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[nubs]

Hello all!
Great contributions last week from Thisisnotasmile and Rinkworks. Last week, someone made the suggestion that every week's voting will be on the sets from the previous custom set challenge. You can find the details for Custom Set Challenge #2 here: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=475.0

As for this week's challenge:
Design a set that makes the Five Worst $6+ Cards article shine and the Five Best $6+ Cards article weak - but still useful.
A few clarifications:
You don't have to use all of the cards from either article. The more $6 cards you can incorporate without making the game boring, the better. The idea is to create a set that improves the usefulness of the "weak" $6+ cards as much as possible and decreases the usefulness of the "strong" $6+ cards. The more of the high end cards you can incorporate, the better. Try to design a fun set that makes players reconsider the stock opinions on cards value.
Sets: Any allowed.
Platinum / Colony as per designer preference.
Articles on cards found here:
Worst $6: http://dominionstrategy.com/2011/06/27/the-five-worst-6-cards/
Best $6: http://dominionstrategy.com/2011/06/29/the-five-best-6-cards/

Feel free to post questions about clarifications. This week is left purposely open-ended to allow creativity.

[DStu]

So for a first lower bound I would aim for
+ Bank, Forge, (Adventurer)
- KC, Goons

Getting Bank and Forge to shine is usually easy by big Handsizes, so we add a Tactician. I would expect good trashing under this conditions with Forge, so Adventurer should also find nice things, but I'm not sure if one really wants to play it. Also it's not completely clear how aggresively one wants to trash copper. To leave Goons as bad as is possible we don't want +Actions (despite Tactician), and also no cantrips because of KC. +Buy would anyway be nice, I'm not quite sure which one one wants to include. Probably just a Woodcutter for not being to powerfull for the KC.

So a setting would be so far
Bank, Forge, Adventurer, KC, Goons, Tactician, Woodcutter.
I don't think I want to add anything from the 2 lists, so just 3 fillers which don't interfere with my plan, say Coppersmith, Smugglers, Baron. Of course with Colonies cause to give a little bit more time aganst BigMoney, as there are no attacks (yet).

Thinking more about it maybe KC still is to powerfull, as one might want to Chain-KC into more than two actions. On the other hand, there is no draw (except Tactician that doesn't stack and Adventurer that doesn't draw actions), so it can not be done too excessively. The banks might be more valueable.

Edit: Think I can swap the Smugglers for Hoard, which is on both lists but probably does nothing interesting here...

[DG]

mine, loan, bank, forge, adventurer, hoard, goons, king's court, thief, harem, platinum, colony

I think there's an inherent difficulty in creating sets with a strong hoard but weak harem, or weak king's court but strong nobles. The interactions of these high cost cards are too good regardless of the rest of the kingdom.

[Tydude]

I'll give this a shot. No colonies.

7) Bank, King's Court, Forge
6) Harem, Nobles, Adventurer, Goons
5) Contraband, Tactician
4)
3) Watchtower
2)

One of the main problems cited with bank is that you need +buy for it to be useful. Having Contraband counts both as a treasure for Bank and a source of buy. With many sixes and sevens (especially the victory point ones), it makes Contraband more useful anyways. Tactician for large hand sizes, of course. King's Court can only really be used with Adventurer and Nobles, so that makes it weaker. All the strong treasures (especially Bank) will make Adventurer stronger. Watchtower mainly because it can't be King's Courted and for potentially top decking good cards if you're denied provinces. Forge for some trashing. Harem may be weaker than Nobles here because Adventurer will pick up Harems when you may want it to find a better treasure instead. And, Goons without cantrips or +Actions (except Nobles, but that is pretty tough to pull off) will make it weaker.

[Thisisnotasmile]

I'll give this a shot. No colonies.

7) Bank, King's Court, Forge
6) Harem, Nobles, Adventurer, Goons
5) Contraband, Tactician
4)
3) Watchtower
2)

One of the main problems cited with bank is that you need +buy for it to be useful. Having Contraband counts both as a treasure for Bank and a source of buy. With many sixes and sevens (especially the victory point ones), it makes Contraband more useful anyways. Tactician for large hand sizes, of course. King's Court can only really be used with Adventurer and Nobles, so that makes it weaker. All the strong treasures (especially Bank) will make Adventurer stronger. Watchtower mainly because it can't be King's Courted and for potentially top decking good cards if you're denied provinces. Forge for some trashing. Harem may be weaker than Nobles here because Adventurer will pick up Harems when you may want it to find a better treasure instead. And, Goons without cantrips or +Actions (except Nobles, but that is pretty tough to pull off) will make it weaker.

