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[tlloyd]

I've got an idea. I think it could be a new dynamic (entirely new card type), but I can also see using the same idea within the confines of existing card types, or possibly even within a single new card. Clearly my thoughts are still a bit muddled, so any feedback would be appreciated.

Here goes. Imagine a card that you play down on this turn (with some immediate effect), but which stays in play in front of you for as long as you want (even past multiple future turns). At any point in the future you can choose to clean up the card to gain some latent effect. As a simple example, a card called "Crack for Action-chain Addicts" might give +1 card and +1 action now, and then on any future turn you could clean up the card for an additional +1 action. Don't ask me about costs - the idea isn't that developed yet.

Now some of you might be thinking "that's just a variation on Duration cards!" I agree to some extent. You could simply call these Duration cards where the secondary effect and cleanup occur not necessarily on the next turn, but rather on any future turn. That may sound not-too-exciting, but just that little bit of freedom in how you play the card could have incredible combo potential. For instance, we all know that you can't (productively) Throne Room a Tactician. But what if you had a "Duration+" card that gave you +1 card at any time--including right in the middle of your turn? Play Throne Room, Tactician, discard your hand, cleanup the Duration+ card, draw one card, then discard it. You have successfully Throne Room-ed a Tactician.

But we can go even beyond that. Why limit the card to being used only during your turn? Have an incredible hand thats about to be demolished by a Torturer chain? Think your top card could be your Moat? Clean up your Duration+ card in the middle of your opponent's turn and hopefully stop his Torturers in their tracks. Of course, there could be potential for abuse (and outright chaos) if there were any Attack-Duration+ cards. Imagine cleaning up your Militia-type card right after your opponent has drawn his whole deck. Not nice.

Two more thoughts on this: first, we could combine the latent-effect idea with Donald's interest in one-shot cards. If the latent effect of these cards was strong enough, they might be worth buying, playing, and waiting for that one opportune moment to trash them for a benefit that could win you the game. Very swingy, which always bothers the rank-chasers on isotropic, but lots of fun for those of us who remember this is just a game.

Second, we could encapsulate most of this concept with a single new card: the Ultra-Haven. Rather than putting aside a card face-down to draw immediately next turn, place a card aside face-up for use at any time in the future. Now every card in the supply could be held in waiting for a time when its effect is desperately needed. Biggest drawback to this approach would be having to choose between the "play even during an opponent's turn" idea and the possibility of a latent attack, because you don't want both.

Anyway, there's the idea. Let me know what you think, what ideas you have for particular cards, and what cool name we could use for the concept (hopefully something sexier than "latent").

[Thisisnotasmile]

I'm not really into fan-made cards and stuff in Dominion (or any game for that matter), so I try not to get too involved with discussions of such ideas, but one thing that should be noted about this is:

Attack-Duration+ cards (such as your "Militia even when it's your opponent's turn" card) or Ultra-Haven allowing you to play any card during your opponent's turn won't work. They effectively are (or COULD effectively be) targeted attacks, and we all know about them. Now, I'm sure you mean "Militia+ used on an opponent's turn would still attack everybody", but the fact is, it's attacking one specific player when they have their whole deck in their hand and everybody else when they have 5 cards. And you can choose who you do that to. That's a targeted attack. Similarly, Ultra-Haven allows you to save attacks and use them specifically when they hurt one player the most.

Other than that, I'm going to avoid discussion of this.

[okt]

So I will need to click after every card my op plays?  That will get boring real fast.

[Thisisnotasmile]

There is no clicking in Dominion. Isotropic does not implement fan expansions.

[meshuggah42]

I think your TR-Tactician thought is flawed, because when you TR any card you play it twice, without any means of doing anything in between the two plays. Unless of course the card says it can be played instantaneously at any time even during the resolving of an action. This latter thought could lead to some interesting cards though, so I vouch your idea.

[guided]

This is a good idea for expanding the design space. Even vanilla stuff like "clean up for +1 action" could be quite interesting. I will say that I think allowing you to play attacks when it's not your turn is a categorically bad idea. Effects should be limited to "cashing in" on your turn, or "cashing in" as a benignish reaction effect (like any of the existing reaction cards in the game). For timing reasons I think any use of such a card when it's not your turn should be worded as a reaction effect.

Note the existing Duration rules are definitely broad enough to encompass this sort of card. Duration cards are cleaned up when they have no further effect after the current turn*, so a card that still has a pending effect is not cleaned up.


