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Author Topic: Minotaur's card concept thread  (Read 4388 times)

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Minotaur

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Minotaur's card concept thread
« on: January 30, 2013, 05:34:16 am »
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This one is mostly for fun, since it massively breaks the whole Dominion theme.

Antarctica
Action-Duration
Cost: 6
+1 VP
If Antarctica is in play during your clean-up phase, do not discard it. Discard Antarctica at the start of your turn. While Antarctica is in play, any player wishing to use an Action must first discard an action card from their hand.

(I considered making this an attack, but... no, Antarctica isn't an attack. Antarctica is just Antarctica. I could see making it a Victory card rather than generating tokens, though. Villages are great against this card: either you get to play an extra action, or you discard the Village to play the action. Alternately, Big Money. But if a 5-action card can be use to beat Big Money, then the choice whether to get Antarctica becomes relevant again... I have doubts about this one, though. Then again, is it really any more of a pain than Goons?)



Extravagant Feast
Action
Cost: 5 (EDIT: Originally, this costed 4, which was OP.)
Trash Extravagant Feast and discard up to three cards from your hand. Gain a card costing at most (4) more than the number of discarded cards.

(After a moment's thought, I realized that "any number of cards" was going to lead to idiotic games where the winner is whoever has enough luck to alternate 4-coin hands with hands that are dead except for this card. I changed the cost from 4 to 5.)

(Holy cow, the version of this that cost 4 was broken. If you buy the 4-cost version early in the game, discarding one card to break even with vanilla Feast is virtually no opportunity cost whatsoever, leading to easy Golds or even Banks wicked early, and you can still buy Silver or an action those turns. Way too good. When it costs 5, then by the time you can actually play it, it may actually be a meaningful decision whether/how many cards to discard. It's still good enough to buy too, but it rapidly becomes obsolete *unless* attack cards are making it difficult to get 6-7 coin hands in a reasonable amount of time. But now that it costs 5, how does it compare to Vault? Well, Extravagant Feast can get you those cool 7-cost cards guaranteed, so that's cool. And if you discard two, you might have spare change to buy a Silver or something that turn, if you really wanted to EF for a Gold or something; it would probably take a few more turns before a Vault in the same turn would likely bump you up to buying a Platinum. So the new version looks like it depends on the board, but typically becomes relevant at a certain point and then ceases to be worth it. But ymmv, only tested it 2-3 times so far.)



Lucky Penny
Treasure - Reaction
Cost: 3
(1)
When you play Lucky Penny, reveal the top card of your deck. Draw it, or return it to the top of your deck.
-----------------------------------------------------
If you have a Wishing Well in play during your action phase, you may discard Lucky Penny and return Wishing Well to your hand.

(The reaction effect is an optional feature to include, but... yeah, it belongs, I think. This card is sort of alright even without Wishing Well, but probably not great or an automatic buy. A sort of watered-down Venture that sometimes makes your next turn a little better. Probably too good if it costed 2, not sure.)

(EDIT: This card is really strong, actually, maybe even worth 4, but I don't know. At 3, it's strong when your deck is mostly a mix of green, gold, and/or purple, when it will almost always be doing good things for you every time you see it, acting as either a self-spy or a Venture each time. When there are strong white card combos on the table, then it may be hurting you, but really... that's the only time it's worse than Silver. I really don't know what to do about this card. I like it, but it makes for some really breezy games. It's not broken like 4-cost Extravagant Feast, but it might be a little OP. Also, the test game had Bureaucrat, and I shouldn't really have to explain why that was insanely good... Seriously considering a cost of 4 here. Either that, or it can cost 2 and have an "optional trash-when-played" precondition to the special effect for more drama/strategy. y/n?)
« Last Edit: January 31, 2013, 04:43:44 am by Minotaur »
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NoMoreFun

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Re: Minotaur's card concept thread
« Reply #1 on: January 30, 2013, 07:18:53 am »
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Lucky Penny is essentially a Peddler, which I think was shown somewhere to be balanced as a $4 card.

