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Author Topic: Conquest - the 4s  (Read 12752 times)

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WanderingWinder

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Conquest - the 4s
« on: September 29, 2011, 01:12:40 pm »
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4 is perhaps my favourite cost to design for, so at least to a certain extent, this is the heart of the set. Anyway, here are the first few:

Depository
Victory         4
Worth 1 VP for every 5 treasures in your deck (round down)

I love alternate ways to get points, and here's a big one. I think it compares to gardens pretty evenly, but we'll see how the testing shows it to be. It should, in most decks, be worth 2-3. It's going to be tough to get  many of them and have them be worth 4+, as they don't pump themselves

Regent
Action         4
+$2
Name a card. Reveal cards from the top of your deck until you reveal the named card. Put that card back on top and discard the rest.

Directly ripped off from a card Donald originally had for cornucopia, except that that cost 3 and had type instead of card. This is quite possibly too strong though, as it just lets you spam your strongest card. Might have to make some kind of weakening to it. Obviously, it can basically always be played as chancellor.

Medical Tent
Action         4
+2 Cards
Discard any number of cards
+1 action for every card discarded this way


It's vault with actions instead of money. You can play it as slightly better than a normal cantrip. You can play it as a village where you aren't getting the card back, but you've got a selection of more cards to choose which to not have. Possibly this can be costed at three, but this is one of the cards in the whole set I have most confidence in, especially in its simplicity.

rinkworks

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Re: Conquest - the 4s
« Reply #1 on: September 29, 2011, 02:23:34 pm »
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Depository

Probably balanced and potentially some interesting play in a Big Money deck, where the trade-off is between acquiring another one of these or inflating their value.  But I think such a game would only be interesting once or twice.  As a supplemental source of VPs, it's okay, but I don't like that it promotes a Big Money game.  Contrast to Vineyards, where there are always interesting decisions to make about what particular action cards (the selection of which changes every game) you pick up to feed them.

Quote
Regent

I wrote up this three-paragraph essay on why this was absurdly, ridiculously overpowered, and then I reread the card text and realized the card you dig for goes back on the deck instead of in your hand.  As you actually have it, it sounds great and potentially just fine as a $4.  Best case, this card makes you able to spam your best card every other turn.  That really doesn't seem so bad.  It doesn't do anything a good draw engine or a Chapel deck can't do better.

Quote
Medical Tent

This one is good too.  No individual use of it warrants a $4 cost, but its versatility (see also: Nobles) could come in quite handy.  Actually, no individual use of it warrants even a $3 cost.  So maybe you're right, and the cost ought to be $3.

Anyway, like you, I'm confident this will work at one price or the other, and maybe even both.
« Last Edit: September 29, 2011, 02:27:09 pm by rinkworks »
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ChaosRed

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Re: Conquest - the 4s
« Reply #2 on: September 29, 2011, 02:37:47 pm »
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Love Depository...and is indicative of the kind of cards I want to test and play. Nicely done.
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rinkworks

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Re: Conquest - the 4s
« Reply #3 on: September 29, 2011, 06:38:00 pm »
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This one is good too.  No individual use of it warrants a $4 cost, but its versatility (see also: Nobles) could come in quite handy.  Actually, no individual use of it warrants even a $3 cost.

I have to take this last sentence back.  If you discard two, that isn't just a Village minus the +card.  It's a Village plus 2/3rds of a Warehouse minus the +card.  That's almost certainly worth $3.
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Tejayes

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Re: Conquest - the 4s
« Reply #4 on: September 29, 2011, 10:50:55 pm »
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I've been doing a bit of rewording recently, but this set of three cards is pretty close to perfect. Just change "round" to "rounded" in Depository, add "of your deck" to Regent, and maybe just a comma in Medical Tent, and this looks official. Now, as for my thoughts...

Depository -- I was wondering about the number of Treasure cards needed, but after looking at some Gardens games on CouncilRoom, I think 5 is a good number of Treasures per point.

Regent -- This sounds interesting. It can both help a good engine and be rendered useless by the same engine if you draw all of your cards each turn before playing Regent. Not to mention the ability to set up your next hand a good bit. Still could be a little strong, but it's worth putting to the test.

Medical Tent -- It's like Hamlet, in a way. If you have some crap you can discard, you can basically turn this into a Laboratory or better, same way that discarding excess with Hamlet turns it into a Worker's Village. I think it would be too strong at a $3, so $4 is a good price for this one.
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rinkworks

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Re: Conquest - the 4s
« Reply #5 on: September 30, 2011, 08:13:18 am »
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Medical Tent -- It's like Hamlet, in a way. If you have some crap you can discard, you can basically turn this into a Laboratory or better, same way that discarding excess with Hamlet turns it into a Worker's Village. I think it would be too strong at a $3, so $4 is a good price for this one.

