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[sherwinpr]

This is a kingdom card idea I had the other night, and I would be surprised if no one had thought of yet (a quick glance turned up nothing on here, but I haven't checked BGG), and in fact, seeing the Inflation post reminded me of it.

Tax
Action - $2
+$2
Trash this card.  Put a Tax token on top of a Supply pile.
---
During the buy phase, each card costs +$1 per Tax token on its pile.

This is obviously just Embargo with a cost increase instead of a Curse handout.  I may be wrong, but I think it should be about as strong as Embargo.  A one cost increase often isn't prohibitive, but could make some cards undesirable relative to others, and might make players decide to put more money (virtual or treasure) in their trimmed decks to be able to afford Provinces or Colonies.  Unlike Embargo tokens, which are ineffectual once the Curses have run out, Tax tokens seem more permanent.  However, like Embargo, they can be circumvented by cards that gain outside the buy phase.  I think pricing it at $2 would be correct; after all, like Embargo, a big part of the reason to buy it is just the trash for +$2.

One modification may be preventing it from being applied to Copper to keep those free, but I don't think that's a very serious concern.

[DG]

I think the difficulty is that they just don't do enough at +1 cost. Whilst it may slow down someone who's making a torturer deck (by an odd turn) it won't really affect strategy in the same way as an embargo.

[Kuildeous]

I like how you stipulated that it's during the Buy phase. I was starting to get images of someone Remaking two Curses into Provinces. With that stipulation, I don't see that happening.

Interestingly enough, the Black Market can get around the Tax, which is thematically appropriate.

As far as how powerful +$1 is, I could see it being a thorn in some people's sides. How many times do I grind my teeth because I'm short in purchasing a card? But it's not hugely powerful, no. Then again, if you bump it up to $2, then it's probably too powerful.

Alternatively, you could increase the cost and remove the self-trash requirement. Now the card only gives +$1, but they can really stack up. Then the question becomes what to do if you all of the cards are too expensive for anyone to buy (assuming that you cannot build a sufficient draw engine with the cards out there), resulting in an unwinnable game. 

[Thisisnotasmile]

I like how you stipulated that it's during the Buy phase. I was starting to get images of someone Remaking two Curses into Provinces. With that stipulation, I don't see that happening.

Interestingly enough, the Black Market can get around the Tax, which is thematically appropriate.

As far as how powerful +$1 is, I could see it being a thorn in some people's sides. How many times do I grind my teeth because I'm short in purchasing a card? But it's not hugely powerful, no. Then again, if you bump it up to $2, then it's probably too powerful.

Alternatively, you could increase the cost and remove the self-trash requirement. Now the card only gives +$1, but they can really stack up. Then the question becomes what to do if you all of the cards are too expensive for anyone to buy (assuming that you cannot build a sufficient draw engine with the cards out there), resulting in an unwinnable game. 

Yes, but you can't buy cards from supply piles during a Black Market "buy" phase, so it wouldn't affect Black Market anyway.

[minced]

This idea has been suggested as "bridge troll" in the fairy tale fan expansion, with some modifications. The biggest problem with tax, in any implementation, is that it can make a pile effectively impossible to buy if it stacks - a $11 province is well out of price range in a province-only game. It's not really changing the playing field much, just making the game nigh-impossible to end without remodel or +buy. You could make taxes non-stackable to avoid that issue, but then a $1 malus just doesn't affect the game much.

If tax doesn't stack and affects base cost instead of buy cost, then it can be used to place $4 cards out of the range of ironworks or $5 cards out of the range of university, which at least alters strategies. Furthermore, it could either be used to make gold $7 so upgrade can take gold -> province (!), or make copper $1 to mess up somebody trying to upgrade copper, both of which significantly alter the strategy space. Maybe try that.

[Kuildeous]

Yes, but you can't buy cards from supply piles during a Black Market "buy" phase, so it wouldn't affect Black Market anyway.

D'oh, yes, you are correct.

The more recent post about making it nonstackable means that it could work with +$2 increases. That makes Colony into a $13 card, which is hefty but not insurmountable.