Does Antarctica's effect mean that discarding one action card is enough to play as many as you want in your turn, or do you have to discard one every time you want to play one. It probably does too well discouraging action heavy decks.

Don't know what to make of Extravagant Feast, but it's probably not much more interesting than the normal kind.

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Morgrim7

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Re: Minotaur's card concept thread
« Reply #2 on: January 30, 2013, 08:32:00 am »
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Whoa Antarctica is way too powerful.

@NoMoreFun, no, it isnt a Peddler. Lucky Penny is a Treasure card.
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cluckyb

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Re: Minotaur's card concept thread
« Reply #3 on: January 30, 2013, 01:36:01 pm »
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Whoa Antarctica is way too powerful.

@NoMoreFun, no, it isnt a Peddler. Lucky Penny is a Treasure card.

Peddler gives you +$1, doesn't decrease your hand size or reduce the number of actions you can play. Lucky Penny does basically the same thing even though its a treasure. It's a little different (you can leave the card there, which is a bonus, but you can't draw an action with it) but is still more-or-less the same despite the fact that its a treasure. Same reasoning that a +1 action +$2 card is basically the same thing as a silver.
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Minotaur

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Re: Minotaur's card concept thread
« Reply #4 on: January 30, 2013, 02:47:38 pm »
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Yeah, Lucky Penny is kind of like a peddler, but weaker for the most part. The option to top-deck a treasure that you don't need yet is probably the only thing stronger about it. It's also a lot cheaper early on, when it's likely to be as good as a silver: either you get a copper now, or you get an Estate out of your next hand. If it somehow draws your 4-action dead, you put it back and it was just a copper for you that turn.

Peddler is better with actions, while Lucky Penny is more treasure-centered, but is still going to grease your deck a little overall if you still have a couple later on. It's never bad to have more Peddlers, but a ton of Lucky Pennies could easily mess up your deck. It's a card that would be nice to draw with a Cartographer or especially Navigator. EDIT: Sort of like Venture without the search feature, but with the mild compensation that you get to sift (or not) one card if you fail. I originally thought of it as Venture lite, but added topdecking to make it genuinely Lucky.

I've thought about making it cost 2, but I'm not so sure that's a good idea. The temptations are mainly because a penny should be cheap, and if it's a Wishing Well enabler, then costing the same as a Wishing Well when Wishing Well is already a cantrip wouldn't do much.
« Last Edit: January 30, 2013, 05:36:29 pm by Minotaur »
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Minotaur

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Re: Minotaur's card concept thread
« Reply #5 on: January 30, 2013, 02:54:16 pm »
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Whoa Antarctica is way too powerful.

Hmmm. Maybe I'm not thinking about it right, but can you compare it to other attack cards? Goons gets you more VP. Antarctica stops massive cantrip chains, combos, and KC/TR, but I don't particularly like those; in a lot of ordinary turns, Goons would make you lose two useful cards, when Antarctica only makes you lose one. It mostly would force people to buy Villages and it would stop combos from happening. The wording could be changed to "first time each turn", but I don't lean toward that yet.
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eHalcyon

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Re: Minotaur's card concept thread
« Reply #6 on: January 30, 2013, 03:09:36 pm »
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Whoa Antarctica is way too powerful.

Hmmm. Maybe I'm not thinking about it right, but can you compare it to other attack cards? Goons gets you more VP. Antarctica stops massive cantrip chains, combos, and KC/TR, but I don't particularly like those; in a lot of ordinary turns, Goons would make you lose two useful cards, when Antarctica only makes you lose one. It mostly would force people to buy Villages and it would stop combos from happening. The wording could be changed to "first time each turn", but I don't lean toward that yet.


Antarctica is too powerful because it shuts down any kind of strategy that involves playing lots of action cards.  While you might not personally like engines, they are a major part of the game and, very often, the dominant strategy on a given board.  Not to mention, engines are usually more interesting than just playing Big Money.

