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[Tables]

That is to say, how good is this card:
Terminal Gold
Action - $?
+$3

This came about after a little discussion in the variants forum about the strength of terminal Gold. I personally had always considered it to be a weak $5, and therefore terminal Gold with minor benefit to be possible at $5. But there was some disagreement, with others thinking it would be a strong $5 just as is, which got me thinking about the possibilities.

I think we can all agree it would be too strong at $4, too weak at $6 and so we can consider it in comparison to current $5's which: are terminal, can generate at least $3 and doing so is at least fairly common (this excludes cards like Tribute, Vault which aren't really sensible to call terminal Golds). I would consider Counting House, Explorer, Mandarin, Harvest, Merchant Ship to qualify therefore. Now the thing to note with all of these is that all of them have both strengths and weaknesses compared to a flat terminal Gold, and also, all of them except Merchant Ship are rated in the bottom 10 in Qvists community card rating list.

Looking mostly at Harvest and Merchant Ship: Harvest is almost always worth at least $2, usually worth $3 and sometimes worth $4, so it's a little random (not necessarily a bad thing, in fact often a good thing). It also cycles your deck, which is a good thing usually except making it miss reshuffles, and Harvest is also weak early (it's also very bad to play after matching your Treasure Maps, although I can think of worse cards to play). I think terminal Gold is probably preferable to this, because stronger earlygame and probably not much weaker later. Merchant Ship is actually not that different, Duration type makes it more likely to miss reshuffles, and it always gives +$4 but over two turns, which cripples it compared to flat +$4. However I think Merchant Ship is probably stronger than a flat Terminal Gold, thanks to actually giving more money (and in particular, getting a phantom +$2 the next turn).

I guess what I'm thinking is, flat Terminal Gold would fit comfortably somewhere around 25-38th in the list of $5's, which roughly means, somewhere in the 3rd quarter. And I think that means that there's space to see a terminal $5 with a small benefit, and that not being too strong for $5. But that makes me wonder, what kind of benefit might we see, if such a card were to exist? +buy is one of the weakest benefits on terminal silvers but would probably make a terminal Gold worth $6, especially because of the synergy. I guess what's likely is something that's generally a benefit but could be a detriment, or maybe some kind of reaction or something. I won't speculate too much as this isn't a variants thread.

[timchen]

On a general level, I think your points are valid. However, to be more specific:

(1) in BM+X or action-poor games, a terminal gold is actually pretty bad. Its effect is probably only on par with smithy. If priced at $5 you usually have better options. Note that harvest is actually quite a bit better because it can cycle itself back much much faster.

(2) in action-wealthy games, it can sometimes be better than gold, due to the fact that you may want it played in the action phase. However in this case rather than saying that it should worth more than $6, it is more often that gold is just a lousy $6 (or even $5) in the setup.

In any case, I don't think anyone would be thrilled to see another card pursuing this concept though.

[Davio]

With good card design, it's not a question of "how good" or "how bad", it's a question of "how interesting" or "how boring".

An action card that provides $3 may be $5, but it's not that interesting.
Imagine seeing this card in Guilds, would you be overjoyed or disappointed that a card like this fills a slot in the box?

[Octo]

Sometimes people liken treasure to +1 card / + 1 Action / +$x, but it's better than that because you dead draw it. (And it's also not affected by Poor House because its phase comes later).

One interesting question is how much would a terminal silver cost - probably $2. So perhaps $4 is ok for a terminal gold. However, you'd likely just open with it very often in that case. The only way to tell really is to play test it, which we're not going to do. I suspect that +$3 coming from actions is rare precisely because it's so variable: it makes engines much easier to generate the cash, but it's probably relatively useless without +actions kicking around.

Still, Davio's point is the most relevant - it's not an interesting card at all. And also seeing as it doesn't fit into a nice $4 or $5 all that easily it would probably need something to make it balance right.

[SirPeebles]

Octo, that may be an apt criticism of a "+1 Action, +$3" card.  But throw in "+1 Card" and you have something which is very often better than gold since it replaces itself.  It can therefore chain through copies of itself, or at least draw a Copper bringing its worth to "+$4" effectively.

As for the original post.  I really like the comparison with Harvest and Merchant Ship.  Also, I had never thought about how, in the absence of trashing, Counting House on average is worth about $3.  While Harvest is usually at least +$2, I think it's interesting to point out that +$0 seems to come up more often than +$1, at least for me.  Sometimes I'll gleefully draw my entire deck, only to immediately regret it when I see that Harvest in my hand.  Hopefully I have something that discards or gains...