You can't make it a Laboratory.  If you start with 5 cards, playing the card puts you to 4.  Drawing 2 puts you at 6.  Discarding one for an action gets you back down to 5.  It's better than a cantrip, because you got to pick your 5 cards from 6, but you're still ultimately only at 5 cards.

But it's funny you mention Laboratory, because I was thinking this exact same card with a +3 Cards bonus would also be a cool card, albeit one you'd have to price at $7.  You'd get to make it a Smithy, Laboratory, or Village, whichever one you needed at the time.  But better still, since the Laboratory and Village options would also feature some partial Warehouse action.  Maybe it's even too good for $7, I dunno.
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Conquest - the 4s
« Reply #6 on: September 30, 2011, 09:36:34 am »
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Swing
Action         4
+4 Cards
Discard 2 Cards

Compare to envoy. You get one fewer card, and you have to discard one more. On the other hand, you get to choose what it is you discard, and from your whole hand. This probably makes this better, to the point I need to tweak it to stop it from being too good. A wording like "reveal the top four cards of your deck. Put two in your hand and discard the rest" or just making you discard first is possible, but I think it might be a touch weak there, so I want to try it here first, see how broken it is (or hopefully not!) and then adjust.

Looter
Action-Reaction      4
+1 Card
+1 Buy
+$1
You may discard a card. If you do, +1 Action
___________________________________________
Whenever you discard a card, you may set this aside from your hand. If you do, +1 card and return this to your hand at the beginning of your next turn.


The main effect is a slightly-worse market, which is a sorta weak $5, for 4. The reaction is probably not super strong but can potentially chain up for a long time. Hmm, this is probably a bit too strong as well. Originally I had it as having no extra card, you always got the action, the buy is what you got on discard. Probably I want to spice the reaction up a little bit, especially if I go back to that. But I also need something to differentiate it from rage a bit more.


Expedition
Action         4
+1 Card
+1 Action
Gain a silver

Main comparison here is bureaucrat. Pros of this card: it's a cantrip. Pros of bureaucrat: it gives you the silver on top of your deck, and there's the attack. This is probably going to be stronger most of the time, but bureaucrat is no world-beater. If this isn't fine here, I can swap out the +1 card for a coin or a buy or nothing.

Deadlock39

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Re: Conquest - the 4s
« Reply #7 on: September 30, 2011, 10:05:23 am »
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I agree with the Medical Tent can be a Lab statement.  Tejayes said "basically a Lab" not "literally a Lab". If you have an Estate in hand (and no other purpose for it), Medical Tent plays for the same effect as Lab (discarding the Estate has no net effect on your turn).  This can't be chained unless you are bogged down by Victory cards, but if you had several of these towards the end of the game, you could chain them for very close to Laboratory effect. 

rinkworks

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Re: Conquest - the 4s
« Reply #8 on: September 30, 2011, 11:00:05 am »
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I agree with the Medical Tent can be a Lab statement.  Tejayes said "basically a Lab" not "literally a Lab". If you have an Estate in hand (and no other purpose for it), Medical Tent plays for the same effect as Lab (discarding the Estate has no net effect on your turn).  This can't be chained unless you are bogged down by Victory cards, but if you had several of these towards the end of the game, you could chain them for very close to Laboratory effect.

Rereading the post I was replying to now, I realized I must have skimmed it too quickly.  You are correct.
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rinkworks

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Re: Conquest - the 4s
« Reply #9 on: September 30, 2011, 11:08:02 am »
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Swing
Action         4
+4 Cards
Discard 2 Cards

Compare to envoy. You get one fewer card, and you have to discard one more. On the other hand, you get to choose what it is you discard, and from your whole hand. This probably makes this better, to the point I need to tweak it to stop it from being too good. A wording like "reveal the top four cards of your deck. Put two in your hand and discard the rest" or just making you discard first is possible, but I think it might be a touch weak there, so I want to try it here first, see how broken it is (or hopefully not!) and then adjust.

I agree with basically everything you said here.  Good card.  Not necessarily a serious suggestion, but as a compromise between this stronger version and the weaker discard-first version, you could do: "Discard a card.  +4 Cards.  Discard a card."  It makes the card a bit more complex, possibly needlessly so, but the symmetry is kind of cute, don't you think?