But Antarctica destroys that.  You suggest that overbuying Village is a defense, but that is not true.  What happens if I have Village and four non-action cards?  That Village is now completely dead.  Same goes for any other action card.  The only option left is to play Big Money.

You mischaracterize Goons as well.  It does not make you lose two useful cards.  It makes you discard your two WORSE cards out of five.  These will often be dead cards like Estates or Curses or an extra terminal action, or weak cards like Copper.  Antarctica blocks actual useful cards because it requires discarding actions.

The other thing is stackability.  If I play two Goons, the second one doesn't affect you.  But if I play two Antarcticas, now you have to discard two actions to play one.  You need three actions in hand just to get one play out of it.  If I can play even more Antarcticas, you have no hope of playing any actions at all.

So Antarctica means that all you can safely buy is Treasure.
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dondon151

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Re: Minotaur's card concept thread
« Reply #7 on: January 30, 2013, 03:12:23 pm »
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Antarctica kills all engines dead. Think about it: virtually every non-terminal action no longer increases your hand size, and most will decrease it. A village + terminal draw combination does not net card draw unless they draw a combined 5 (!) cards, which is basically just Council Room with most villages (although you would never want to play CR because the benefit to your opponent is no longer worth the benefit that you gain from playing the card). Most importantly, assuming that the village draws a card, a player needs an average density of 4 Action cards per 6 cards in his deck in order to even play a single village + terminal draw in the first place, since you can't play an Action without first discarding another one.

So now players are strongly encouraged to play money strategies, which in turn makes Antarctica a useless card in decks if it won't hurt anyone.

The other strike against it is that it's super swingy. Say that both players are building Action engines that aim to play Antarctica as much as possible. The first player to play it shuts down the other player. The other player will struggle to recover until he draws his own Antarctica with another Action card that he can discard.

The flaws in the comparison that you're drawing with Goons are that 1) Goons is very easily counterable, and 2) you can still have big turns even after being attacked. Against all attacks, you still retain the possibility of having big turns if your deck is designed to do so.
« Last Edit: January 30, 2013, 03:19:54 pm by dondon151 »
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Minotaur

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Re: Minotaur's card concept thread
« Reply #8 on: January 30, 2013, 03:32:18 pm »
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The other thing is stackability.  If I play two Goons, the second one doesn't affect you.  But if I play two Antarcticas, now you have to discard two actions to play one.  You need three actions in hand just to get one play out of it.  If I can play even more Antarcticas, you have no hope of playing any actions at all.

I meant to include a non-stackability clause. I neglected to do that here. I definitely didn't mean for there to be two or more Antarctica effects on the board.

About it only letting you buy treasure, it depends. If Big Money beats Antarctica, then it's probably better to build money. Big Money would beat Antarctica spam, Antarctica spam would beat tons of actions, and money+actions beats Big Money.
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Minotaur

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Re: Minotaur's card concept thread
« Reply #9 on: January 30, 2013, 03:40:53 pm »
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Antarctica kills all engines dead. Think about it: virtually every non-terminal action no longer increases your hand size, and most will decrease it. A village + terminal draw combination does not net card draw unless they draw a combined 5 (!) cards, which is basically just Council Room with most villages (although you would never want to play CR because the benefit to your opponent is no longer worth the benefit that you gain from playing the card). Most importantly, assuming that the village draws a card, a player needs an average density of 4 Action cards per 6 cards in his deck in order to even play a single village + terminal draw in the first place, since you can't play an Action without first discarding another one.

So now players are strongly encouraged to play money strategies, which in turn makes Antarctica a useless card in decks if it won't hurt anyone.

The other strike against it is that it's super swingy. Say that both players are building Action engines that aim to play Antarctica as much as possible. The first player to play it shuts down the other player. The other player will struggle to recover until he draws his own Antarctica with another Action card that he can discard.

The flaws in the comparison that you're drawing with Goons are that 1) Goons is very easily counterable, and 2) you can still have big turns even after being attacked. Against all attacks, you still retain the possibility of having big turns if your deck is designed to do so.