KC -> Nobles -> Goons says hi. Hold a watchtower in hand and you're well away.

[chwhite]

Disclaimer:  As far as I'm concerned, Nobles is a decent 6 and Harem is one of the weakest; my list would have more or less switched the two.  Therefore, counting Nobles as "weak" and Harem as "strong" feels like cheating to me.

Anyway...

Peddler
7) Bank, Forge, King's Court
6) Nobles, Harem, Grand Market, Hoard
5) Mountebank
4) -
3) -
2P) Apothecary
2) -

Colonies are probably included, primarily for the purpose of blunting Harem and boosting Bank.  Nobles is the only source of +Actions and one of two sources of +Card; Forge is your only trasher; Bank + Apothecary is your best bet for getting Colonies.  Grand Market is your only source of buy (which dings Peddler), good luck getting it on this Copper-tastic board. KC still works well with Mountebanks and Nobles, but it's harder to get than usual, and doesn't work with several important Kingdom cards (Bank, Forge, Hoard).  It's really hard to find a setup where KC is actually weak without something cheesy like with Library, Watchtower, and eight Treasure and Victory cards.  It's a lot weaker than usual, and that's good enough for me.

Really, Apothecary is probably the strongest card here.

[AJD]

That sunglasses smiley that the "8 )" transforms into automatically is oddly appropriate for Peddler.

[nubs]

Seems like there is a lot of similarity amongst which "worst" cards to use and which "best" cards to blunt.

Just curious though, does anyone have thoughts on improving the overall game if fewer $6+ cards are used for the sake of filling up the kingdom with $2,$3,$4,$5 cards? These seem to be sparse.

To put it another way, would a set that makes 2 "weak" $6 cards significantly stronger by adding some lower cost cards be better than a set that tries to pack in as many $6+ cards as possible?
By better, I mean that those cards will significantly alter standard algorithms of play (ie, "this card sucks"). Which of course is always dependent on the kingdom.

[nubs]

I don't think I want to add anything from the 2 lists, so just 3 fillers which don't interfere with my plan, say Coppersmith, Smugglers, Baron. Of course with Colonies cause to give a little bit more time aganst BigMoney, as there are no attacks (yet).

Are there other cards that you could put in to improve the game in other ways? Rather than placeholders that are essentially useless, what about cards that could offer more diverging options? What about cards that could strengthen your selected $6+ more?

[DStu]

I don't think I want to add anything from the 2 lists, so just 3 fillers which don't interfere with my plan, say Coppersmith, Smugglers, Baron. Of course with Colonies cause to give a little bit more time aganst BigMoney, as there are no attacks (yet).

Are there other cards that you could put in to improve the game in other ways? Rather than placeholders that are essentially useless, what about cards that could offer more diverging options? What about cards that could strengthen your selected $6+ more?

Also in regard of your last post, I think if we throw out KC and Goons, there is of course a lot you could do for improving say Bank and Forge. KC, Goons more or less forbids any standard-carddraw, even Pawn is dangerous because of strong trashing, same for actions.
If you can forget about this , there is a lot that would help. Wharf for more easy buys and more cards, Venture for the Bank, Actions to play more of these. Tactican,Forge+Bank has the potential to explode drastically, and there is a lot that helps the explosion there.

If you keep KC and Goons in, that is a lot more difficult. I think Coppersmith there is not completly uninteresting with Tactician, might be an alternativ fast way against the Forge+Banks. Have not really tested either of these, but I think it would desevere attention. The two others are really random, Contraband was mentioned and could replace one of them. Is of course a possibility for an actionless +buy, during the built-up of the deck. But wothless in endgame. Other Actions get difficult as you can only play 2 of them per Tacticianturn, Venture is the one card I see, but it weakens the adventurer a good bit.