until you reveal a Copper card. Put a card revealed this way into your hand and discard the rest.

• #39 - Metallurgist
• Copper works great as an identifier since you begin the game with so much of it in your deck. Coppersmith and Moneylender exist for this very reason. It's also one of the easiest cards to load up on, giving cards like Counting House a legitimate reason to exist.
• This started with just the latter ability. It's a difficult device to balance with just a cost, though; compare to Hunting Party, which might be the closest Dominion has to "search your deck for a card". Trashing all your Copper is probably easier more often. Thus the gain a Copper to hand drawback/benefit was added, both to give the card more spending power on bad searches and to make it tougher to abuse in trashing games. It can still perform really well with a good trasher; it just won't always be an automatic "find exactly what I want."
• Does gaining a Copper to hand make this too weak in non-trashing games? That's the question I'm eager to have answered. If all that Copper is too daunting, then this card is doomed to upset. But if there are enough clever ways to utilize it, the card becomes strategically interesting. I'm eager to hear opinions on that point especially.

I dunno, I feel the opposite.  It's discouraging to wade through unplaytested, unfiltered ideas.  I pay much more attention to posts where the OP has already playtested and worked through the proposed cards.

I've never felt this way myself. The Magic community I come from is overflowing with content and it's rather enjoyable to peel through all the ideas and see what people are brainstorming, more fun when I can help them on their way to whatever goal they have. Play-testing is arduous (though eventually necessary), but it's useful to talk about ideas even if they aren't completely fleshed out. Also, Magic is very much a game specific to play environment, and without knowing the cards surrounding that environment, it can be particularly difficult to suggest whether some designs will be healthy or not. Dominion is still at a point where the card count is low and the whole game can be contextualized, so there's a difference on how to approach the two. Either way, I enjoy talking with people about their designs no matter what stage a design is in, which is one of the reasons I enjoy contests so much (especially the mini-set one).

[AJD]

Hunting Party, which might be the closest Dominion has to "search your deck for a card".

Scavenger?

[LastFootnote]

OK, I actually really like the concept of Metallurgist. The exact implementation may even be balanced. Tough to tell without playtesting.

Here's my suggested wording:

Metallurgist (5)
Action
+1 Action
Gain a Copper, putting it into your hand. Reveal cards from the top of your deck until you reveal a Copper. Put one of the revealed cards into your hand and discard the rest.

The biggest possible issue I see is that it could take a very long time to reveal your entire deck card by card if you have no Copper, but that's not really a dealbreaker.

[Rush_Clasic]

Hunting Party, which might be the closest Dominion has to "search your deck for a card".

Scavenger?

Ya, that too.

*shakes fist at Dark Ages*

I'll get familiar with those cards one of these days. Probably after I actually get to play with the set.

[AJD]

Hunting Party, which might be the closest Dominion has to "search your deck for a card".

Scavenger?

Ya, that too.

*shakes fist at Dark Ages*

I'll get familiar with those cards one of these days. Probably after I actually get to play with the set.

No, you should have gotten familiar with Alchemy. But you'll get sage as a result of Dark Ages. Count on it. It spoils you.

[razorborne]

OK, I actually really like the concept of Metallurgist. The exact implementation may even be balanced. Tough to tell without playtesting.

Here's my suggested wording:

Metallurgist (5)
Action
+1 Action
Gain a Copper, putting it into your hand. Reveal cards from the top of your deck until you reveal a Copper. Put one of the revealed cards into your hand and discard the rest.

The biggest possible issue I see is that it could take a very long time to reveal your entire deck card by card if you have no Copper, but that's not really a dealbreaker.

this problem already exists in Golem and, to a lesser extent, Hunting Party. with Copper though, if you are 100% sure that you have no coppers left in your deck I doubt anyone's gonna mind if you just flip over your whole deck at once to prove it.

also, I misread this at first as putting the revealed copper into your hand. which would be an interesting card too, although very different. a non-terminal silver that populated your deck with coppers and helped cycle through would certainly be interesting in an alt VP strategy, although it seems pretty bad outside of that. probably doesn't do enough to be worth it.