The Copper restriction might be required in case someone accidentally Chapels away his Coppers or gets hit by the KC/Masquerade madness. But, if either case happens, that player has bigger problems than nonfree Copper.

[WanderingWinder]

I'm not worried about provinces being out of reach - people will just have to go for duchies and stuff. I'm much more worried about an infinite game when we've stripped each other of all money somehow and coppers cost like 2 or 3.

[grep]

What's a problem in sending provinces out of price? It is just another strategy (buy a couple of early provinces, then skyrocket the prices to make provinces unavailable for the opponent).

Actually the visible problem with taxes is that they may slow down the game to a snail's pace - there should be some way to limit the tax spamming, for example:

Tax
Action - $0
+$2
Trash this card.  Put a Tax token on top of the Tax pile and on another Supply pile.
---
During the buy phase, each card costs +$1 per Tax token on its pile.

The first taxes are incredibly cheap, but the more taxes are introduced, the harder it is to establish another one.

[sherwinpr]

This idea has been suggested as "bridge troll" in the fairy tale fan expansion, with some modifications. The biggest problem with tax, in any implementation, is that it can make a pile effectively impossible to buy if it stacks - a $11 province is well out of price range in a province-only game. It's not really changing the playing field much, just making the game nigh-impossible to end without remodel or +buy. You could make taxes non-stackable to avoid that issue, but then a $1 malus just doesn't affect the game much.

If tax doesn't stack and affects base cost instead of buy cost, then it can be used to place $4 cards out of the range of ironworks or $5 cards out of the range of university, which at least alters strategies. Furthermore, it could either be used to make gold $7 so upgrade can take gold -> province (!), or make copper $1 to mess up somebody trying to upgrade copper, both of which significantly alter the strategy space. Maybe try that.

The first version I considered actually affected the base cost, which I thought would be cool and thematically interesting precisely because of how it interacted with Workshop, Ironworks, University, Talisman, Smugglers, etc.  You can put a card "out of reach" of these.  However, then I realized I didn't like the interactions with the other cards too much, such as Remake, Upgrade, Swindler, etc.  For example, putting a single tax on curses really messes with upgrade or remake being used to get rid of coppers (probably in a more devastating way than putting a tax on coppers, which would lead them to be upgraded to 2's, which at least means you can upgrade them to Taxes, haha, unless they've been taxed.).  Yes, altering the strategy space is cool, but this makes it really swingy, perhaps, like making sure you have your tax at the right time to create this sort of discomfort for your opponent or relieve it for yourself, just seems to introduce too much variance.

I'm still not really convinced that this is too strong or too weak.  Sure maybe it's often a bit weaker than Embargo, and sure it can put Provinces out of buying range; but I don't mind either.  There will only be ten taxes (okay, thrity in a King's Court game, but if that's a concern we can add an "if you do" condition after "trash this card") max across 17+ cards.  What is the most annoying tax spread?  4 on Province, 6 on Duchy?  This could be pretty bad, but then the game would just end on piles.  An early tax on something like Laboratory might make it harder to build that engine.  A tax on Duchy could alter how the Duchy dance goes.  A tax on some cheap 2 cost card could prevent it from being mass-bought for some strategy.

[kazztawdal]

I'd prefer to try playtesting it as altering base cost, and then if that proves to be too ridiculous, just buy cost.

Either way, I like the card a lot.

[sherwinpr]

Another reason I wanted to focus on the buy phase was because that makes the card closest to how Embargo works (it's still not exactly the same, because Horn of Plenty cannot circumvent Tax, while it can circumvent Embargo).

If we do want to alter base cost, I think the card should say something like "except the Copper or Curse supply piles."  Or maybe it should say this either way?

Here's another idea (where (P) denotes the potion icon):

Ridiculousness
Action - $2(P)

+1 Action
+$2
Trash this card.  Put a Ridiculousness token on top of a non-Treasure Supply pile that does not have a Ridiculousness token on it.
---
During the buy phase, each card costs +(P) if it has a Ridiculousness token on its pile.

[cherdano]

Tax (Action - Duration):
+1 Action, +1$
While this is in play, every card costs +1$ during every other player's buy phase. Trash this card during your next turn's clean-up phase.