Anyway, yeah, I'd say test this version and go from there.

Quote
Looter

I still can't envision ahead of time how these react-to-discard cards will play.  So no comment on this one for now.

Quote
Expedition

Seems like it should be fine.  The cantrip allows painless and indefinite accumulation of Silver at the cost of a tempo loss by choosing it over Silver initially.  That seems like a fair trade.  Probably strong in Big Money Province games, but in any other kind of game it'll reach a point where it becomes undesirable.  So that's my only reservation on this card:  that it will encourage BM+X play over something more interesting.  But it seems fine.
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Conquest - the 4s
« Reply #10 on: October 01, 2011, 12:23:20 am »
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Exhaust
Action-Attack      4
+$2
Every other player gains a copper

(Originally was a cantrip instead of a terminal silver).
Truth be told, I don't think this is probably too powerful, at least on most boards. You guys probably think it is, and I have some nerfs ready when you're proven right.


Agriculture
Action         4
While agriculture is in play, victory cards gain the treasure type (in addition to their other type(s)) and can be played as treasures for $2

An interesting little card, I think, to make use out of your victories. I also had the theought of making all cards into coppers. Originally I actually said that Victory cards became silvers, but this would be totally broken with anything that let you gain a silver. Note that this still does have a cool mine-gold-province-this interaction, though obviously that's too convoluted to really come up with any kind of normal frequency. Great for bank, too though.

Moneybreeder
Action         4
Discard a silver. If you do, choose one: gain a duchy or gain a gold.

Okay, first, a quick note on the name. Probably 3/4 of the names in the set I think are not very good, but this one is especially, terribly bad. Now about the card itself. Well, comparison to mine would make it seem too good, except that instead of increasing your buying power by 1 this turn, it decreases it by 2. This on top of only being able to do things with silver. So as it is it's sort of a cross between a mine that can only use silver and a remodel that only gets duchies from silvers. Probably both things are fairly weak, so this ought to be fine here, but what do I know, there's probably a way to break it.
« Last Edit: October 01, 2011, 04:13:07 pm by WanderingWinder »
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Elyv

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Re: Conquest - the 4s
« Reply #11 on: October 01, 2011, 03:52:57 am »
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Exhaust is like a familiar with a source that takes forever to run out and doesn't require a potion. Seems pretty good for me.
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Thinkaman

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Re: Conquest - the 4s
« Reply #12 on: October 01, 2011, 06:22:03 am »
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4 is perhaps my favourite cost to design for, so at least to a certain extent, this is the heart of the set. Anyway, here are the first few:

I hesitate to say something that might be construed as "your perspective is wrong", but I'm gonna interject a note on viewing costs in general.

In my mind, there are 2 categories of cards in Dominion: weak cards and strong cards. (Maybe there is also "junk", a third level below weak.)  Weak cards cost 2, 3, or 4; strong cards cost 5, 6, or 7.  There is almost no difference between 2/3/4, nor 5/6/7.  There is a canyon between the two categories--the grand canyon, filled with lava.

Costing a card at 5, 6, or 7 is mostly just a matter of "How early do we want people to be able to purchase this?" so that's easy.  Costing a card at 2, 3, or 4 is a function of how beneficial the card is when spammed, whether or not we want to permit it as a double opening, and if we want to allow purchase as part of a 5/2. 

Chapel and Lighthouse are really powerful weak cards but they cost $2 because there is no reason for them not to.  Then you've got stuff like Treasure Map which has to cost 4 because allowing a double-TM opening defeats the point no matter how you balanced the reward.  Then you've got say Lab which is a really powerful strong card, but it's okay at $5 because getting it early isn't a concern.  Meanwhile on most boards Forge isn't that amazing compared to other strong cards, but it has to be $7 because it can't be freely allowed into the game that fast.

I'm probably preaching to the choir here, since the pope has said all of this before.  The point of this long-winded preface is that I won't be looking at these as "the heart of the set", or meat-and-potatoes.  I'm going to be looking at these as just weak cards that for some reason can't be $3. (or $2)

Depository
Victory         4
Worth 1 VP for every 5 treasures in your deck (round down)

So 10 seconds ago I thought this was a fantastic idea, 5 seconds ago I thought it was actually a bit lame, and now I hate it.  This is an alarming subjective trend.

