Disclaimer: I submitted to the contest.
Healer
$2 - Action
+1 Action
Reveal cards from the top of your deck until revealing a Victory or Curse card or until revealing 4 cards, whichever comes first. If you revealed a Victory or Curse card, trash it or discard it. Put the other revealed cards back on top of your deck in any order.
This is a relatively new card, not tested as thoroughly as some. But it seems just fine. It's a safer but less powerful Lookout, essentially. Digs deeper, but only trashes OR discards, not both. Once the opening estates are gone, it's a dead card until you start greening (unless the deck reordering will help, which sometimes it does). I suppose it's still a fine opener, because you'd rather have one Healer than three Estates during the mid-game. But it's clearly better when junking attacks are present.
Lockbox
$2 - Action
+1 Card
+1 Action
--
While in play, at the start of your buy phase, you may trash this card. If you do, +$2.
This is another fairly new card and as such has received less testing than most of the others. I suspect this really needs to cost $3. It's preferable to Silver more often than you might think. That in itself isn't a reason to price it higher than $2 -- the real reason is that at $2 it's arguably too easy to pick up extras just because you've got money and buys left over and might as well. That's not a big deal with Hamlet and Pearl Diver, because there's a limit to how much more of those help you, but money always helps. So inevitably the pile would empty out during our test games.
But I haven't actually tested it at $3 yet, and so I decided to submit it under its $2 price, where it feels strong but isn't unbalanced in any kind of obvious way. If this card wins, I'll be open to tweaking its price after further testing.
Architect
$3 - Action
+3 Cards
+$2
Put 3 cards from your hand on top of your deck.
This was my first fan card. Or, rather, it's the final refinement of my first fan card. At the time, I was considerably less knowledgeable about Dominion strategy and what makes a balanced card. The initial draft cost $5 and did not offer a monetary bonus. Horribly underpowered, in other words, but even after playing games with it, I was convinced it was strong, since it lets you "set up both your current turn and your next turn." It actually IS powerful if you're enough of a Dominion novice that you overbuy terminals and need a card like this to separate them from each other! Then again, maybe not, since this is itself a terminal you have to work around.
Obviously I've wised up since. Pricing it at $3 and offering +$2 makes it comparable to other $3 terminal Silvers.
If you vote for this, though, you have to be okay with a certain amount of AP. It's not awful in that respect, but it's got more AP than most cards do, since the number of ways you can put 3 cards back out of ~7 is a lot.
Matador
$3 - Action-Attack
+2 Cards
Each player (including you) reveals a card from his hand. He discards it or puts it on top of his deck, your choice.
Loved the attack idea, which wasn't mine, and had trouble pairing it up with an appropriate vanilla bonus. +Coins might be more desirable more often than +Cards, except that the attack hits you too. Offering +Cards means the self-hit is more likely to benefit you than hurt you. This is the same principle that makes Garrison work.
Museum
$3 - Action
+$1
You may choose a card from your hand that you do not already have a copy of on your Museum mat. Place it on your Museum mat.
If you have at least 4 cards on your Museum mat, you may trash 4 of them and gain a Prize (putting it on your deck) and a Duchy.
This was an attempt to create an alternative Prize-giver that plays differently from Tournament and offers different strategic opportunities. And it does -- the key difference is that Tournament snowballs: once you get one Prize, you're more likely to get the next one, and then the next one, and so on. With Museum (which would obviously need to be renamed for the community set if it wins), the game is rarely long enough to get more than one Prize out of it, so that makes it feel different already. Furthermore, activating it is more than just a simple race for Provinces, which is something you usually want to do anyway: you have to pursue a specific strategy that entails deciding on 4 unique cards to trash and setting about pairing them up with your Museum.
So what do you trash with it? In a Dark Ages game, it's easy: Copper and three Shelters. In a non-Dark Ages game, Estate and Copper are obvious. In a Cursing game, Curse becomes an easy third card. If you double up on Museums, you can stow cards away fast without fear of collision, because if they collide you just stow away your duplicate Museum. The fourth card will tend to be something good, but by that point you just have to fight your
loss aversion instinct and ask yourself, "Would I rather keep this Swindler or have a Followers and a Duchy instead?" Often there is something easier to part with, like a Pearl Diver you picked up with an extra buy. Sometimes getting rid of an early Silver is a good thing. Every game is different, and I find that the suitability of a fourth card for the Museum mat tends to make the difference as to whether this is a good card to go for in any given game.