*I think the only real case where this rule can currently be invoked is in discarding an impotent Tactician the same turn it's played.

[rinkworks]

This sounds like a great idea.  But I share the concern of others here about being TOO free with when the card could be cashed in.  If you can cash them in during an opponent's turn, you could run into all sorts of timing issues that would cause a rules nightmare.  Say an opponent has just played Tribute.  You know you've got a good card on top of your deck somehow, so you cash in your Duration+ card that gives you +1 Card.  Does it take effect *during* the resolution of the Tribute, or must it wait until the Tribute is finished resolving?  I'm sure you could come up with a rule that would cover this, but my point is that, whatever rules you create, there are probably always going to be a bunch of corner cases (including possibly with future official cards) you haven't thought of, where it really makes a difference.

Beyond that, there are practical considerations.  Say an opponent is zipping along with his turn.  He plays one card, then announces another card before you have a chance to butt in and say, "Iplaymyduration+cardnow!"  Do you get to play your card before the effect of his second (in which case you benefit from unfair knowledge of what he can do next [or MUST do next, even if your duration+ play changes his mind), or must you wait until after (in which case a strange race element is introduced to the game)?

Reaction cards allow you to play during an opponent's turn, but the timing of when you're allowed to play and in what order everything resolves is strictly regimented.

So let's say you can only cash in your Duration+ cards on your own turn.  I still think there are going to be problems if you can do so WITHIN the resolution of any other card (such as Throne Room, in your double Tactician example, cool as that may be).  Imagine cashing in a +1 Card bonus in the middle of a Golem play:  you set aside a few cards, get down to the last one in your deck, which you happen to know to be your only Gold, cash in the +1 Card, and then resume the Golem's search for action cards.  You could do similarly weird things if you interrupted Navigator, Lookout, Warehouse, Cellar, Vault, Masquerade, and numerous other cards in the middle of play.  Although I'm struggling to think of an example that's genuinely broken, again my point is just that the interactions are so potentially wild and unpredictable that I'd be afraid I wouldn't be thinking of some broken interaction.  Of course, there's no way to know anyway, without knowing what the specific cash-in effect on a specific Duration+ card is.

I'm a lot less nervous if you can only cash-in during your turn, and between the resolution of any given card.  But now let's move on to your Ultra-Haven example.  Does setting aside an Action allow you to play that action card even during your Buy Phase?  What if that card is Golem?  Now you're forced to play additional actions during your Buy Phase, too.  What if you've already bought a card, which means you're not allowed to play any additional treasures during your Buy Phase, and Golem turns up an Adventurer?  Now you have to dig for treasures and put them in your hand, but you're unable to play them.  Yet again, I'm struggling to think of a genuinely broken and/or ambiguous rules issue, but it sure is confusing -- you'd have to know the rules extremely well to figure out how to play situations that might commonly arise.

Could you play an action card set aside by Ultra-Haven during your Clean-Up phase?  Definitely all sorts of strangeness there.  Say you play an Outpost.  You draw three cards for your next hand during your Clean-Up phase, then cash-in your Ultra-Havened Golem, which turns up a couple of Treasuries.  You get to draw two additional cards and have $2 to spend in your Buy Phase of...which turn, exactly?  The current one, whose Buy Phase is already over, or the next one?

To make a short story long, I really think you need to restrict Ultra-Haven to action cards only, which can be cashed-in only during your Action Phase, and not while another card is resolving.  You could make it so that an action is required to play an Ultra-Havened action, or you could make the cashing-in free.  I think you can still manage double Tacticians this way, though perhaps not as easily:  play a Tactician from your hand, then cash-in your Ultra-Havened Laboratory, which draws a Tactician and another card.  More easily, if you have two Ultra-Havens, play a Tactician from your hand, cash-in any drawing action you'd previously Ultra-Havened, then cash-in an Ultra-Havened Tactician.

With those restrictions, I think you've got a terrific idea.  You need restrictions on play options anyway.  Strategy and interest comes from the restrictions, not so much the power.  Conspirator is an awesome card, for example, but would be ever so much less interesting if it cost $5 and ALWAYS offered +1 Card, +1 Action.  And how much more boring would Grand Market be if it cost $7, but you could use Coppers to buy it?