Here's the problem: This is very similar to Gardens/Vinevards, except that Gardens/Vineyards is fun.  Gardens/Vineyards has the impact it does because making a cool and fun Gardens/Vineyards deck is how you feed it.  Your buying engine Woodcutters and Workshops, your game-ending Estates and Great Halls, your token 3rd-pile Havens and Pawns, all that fun stuff counts.  These factors and their flexibility are what ultimately makes these alternate victory cards soooo cool.

But then here well, all there is to it is "maybe get +buys for coppers" and "be biased in favor of Big Money."  Yawn.  At the end of the day... Actions are fun, Treasures are lame.

Regent
Action         4
+$2
Name a card. Reveal cards from the top of your deck until you reveal the named card. Put that card back on top and discard the rest.

Donald X pointed out that this is strictly superior to Chancellor, and that really, really bothers some players.

Good news is, I'm not that guy.  Bad news is, as a designer, I share Donald's terror of that guy.  I suspect he knows where I sleep, and you too.  You can see it in his OCD eyes.  In fact I'm 99% sure that if you attempt to push this card, he will try to sneak into your house at night and delete it from your hard drive.

The Strictly Superior Suburban Slasher is not a joke, and should be taken seriously.

Medical Tent
Action         4
+2 Cards
Discard any number of cards
+1 action for every card discarded this way

Seems pretty good.  It's presumptive of me to say this without playtesting, but this is probably a good example of a well cost card.  It's powerful, but not nearly powerful enough to cost $5+.  However, since that power comes from it being a spammable engine enabler, we can't have it costing $3.

I always worry about cards that give lots of actions (beyond a basic +2 village), since the value of mass actions is so wildly variable.  But it's not a concern worthy of shooting down cards for.

Swing
Action         4
+4 Cards
Discard 2 Cards

First I thought this was too powerful, then too weak, and now I've just concluded that I'm too stupid to properly guess.

I think I like it though, for sure.  It's very dynamic since it has implications with a lot of cards.  It's definitely better than Smithy for combos.  It's like, this:Smithy::Smithy:Envoy.  And that's neat!  It burns through your deck faster but gives you less card advantage.  Definitely cost correctly at $4.

Looter
Action-Reaction      4
+1 Card
+1 Buy
+$1
You may discard a card. If you do, +1 Action
___________________________________________
Whenever you discard a card, you may set this aside from your hand. If you do, +1 card and return this to your hand at the beginning of your next turn.

I'm so confused about the name.  Looter should be an attack, right?  I mean, it's a bad guy who takes stuff.

I'll be honest, I don't understand anything about this card mechanically either.  So it's like a Market, but you have to discard to get the Action.  Why?  Oh, but it has a reaction on discard.  Why?  It gives you this self-perpetuating +1 Card.  Why?

Come to think of it, this card is absurdly powerful.  With discard procing cards in your deck, this is almost better than Alchemist.  So it's either a super engine that can't be stopped once it hits critical mass, or it's a mediocre and random $4 grab bag of stuff.  You've got some explaining to do before I bite on this one.

Expedition
Action         4
+1 Card
+1 Action
Gain a silver

Hmm, I think I like this.  It's narrow and varies a lot in utility (on a lot of boards it would never get touched), but elegant. 

Does it have to cost $4 though?  It's spammable, but how powerful is it really?  Buying this twice as an opening is not promising at all for your turn 3/4 buys...

Exhaust
Action-Attack      4
+1 Card
+1 Action
Every other player gains a copper

Truth be told, I don't think this is probably too powerful, at least on most boards. You guys probably think it is, and I have some nerfs ready when you're proven right.

Yeah, we need to talk.

So first off, cards that give people junk are *really* powerful.  A Copper is not nearly as bad as a Curse (or Estate), but it's still *really* bad!

Second, spammable attacks are both obnoxious and really powerful.  Comparable Spy attack strength to terminal attacks--it's not in the same ballpark, or even the same sport.  Makes sense, since palying 5 Spies is easy and playing 5 Witches is, thankfully, super hard.

Familiar is the exception that proves the rule.  The only way a strong, cantrip attack can exist in any sane way is with a high cost involving potions.  Getting Familiars requires two entire deck cycles, and that's just for one!  Your ability to actually get Familiars to spam as you'd like is super constrained by the economics of Potions.

And here you are proposing a cantrip junker you can get as an opening--any opening!  Sorry chief: Three minutes in the penalty box for this one.

Agriculture
Action         4
While agriculture is in play, victory cards gain the treasure type (in addition to their other type(s)) and can be played as treasures for $2

Okay, this is awesome.  I'm trying to think of a good reason why this sucks and shouldn't exist, and I really hope I fail.  Hmm, gimme a moment, this might take awhile.