During and/or after building the Museum up sufficiently to get a Prize out of it, you can use it for a light Islanding effect: stow away a Province, for example, and a Duchy (and you'd have one of those if you'd previously fired it), and just never trash those. Not a dramatic effect, but it's enough of one to keep it from being a completely dead card after it's fired. Of course you can still stow away a Copper and a Curse, even if you never want to activate it again.
For the longest time, there was no vanilla bonus. Over the course of many test games, it just felt wrong. I tested +$2, and that was clearly too much. +$1 was just right.
Street Sweeper
$3 - Action
Choose one: +2 Cards; or look through your discard pile and put one card from it into your hand.
Invented prior to Scavenger. The gain-to-hand makes it stronger in one sense, but weaker in another: you can't pull back a strong action card with it unless you've got an extra action with which to play it. This was another card that started out as a $5 card, because my brother and I were imagining we'd always be pulling back Platinums and stuff with it. In reality, it whiffs so much more than you'd think. We had to drop the price and add a consolation prize (for when the discard pile is empty or full of junk) just to make it competitive. It's still a somewhat weak card, but that's okay.
Auction House
$4 - Action
+1 Card
+1 Action
+1 Buy
Trash a card from your hand.
The impetus for this card was to offer something you often desperately need (+Buy) and cause you to do something you don't always want to do to get it (trash a card). By design, it's actually a little anti-synergetic: you want trashing early on, when you probably don't need the +Buy, but if you have an engine firing and need the +Buy, you're less likely to still have cards around to trash. So you need just the right deck density for both benefits to work. That's not actually THAT hard to achieve, and when it does it's terrific, but it does impose constraints that you have to strategize around.
I made this card before Dark Ages came out. Junk Dealer is the same card but priced $1 higher and offering +$1 instead of +1 Buy. It's a fine card, but I kind of like Auction House better, as Junk Dealer doesn't really have the internal tension to it: while any given +Buy card stands a good chance of being the only way to get +Buy, there's never only one way to get +$.
That said, this is a strong opener even if you never need the +Buy. Not
too strong, I think, but it's definitely one of the power $4 cards to open with.
Banquet Hall
$4 - Action-Victory-Reaction
Choose one: +1 Card, +1 Action; or +2 Cards.
--
When another player plays an Attack card, you may set this aside from your hand. If you do, +1 Card, and return this to your hand at the start of your next turn.
--
Worth 1 VP
This was an early card, invented prior to Horse Traders. Horse Traders' reaction is stronger, since the +1 Card happens AFTER a Militia attack has resolved instead of before. But for other kinds of attacks, it's just as good. Basically this is a Great Hall with some extra features. There isn't really a unifying theme here -- the different abilities are kind of cobbled together -- and yet I've enjoyed test games with it. I think the reason I've liked playing with it is that it fills the Great Hall slot in a more interesting way than Great Hall itself does: although it doesn't "do" much, it does do
something, whereas Great Hall is usually not THAT different from a Victory token.
Magistrate
$4 - Action-Reaction
+$2
Look at the top 3 cards of your deck. Discard any number of them. Put the rest back on top in any order.
--
When another player plays an Attack card, you may set this aside from your hand. If you do, look at the top 3 cards of your deck, discard any number of them, put the rest back on top in any order, and at the start of your next turn return this to your hand.
Made this before Hinterlands came out. Cartographer vindicated the mechanic without really making this obsolete. The action component is weaker, obviously, but the ability to do the sifting as a Reaction is interesting for a number of different attacks. It's also nice to be able to do the sifting twice in a row, even if you react to an attack that never touches the top of your deck. Get hit by a Witch, well, you still get the Curse, but now you get to sift twice.
Archivist
$5 - Action
+1 Action
Choose one: Draw up to 6 cards in hand; or +$1 and discard one or more cards from your hand.
This is the card that won Davio's contest and was available on isotropic for a while. I designed it to be a "single card engine" like Minion, but it turned out rather differently.
You can read the thread about this card here. Since that thread, however, I've learned more about how this card plays.
The big revelation was that although a stack of Archivists does work as a strategy (a competitive one, but not one that will keep up with the big power strategies), it's NOT a card you have to race for. I've discovered that you can usually improve upon a dedicated Archivist stack by finding a different way to shrink your hand size than Archivist itself. I mean, when you use an Archivist to discard, sure, you're powering up the next Archivist, but you're also wasting one as a Copper equivalent. You'd rather play a Hamlet, for example, for the discard part of the cycle. Or some Festivals, or Vault/SC, or Horse Traders, or Oases, or Horse Traders, or whatever. A hybrid Archivist/Minion stack is interesting. Governors fit in seamlessly too and actually change the way you want to play the Governors a little bit. With Cellar or Warehouse, you get extra filtering without the card slot penalty. Etc.