Even reined in, Ultra-Haven would be a powerful card.  It's almost more similar to a Native Village rather than a Haven.  Like Haven, you get to select the card you can set aside and you can set aside only one.  But then it becomes like a Native Village, where you can cash-in whenever you want, at the best opportunity.  It'd be pretty great at pairing up Treasure Maps, or Tournaments with Provinces, or Barons with Estates.

Going back to the vanilla Duration+ idea, imagine how powerful a simple +1 Buy would be if you could choose when you cashed it in?  +Buys go unused a lot, just because you need to overbuy +Buy a little just to ensure it'll be there when you need it.  But if you could choose when you got your +Buy, you could devote more turns to picking up Conspirators and fewer to picking up Markets.  And you wouldn't have to worry about drawing your Bank without the ability to use all the money it gives you.

It's definitely a great idea.  I just think some of the interesting possibilities need to be sacrificed for the sake of keeping the game sane and playable.

[Matt_Arnold]

You know, this could be the heart of a whole new game.

[KuulGryphun]

Here is a card I've been playing with for a few months in my custom card games.  Seems to be a simple implementation of what you suggest (with new card-type and all).  It's a popular card in our games:

[tlloyd]

Thanks for all the responses so far. Let me try to respond to several comments at once:

I think being able to play a militia in the middle of an opponent's turn is a terrible idea. However, I like the idea of being able to use the card somewhat as you would use a reaction card, but (if possible) without such narrow constraints. In order to avoid the truly chaotic results that could otherwise follow, I'm thinking you could clean up and take the effect of your card at any time you do anything. Have to gain a card? Discard cards? Reveal cards? You can use your latent cards immediately before or after. So yes, you could frustrate your opponent's Tribute by triggering your +1 card before you reveal two cards.

On your own turn, you should be able to trigger the effect at any time, even in the middle of resolving an action card (as my throne room/tactician example suggests). The particular cases that Rinkworks is concerned about are exactly the kind of interesting combos I had in mind in the first place. I don't see anything broken, although admittedly it's hard to say without particular cards to evaluate.

As for the Ultra-Haven, I originally thought of it only as a single-card alternative for the same basic idea. But I think it's perfectly workable with the single restriction that the set-aside card can be played only during your action phase--I see no reason to restrict it to action cards. BM allows you to play treasures during your action phase, and that gives it unique combo potential. Or as a last resort you could use it as an Island to set aside victory cards from your hand. Perhaps in addition to being able to freely play a card during your action phase, you could also freely place the card into your hand at any point even during your opponent's turn, and thus use it to keep key reaction cards handy.

[kazztawdal]

On your own turn, you should be able to trigger the effect at any time, even in the middle of resolving an action card (as my throne room/tactician example suggests). The particular cases that Rinkworks is concerned about are exactly the kind of interesting combos I had in mind in the first place. I don't see anything broken, although admittedly it's hard to say without particular cards to evaluate.

This is a balance nightmare.  Your idea of an "interesting combo" makes me think you're probably a Magic the Gathering player; and if you're not, you should be.  In that game, the entire goal is to come up with a sincerely broken deck that very few opponents can counter.  That's what being able to clean-up during card resolution could do; you're essentially circumventing the game's own rules.

In that respect, it goes without saying that a card that can do this is a must-buy for every player in every game, which is completely insane.

Your idea only works if you can only play the card in your own Action phase, when you would play an Action card.

[rinkworks]

Yeah.  I meant to reply to this thread again but forgot about it until now.  Basically, tlloyd, if that's the card you want to have, I say do it.  If my suggestions of imposing constraints on the card ruin the enthusiasm you have for the idea, scrap them.

But without those constraints, I share kazztawdal's concerns about trying to balance it.  Of course, the exact cost of such a card would wholly depend on what it actually does, but figure that something innocuous like +1 Buy would probably need to be as high as $4 or $5 to be balanced.  Something more significant would be difficult to price at all.

My best guess is you'd have to resort to a special rule to make it work.  Maybe every player starts with one such card and can trade them in for better ones as the game goes on -- but you can't buy them and can't have more than one at any given time.  That way they don't compete with the other cards for your buys.  Or maybe you could have special restrictions on the purchase of them, like Grand Market has.  (The Secret History of Prosperity suggests that Grand Market, as it exists now, was probably unpriceable except for its Copper restriction.)

If you make any kind of headway on this, let us know!

[tlloyd]

Your idea of an "interesting combo" makes me think you're probably a Magic the Gathering player; and if you're not, you should be.