[werothegreat]

You missed Horse Traders (one of the better $4s) which gets a price drop due to the discarding (which can sometimes be preferable), and Baron (also an awesome $4), which gets a price drop from the possibility of not having an Estate in hand, and Death Cart (which I'm guessing will become one of the best $4s).

[Polk5440]

A terminal Gold would have to be priced at $5 because of Mandarin, I think. I also think because of Mandarin, any benefit attached couldn't always be obviously a benefit. With Mandarin, sometimes putting a card back on your deck is good, sometimes not.

[Davio]

Okay, another problem with terminal vanilla +$x other than the fact they're pretty uninteresting is that they will always fall in between price points.

Look at Chancellor, it's $3 and would be strictly better than Terminal Silver at $3. So you would make it $2, but then it's probably underpriced as regular Silver costs $3 and is often just as good or even better (no dead draw). I would think the possibility of drawing a card dead happens more often than the Tactician/Minion/Scrying Pool case where you want an action instead. So Terminal Silver is something like $2.5.

With Terminal Gold, we have Mandarin which is a bit worse than Gold because of the anti-cycling when you buy it. Often, putting a card back is not that useful as you might think, not unlike Courtyard where you draw cards and will often overshoot your target or leave you with an unplayable action. Then there's Harvest which is a Gold on average I think, but cycles and misses shuffles. Making Gold a $6 competes too directly with its Treasure counterpart and again, you'll often want the Treasure. So we end up at $5.5.

Not every kingdom has a plethora of Villages, we have to be picky about our terminals. This means we'll often end up with some other action cards and even if the Terminal Gold would cost $5, I would still take a Mountebank over it any day of the week and twice on my birthday.

[eHalcyon]

I will revise my original opinion and posit that a plain terminal Gold would be $5.  You can add benefits or drawbacks and still be in $5 range, but I think benefits would more likely push it to $6 territory.

Consider terminal Silver.  Almost all of them cost at least $3, often more.  Off the top of my head, the only terminal Silvers that cost less are Embargo (one-shot) and Duchess (just as helpful for opponents as it is for you).  Likewise, I would think that terminal Gold with benefit will often be $6, sometimes more, and only very rarely less.

[Davio]

[..]

Likewise, I would think that terminal Gold with benefit will often be $6, sometimes more, and only very rarely less.

Well, that's true with all cards, no cost is ever absolute.

The cost is more an indication of preferred availability than anything else.
A cost of $2 just says: It's okay to grab this if you open 5/2, wooohooo, Chapel!
A cost of $6 says: This is too good to get on the first shuffle (in a 2p game).

[LastFootnote]

It seems to me that terminal-coins-with-a-benefit cards get the short shrift on this forum because we overwhelmingly concentrate on 2-player games. In a 3- or 4-player game where engines are less viable, the terminal Gold cards (Harvest, Merchant Ship, Adventurer, Mandarin, Explorer) are likely more useful (relative to engine-enabling cards, that is).

[Taco Lobster]

Don't forget that Dark Ages gave us one more data point.  Count can produce +$3 (though it's hard to weigh given that it comes with an additional drawback (discard 2, gain copper, put a card on top of deck) and an additional benefit in the form of optionality). 

[Tables]

Ah, yes, I thought I forgot something. Yeah, Count is another I think would be stronger than terminal Gold, although it's again quite hard to compare, as it has lots of choices - you choose one drawback, but as you choose it's always the weakest of the three and possibly a strength (discarding for draw up to or tunnels, putting back excess money, gaining copper for e.g. Gardens etc.), and of course if something is more valuable to you than terminal Gold you can choose that (trashing a hand of Estates, gaining a Duchy and still having $5 etc.).

Also just in case it wasn't obvious, I'm not suggesting terminal Gold should be a card because of lots of reasons (restricting design space, boring etc.). I'm more suggesting, if it existed, how good it would be. It looks like there's some good answers to that here.

[Lekkit]

Beggar costs 2. And it comes with a reaction. The coppers are pretty lousy, though.

[aaron0013]

Scout costs 4. And it comes with it's awesome powerfulness. But it is....not a terminal gold.

[Markov Chain]

One interesting question is how much would a terminal silver cost - probably $2.

Duchess is a terminal silver, with the side effect likely to be worse for you than for other players (since other players may be able to set up their draw knowing that they will have a draw, while you can't unless you played a village first).  Duchess costs $2 but is rarely bought, which is why it has the extra option that you can take it for free with a Duchy.