So this remains my favorite of the cards I've had a hand in creating. The drawback for the community set is that I don't know if the set really needs it. Up to you to decide.
Highwayman
$5 - Action-Attack
+3 Cards
+1 Buy
Each other player with 5 or more cards in hand chooses one: He discards down to 3 cards in hand, or he discards his hand and draws 4 cards.
I made this before Hinterlands came out. Margrave turned out to be similar, but I think there's still a place for this too. Margrave hurts more the first time you play it, but helps more on subsequent plays. Other than that subtle difference, they're largely similar: +3 Cards and +1 Buy in exchange for a weak hand size attack. When both are on the table, you probably want both: one Margrave and Highwaymen thereafter. In an engine, playing Margrave first, then your Highwaymen maximizes the harm you can do to your opponent and minimizes the risk of helping him.
Huckster
$5 - Action-Duration
At the start of your next turn, +1 Buy and +$3.
Strong effect, balanced out by increased shuffle-missing and the uncertainty of how much it'll actually help next turn at the time. Do you play a Militia now, or spare your opponents in the hopes that the +$3 next turn will put you over a critical threshold? Of course if you manage your terminals well, this dilemma won't come up a lot; I don't want to make this card more exciting and mysterious than it really is. It's a utility card. Somewhat interesting when it's the only source of +Buy, since even when you're drawing your whole deck every turn, you need two to get the +Buy every turn.
Hunter
$5 - Action
+1 Action
+$1
Look at the top card of your deck and choose one: Put it in your hand and discard the top card of your deck; or discard it and +1 Card.
My Peddler-with-a-bonus. I've discussed this card before. The reason the first option has the discard is about making the card more fun to play, rather than striking some mathematically-precise degree of power: if you choose to draw the card you reveal, you want to be able to find out if that was the right decision or not and cry "Yes!" or "Aaargh!" accordingly.
The filtering is stronger than it might first appear, too, despite that you only get to skip one card.
Sailboat
$5 - Action-Duration
Discard two cards.
At the start of your next turn, +2 Cards and +$2.
Designed at the same time as Huckster. This is a mini-Tactician, cannibalizing your hand a little bit for a smaller but still quite significant bonus next turn. Despite that the benefit is prodigious, it's almost disappointing to see it show up in your hand, because playing it hurts for no immediate benefit. I like that about it.
Sorceress
$5 - Action-Attack
Each other player gains a Curse.
If one or more supply piles are empty, +1 Card and +1 Action.
If two or more supply piles are empty, +1 Card.
Possibly my second-favorite of my cards? It's a weak Curser in the beginning, but if you plow through to the end of the Curse pile and/or rush Sorceresses and/or drain some other pile, they turn into Laboratories rather than dead cards as Witches do. Usually Level 2 Sorceresses are cantrips rather than Familiars, but the latter isn't uncommon either.
Rushing sounds lucrative and sometimes is, but it's rough, since they initially collide and are as dead as the Curses they dish out.
Grand Bazaar
$6 - Action
+1 Card
+2 Actions
+$2
--
You can't buy this if you have any Copper in play.
My second fan card. Well, it's kind of obvious, right? Basically I loved how the Copper restriction plays on Grand Market and the strategy that goes into trying to circumvent it, and I wanted to increase the percentage of boards that had that kind of thing going on.
Despite that it's very similar to Grand Market, there is one way in which it plays very differently: Because they don't provide +Buy, rushing the pile doesn't snowball the way rushing Grand Markets does.
Royal Scepter
$7 - Action
Reveal cards from your deck until you reveal an Action card. Discard the other revealed cards. Play the revealed Action card twice.
Golem/Throne Room variant. Nothing hugely original here, but I like Throne Room and I like Golem, and I wanted to make a card that would increase the frequency of boards that would have stuff like that. It has more variance than Golem, because you might turn up a very weak card or a very strong card. With Golem, the two cards you find are more likely to average out. But you can take that into account when building your deck.
I initially mistakenly thought this could be costed at $4, maybe $5, but I was quite wrong. These have to be expensive, or it's too easy to buy just one critical action card and then play it twice every turn with a stack of Royal Scepters.
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Topic: Mini-Set Design Contest: RinkWorks Cards! (Read 16489 times)