Never played it.

In that game, the entire goal is to come up with a sincerely broken deck that very few opponents can counter.

There are already plenty of examples of dominion decks you can build that are very difficult to counter. We've all been on the losing end of Fishing Village + Torturer, right? What I love about the idea is that it is subtle. Something as "mostly harmless" as +1 card can be amazingly powerful if you let it happen right in the middle of resolving another card. And it exponentially increases the interesting combos, which almost assures that there will be some set of cards for which a latent +1 card is a must buy at whatever cost, along with many circumstances where it's irrelevant. So if your point is that these cards would be difficult to price (as I believe Rinkworks is saying), then boy do I hear you. If you are saying (as I believe you are) that the idea is simply unworkable, well, I'm not giving up so easily.

That's what being able to clean-up during card resolution could do; you're essentially circumventing the game's own rules.

I remember someone once remarked on these forums that the idea of cards that cost $7 was once considered unthinkable--until Donald went and did it. Now you'd sound silly suggesting that a gap between $6 cards and $8 cards is somehow a necessary aspect of the game. Read your own comment back and try to think whether you would have responded the same way to the idea of Duration cards--that is before Donald went and broke his own game's rules in Seaside. It's okay if you don't like the idea (it might turn out to be hopelessly imbalanced), but this is a pretty silly reason to reject it.

[tlloyd]

Okay, so I have a few more thoughts to add:

So far we've been talking in very abstract terms because I haven't proposed any concrete ideas for particular cards. So for the sake of discussion let's break the Market up into four Latent cards: +1 Card, +1 Action, +1 Buy and +$1. I think all of these would be useful cards that, depending on the cost, I would be willing to buy.

Who hasn't been frustrated at hitting $7 when the province race is neck and neck? Put that +$1 out there early and use it to get over that $7 hump later. Feel like your money always shows up on the turn with no extra buys? Save a buy for later when you have the coin to use it! Ever had your amazing engine come crashing down for want of a single action? No longer. And we've already discussed how useful +1 card can be.

But the point I want to make is that for the action, buy, and coin effects, I cannot think of a circumstance where being able to clean up the card and gain the latent effect in the middle of resolving another card would make any difference. Why would it ever matter if you get the +1 action during or after playing an action card (before is obviously another story). Why would +1 Buy or +$1 during a card be any different than after a card? So perhaps my idea is not as revolutionary as I hoped, but it's also much less broken than we feared.

[kazztawdal]

Something as "mostly harmless" as +1 card can be amazingly powerful if you let it happen right in the middle of resolving another card.

This, here, is the problem.  One card being "amazingly powerful" is a bad thing, a nasty vicious thing that we, amateur game designers/tweakers that we are, shouldn't like.  We can come up with a hundred combos where +1 Card in the middle of a card resolution turns the mundane into the bonkers, but pure domination doesn't make a card strategically interesting.  Minion used to be The Card, and now it's been overshadowed by cards like Goons or Watchtower, and combos like, well, Goons/Watchtower.

The best cards are Powerful When Used Correctly, like Masquerade or Conspirator or Gardens, even Chapel.  I want to be rewarded for being clever, not just because I bought Das Übercard.

I remember someone once remarked on these forums that the idea of cards that cost $7 was once considered unthinkable--until Donald went and did it. Now you'd sound silly suggesting that a gap between $6 cards and $8 cards is somehow a necessary aspect of the game. Read your own comment back and try to think whether you would have responded the same way to the idea of Duration cards--that is before Donald went and broke his own game's rules in Seaside. It's okay if you don't like the idea (it might turn out to be hopelessly imbalanced), but this is a pretty silly reason to reject it.

This is called a "straw-man" rebuttal, where you're not really arguing against my point, but inventing your own point and then defeating it.  You're a smart guy; you can do better than that.

I know it doesn't sound like it, but I do like your idea a lot.  +$1, +1 Buy and +1 Action are neat ideas that can probably go anywhere (although adding +1 Action in your Buy phase might, again, lead to insanity).  +1 Card would need to be handled very carefully to be balanced.

[rinkworks]

The best cards are Powerful When Used Correctly, like Masquerade or Conspirator or Gardens, even Chapel.  I want to be rewarded for being clever, not just because I bought Das Übercard.

Although I share your reservations in general and agree with the overall point of what you said here, I'm thinking a "+1 Card at the moment of your choosing" is only powerful if you ARE clever with it.