Okay, I found something, but it's an easy fix.  This let's Thief/Pirate Ship trash enemy Victory cards!  Make it only work on yours and we are golden.

This is crazy good with Scout, Great Hall, Nobles, and Harem.  But that's all okay.  Mint and Mine really push it, but we can give it a pass.

I haven't really considered the power level yet.  This might work better as a non-terminal $5+ card?  Just thinking out loud, I have no idea.

Edit--As fun as type modification interactions are, we can remove all the fringe cases by just dropping it: "While Agriculture is in play, Victory cards in play produce +2 money; during the Buy phase, you may put Victory cards from your hand into play."

Moneybreeder
Action         4
Discard a silver. If you do, choose one: gain a duchy or gain a gold.

I feel like this is sort of an uninteresting alternate economic path.  It's just seems like a really boring way to use your Action and $2?  It's also a surprisingly poor opening, I'm almost certain.
« Last Edit: October 01, 2011, 07:55:04 am by Thinkaman »
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rinkworks

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Re: Conquest - the 4s
« Reply #13 on: October 01, 2011, 09:55:25 am »
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Excellent comments all around, Thinkaman.  Saying that up front, because I'm going to nitpick a couple things and don't want that to be the take-away message overall.

Quote
Regent
Action         4
+$2
Name a card. Reveal cards from the top of your deck until you reveal the named card. Put that card back on top and discard the rest.

Donald X pointed out that this is strictly superior to Chancellor, and that really, really bothers some players.

Good news is, I'm not that guy.  Bad news is, as a designer, I share Donald's terror of that guy.

Chancellor is $3.  Donald's proposed type-digger was $3.  He wasn't willing to go to $4 or tweak the card, so that's why it had to get shelved for being strictly superior to Chancellor.  But as WW's card is $4, it's fine, just like the $4 Village variants.

Quote
Quote
Medical Tent
Action         4
+2 Cards
Discard any number of cards
+1 action for every card discarded this way

Seems pretty good.  It's presumptive of me to say this without playtesting, but this is probably a good example of a well cost card.  It's powerful, but not nearly powerful enough to cost $5+.  However, since that power comes from it being a spammable engine enabler, we can't have it costing $3.

I always worry about cards that give lots of actions (beyond a basic +2 village), since the value of mass actions is so wildly variable.  But it's not a concern worthy of shooting down cards for.

I've playtested this now, and although I haven't done it enough to say for sure, I think there's maybe a 50-50 chance I'll wind up thinking it needs to go to $3.  The problem is that the extra card on Village is super valuable (which is why Shanty Town, even with its whiff protection, is usually inferior), and there's no way to get that out of Medical Tent.  So it's turned out to be not great as an engine card.  Every time I've tried to build an engine on one, it's failed.

That said, it's an outstanding supplement to an engine due to its versatility and the ability to use it as a cantrip-plus-cycle if you have no other use for it.

On your comment of "lots of actions," I did indeed find myself using it a couple times for +3 Actions, but mainly you don't want to do this unless you had an unusually bad shuffle that lumped a lot of terminals together.  The reason is that it just takes so much discarding to get to +3 or more actions that, by that point, you probably don't HAVE that many actions to play.  And if you do, you've probably earned the right to use them, because you've almost certainly made sacrifices to get them, like discarding good treasure.

Although, in theory, you can play this card, discard 3, get +3 Actions, and have 3 cards left in your hand -- presumably the 3 terminals you want to play -- often I found myself playing this after having already played something (like Lighthouse, perhaps) that shrunk my hand.  That would then mean there was no way to get a useful +3 Actions out of Medical Tent.  Either I discard only two, leaving myself with three terminals (one dead), or I discard three, leaving myself with only two of my terminals in hand to use them on.

So I really see this as a supplemental card -- it greases the wheels of an otherwise self-sufficient engine very nicely -- but a lot don't really help that much and can't power most engines on their own.  There are situations where it shines -- it's great for Fairgrounds in a board with lots of terminals -- but you're not going to forego the vanilla Village pile entirely for it.

Really fun card, though, by the way.
« Last Edit: October 01, 2011, 10:24:22 am by rinkworks »
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Conquest - the 4s
« Reply #14 on: October 01, 2011, 10:01:20 am »
0

4 is perhaps my favourite cost to design for, so at least to a certain extent, this is the heart of the set. Anyway, here are the first few:

I hesitate to say something that might be construed as "your perspective is wrong", but I'm gonna interject a note on viewing costs in general.

