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[bourgman]

I'm brainstorming a new reaction card, trying to work through different scenarios:

Cupbearer - Cost 3
Action - Reaction
Trash this card.  If you do, you may reveal a card from your hand that isn't a Victory and gain a copy of it.
When trashing a card, you may reveal this card from your hand.  Place the trashed card in your discard pile and trash the revealed copy of Cupbearer.

I'm thinking you can use Cupbearer to keep your Feast or use Bishop/Apprentice/etc on your Province and still keep it.  Also, if someone uses Sabotage and you turn up a Province, you keep it and can even gain a free gold.

Let me know what you think.  Should it cost more than 3?

[guided]

It's an interesting idea, but I think the reaction effect will only very rarely be useful.

[roriconfan]

It sounds broken without a limit to how much the copy can cost. I can trash it to get a Peddler and on the next round I can trash the Peddler to get a Colony.

[rinkworks]

I agree.  It's a very interesting idea, but would it be a dead card on a board without trash-for-benefit cards?  There aren't really that many -- Salvager, Apprentice, and Bishop are the main ones.  Self-trash-for-benefit would combo nicely, too:  Feast, Treasure Map, Horn of Plenty, Embargo.  With trash-as-side-effect cards (e.g., Trade Route), you'd have a small chance of being able to play them safely more often, but it probably wouldn't be worth eating up a card slot on that off-chance.  It would be a good defense against Pirate Ship and Saboteur (but possibly not Thief, depending on how you rules-lawyer its "gain these trashed cards" clause).

An awful lot of boards have none of these cards.

But you might be able to make it more universally useful if you can get it to give you a benefit no matter what card is trashed.  For instance, if, when you Chapel away a Curse, you could reveal Cupbearer and gain some additional benefit -- while still having the Curse trashed -- then the reaction effect might not be so specialized in scope as to be usually useless.

Maybe something like:

"When you trash a card, you may reveal this card from your hand.  If you do, you may choose one:  place the trashed card in your discard pile; or, +2 Cards and discard this card."

[rinkworks]

It sounds broken without a limit to how much the copy can cost. I can trash it to get a Peddler and on the next round I can trash the Peddler to get a Colony.

Huh?  The proposed card text only says you can only get a copy of a non-victory card.  How are you finagling a Colony out of it?

Anyway, while I wouldn't know for sure without testing, I don't see any reason it should have a cost cap, since: (1) It's only as good as what you draw with it; see also: King's Court.  (2) You can only use it once (unless you have two in hand, so one can rescue the other from the trash pile, but if you're using up two card slots, you might as well get some extra power out of it; see: Minion, Treasure Map).  (3) It wouldn't be the only card that has a chance of giving you a copy of a power card; see also: Jester.

[roriconfan]

^ Through the Peddler combo. It is the most expensive Action card and it's basically bought cheap so you can trash it with Expand (or with Remodel for Province).

[rinkworks]

^ Through the Peddler combo. It is the most expensive Action card and it's basically bought cheap so you can trash it with Expand (or with Remodel for Province).

But you can do that without any assistance from the proposed Cupbearer card.  Peddler+Expand and Peddler+Salvager, etc, are not broken, they're just combos that make the game a strategic enterprise.  Peddler was *designed* for the very purpose of being easier to acquire than its hefty price tag, while retaining that hefty price tag so it can combo with cards that care about cost.  It's also relevant that the number of Cupbearer+Peddler games that also had a trash-for-benefit card such as Expand would be in the severe minority.  When those games do come up, being rewarded for recognizing that tactic and exploiting it is what makes Dominion a good game.

In any case, Cupbearer would still not be the easiest way to acquire extra Peddlers.  Nor the most dramatic:  Four Markets and a Talisman let you empty the entire Peddler stack in a single turn.

[Deadlock39]

Yeah, I think the description is pretty confusing.  This might help:

The action portion of this card is like a Mint that can be used on actions in addition to treasures, but trashes itself when it is played.

The reaction saves one of your cards from being trashed by trashing itself instead.

The reaction seems a bit too good in some scenarios, but I don't actually think you could get enough Cupbearers to pull off the things I am thinking of.  Any trash for benefit could have wild interactions.  Remodel a Gold into a Province, but trash the Cupbearer instead?  Most of these types of things are probably elaborate enough combos that they wouldn't be broken. 

[Fangz]

I think it's too finicky. With some sets it'd be pretty much useless - a single use mint without the trash ability is pretty terrible, and its reaction ability is too rare to be reliable and useful. On the other hand, on a deck with KC, say? Gain copies of KC, three at a time? That's terrifying.