Antarctica in play:
Discard Village, play Smithy. Draw 3 cards. I possibly have two or three additional treasures in hand. This is a one-card gain, but I did not get my action back.

Antarctica not in play:
Play Village and then Smithy, drawing 4 cards with 1 action left.

Antarctica shuts down Laboratory chains and make it hard to KC things. But it's not insta-win and it's not totally useless. If your opponent is getting a bunch of them, you play BM and win. It becomes a bit more of a gray area if they just get one or two, though. It just balances the game more toward terminal actions and cheap villages.

I can see how maybe it would be too limited, being a hardcore anti-engine. The overall game tends to limit attacks to being generally negative, but not out to hobble a certain class of cards. :-/

Anyway, Antarctica. Wasn't going to be in the game anyway.
« Last Edit: January 30, 2013, 03:51:57 pm by Minotaur »
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Minotaur

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Re: Minotaur's card concept thread
« Reply #10 on: January 30, 2013, 03:49:02 pm »
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Antarctica is too powerful because it shuts down any kind of strategy that involves playing lots of action cards.  While you might not personally like engines, they are a major part of the game and, very often, the dominant strategy on a given board.  Not to mention, engines are usually more interesting than just playing Big Money.

But Antarctica destroys that.  You suggest that overbuying Village is a defense, but that is not true.  What happens if I have Village and four non-action cards?  That Village is now completely dead.  Same goes for any other action card.  The only option left is to play Big Money.

You mischaracterize Goons as well.  It does not make you lose two useful cards.  It makes you discard your two WORSE cards out of five.  These will often be dead cards like Estates or Curses or an extra terminal action, or weak cards like Copper.  Antarctica blocks actual useful cards because it requires discarding actions.

The other thing is stackability.  If I play two Goons, the second one doesn't affect you.  But if I play two Antarcticas, now you have to discard two actions to play one.  You need three actions in hand just to get one play out of it.  If I can play even more Antarcticas, you have no hope of playing any actions at all.

So Antarctica means that all you can safely buy is Treasure.

Having a Village and four non-action cards isn't a new thing. What if you draw Throne Room and no other actions? This is already a common thing. If your opponent had played Goons instead, then depending on your hand, maybe you would have discarded Village and a silver and held on to three golds when you would have bought a Colony otherwise. Antarctica would have let you win the game that turn.

Goons has made me discard two useful cards over and over again. Nine-coin hands become seven-coin hands. Six-coin hands become four-coin hands. There are plenty of times that I've had two terminal actions to play, and would have gladly discarded one to play the other, but I didn't have the option to discard just one.
« Last Edit: January 30, 2013, 04:25:59 pm by Minotaur »
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dondon151

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Re: Minotaur's card concept thread
« Reply #11 on: January 30, 2013, 04:30:29 pm »
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About it only letting you buy treasure, it depends. If Big Money beats Antarctica, then it's probably better to build money. Big Money would beat Antarctica spam, Antarctica spam would beat tons of actions, and money+actions beats Big Money.

But this is the same problem as designing a card that reflects attacks back to the person who played them. Its presence in the kingdom renders Attack cards useless. So no one buys attacks, and the reaction card is also taking a useless spot in the kingdom. It's bad for the game.
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Minotaur

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Re: Minotaur's card concept thread
« Reply #12 on: January 30, 2013, 04:56:03 pm »
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About it only letting you buy treasure, it depends. If Big Money beats Antarctica, then it's probably better to build money. Big Money would beat Antarctica spam, Antarctica spam would beat tons of actions, and money+actions beats Big Money.

But this is the same problem as designing a card that reflects attacks back to the person who played them. Its presence in the kingdom renders Attack cards useless. So no one buys attacks, and the reaction card is also taking a useless spot in the kingdom. It's bad for the game.

Most attacks would still work fine. Militia would still be strong, especially early when you would be able to buy it. Antarctica gives you no money, and Militia makes you discard twice anyway. I think labs would be hurt the most, maybe disproportionately. It's sort of a joke card anyway (anti-thematic), but I think on some boards it would be a fun card. I just don't know on how many boards it would actually be used to make an interesting game. It works well in games with a lot of basic cards: witch (maybe works too well actually), smithy, village, and most other terminals. It works alright with Moat, since Moat is a good discard candidate. It totally wrecks Throne Room and Laboratory, and makes Market and Spy not look so good except as discards. I just don't think, overall, that the impact would be exactly what's proposed here; in Village/Smithy play, it's about as strong as Militia as an attack. Militia just doesn't scale into late-game as well if there are seven labs out.

I think fun games *could* include a card like this, but it shuts down a substantial class of cards altogether and too many cards like that would make the game too jagged and inconsistent, I guess. The other two were more serious suggestions that feel like potential cards to me.

EDIT: Sorry, I took the metaphor too literally. You meant that reflections make attacks irrelevant, and that this card makes engines irrelevant. (I think Antarctica itself could have a balanced place among whatever is left, while attack reflections could not. Could be wrong. But "you can't play XYZ" might be somewhat bad for the game in any case.)
« Last Edit: January 30, 2013, 05:16:07 pm by Minotaur »
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Minotaur

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Re: Minotaur's card concept thread
« Reply #13 on: January 30, 2013, 05:25:30 pm »
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Don't know what to make of Extravagant Feast, but it's probably not much more interesting than the normal kind.

Extravagant Fest lets you gain a gold from an otherwise weak hand, with two spots left for treasures. This can be really powerful, but you have to discard at least one card to equal Feast, and at least two to improve on it. Early-game, it's probably not hard to get Gold and a 3-cost card in a single turn. This card is also hurt by discards, but if you get Militia'd, you can still buy a Gold that turn. Not bad. On the other hand, you'd rather Throne Room an ordinary Feast, or generally, you'd rather have Feast in a slim, powerful deck with +actions. If you're getting cursed, Extravagant Feast is a good card to have.

Compared with Vault: Vault makes you discard your whole hand to get a guaranteed Gold, but you get to keep Vault, which is generally a good card anyway. But Vault costs more and can help the other players.
« Last Edit: January 30, 2013, 05:26:54 pm by Minotaur »
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Re: Minotaur's card concept thread
« Reply #14 on: January 30, 2013, 05:54:49 pm »
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To put antarctica at a reasonable power level, you could have it only affect the first action, not all of them. Something like "Each other may discard an action card. If they do not, they do not have an action phase on their turn."
Of course, this probably hurts big money more than engines, and I don't think that's what you want.
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Minotaur

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Re: Minotaur's card concept thread
« Reply #15 on: January 30, 2013, 06:03:47 pm »
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To put antarctica at a reasonable power level, you could have it only affect the first action, not all of them. Something like "Each other may discard an action card. If they do not, they do not have an action phase on their turn."
Of course, this probably hurts big money more than engines, and I don't think that's what you want.

As a general attack card, this is more balanced, but it would definitely need to be balanced by a change in card cost or utility elsewhere. Yours (like mine) needs a non-stacking clause too.

Thematically, sacrificing one action is like enforced community service, where Antarctica is more like... everything is frozen. Maybe yours, thematically, would fit in with a Dominion: A Kid's World expansion. It could be called, "Do Your Chores!".
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Minotaur

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Re: Minotaur's card concept thread
« Reply #16 on: January 31, 2013, 05:29:51 am »
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Ok, updated Extravagant Feast and Lucky Penny with some notes.

Antarctica was sort of a joke card anyway, but I was hoping the other two could be completely balanced.
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Re: Minotaur's card concept thread
« Reply #17 on: January 31, 2013, 05:47:04 am »
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Antarctica may be not that limiting when Ruins are in play. But generally I agree with dondon1. It'd be too much of a deterrent to actions in general. Maybe: Each player loses an action. Each player may discard a card (any!) for +action. (May be limited to once a turn, lest opponents could amass Torturers.)
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