In my mind, there are 2 categories of cards in Dominion: weak cards and strong cards. (Maybe there is also "junk", a third level below weak.)  Weak cards cost 2, 3, or 4; strong cards cost 5, 6, or 7.  There is almost no difference between 2/3/4, nor 5/6/7.  There is a canyon between the two categories--the grand canyon, filled with lava.

Costing a card at 5, 6, or 7 is mostly just a matter of "How early do we want people to be able to purchase this?" so that's easy.  Costing a card at 2, 3, or 4 is a function of how beneficial the card is when spammed, whether or not we want to permit it as a double opening, and if we want to allow purchase as part of a 5/2. 

Chapel and Lighthouse are really powerful weak cards but they cost $2 because there is no reason for them not to.  Then you've got stuff like Treasure Map which has to cost 4 because allowing a double-TM opening defeats the point no matter how you balanced the reward.  Then you've got say Lab which is a really powerful strong card, but it's okay at $5 because getting it early isn't a concern.  Meanwhile on most boards Forge isn't that amazing compared to other strong cards, but it has to be $7 because it can't be freely allowed into the game that fast.

I'm probably preaching to the choir here, since the pope has said all of this before.  The point of this long-winded preface is that I won't be looking at these as "the heart of the set", or meat-and-potatoes.  I'm going to be looking at these as just weak cards that for some reason can't be $3. (or $2)
You're right of course (except in your over-generalized distinction about which cards are strong and which are weak, which is only like 75% true). What I mean is, these are the heart of the set in terms of these are the cards that in designing, got me really excited about the set, that I think are really cool and neat while not be obviously good, the little quirky nice cards which I really like, like I like say, monument and gardens.

Quote
Depository
Victory         4
Worth 1 VP for every 5 treasures in your deck (round down)

So 10 seconds ago I thought this was a fantastic idea, 5 seconds ago I thought it was actually a bit lame, and now I hate it.  This is an alarming subjective trend.

Here's the problem: This is very similar to Gardens/Vinevards, except that Gardens/Vineyards is fun.  Gardens/Vineyards has the impact it does because making a cool and fun Gardens/Vineyards deck is how you feed it.  Your buying engine Woodcutters and Workshops, your game-ending Estates and Great Halls, your token 3rd-pile Havens and Pawns, all that fun stuff counts.  These factors and their flexibility are what ultimately makes these alternate victory cards soooo cool.

But then here well, all there is to it is "maybe get +buys for coppers" and "be biased in favor of Big Money."  Yawn.  At the end of the day... Actions are fun, Treasures are lame.
But I LIKE treasures! One of the things I don't like about now is that there are so many games where very action-heavy strategies are really good. This gives slight help to the money, and it's only really slight. Honestly, you have to do a LOT of work even in BM to make this better than a 4-cost duchy.

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Regent
Action         4
+$2
Name a card. Reveal cards from the top of your deck until you reveal the named card. Put that card back on top and discard the rest.

Donald X pointed out that this is strictly superior to Chancellor, and that really, really bothers some players.

Good news is, I'm not that guy.  Bad news is, as a designer, I share Donald's terror of that guy.  I suspect he knows where I sleep, and you too.  You can see it in his OCD eyes.  In fact I'm 99% sure that if you attempt to push this card, he will try to sneak into your house at night and delete it from your hard drive.

The Strictly Superior Suburban Slasher is not a joke, and should be taken seriously.
It's not strictly better because it costs 4 instead of 3. This is not a problem at all.

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Medical Tent
Action         4
+2 Cards
Discard any number of cards
+1 action for every card discarded this way

Seems pretty good.  It's presumptive of me to say this without playtesting, but this is probably a good example of a well cost card.  It's powerful, but not nearly powerful enough to cost $5+.  However, since that power comes from it being a spammable engine enabler, we can't have it costing $3.

I always worry about cards that give lots of actions (beyond a basic +2 village), since the value of mass actions is so wildly variable.  But it's not a concern worthy of shooting down cards for.
Glad you like it, and your concerns are valid. This helps me to know what I need to playtest it with to see if it's broken - decks which could use a zillion actions, i.e. make sure this can't be the centerpiece of a very nasty draw engine (actually I'm sure it can with like Library, but I'm not SO worried about that; maybe I should be).

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Swing
Action         4
+4 Cards
Discard 2 Cards

First I thought this was too powerful, then too weak, and now I've just concluded that I'm too stupid to properly guess.

I think I like it though, for sure.  It's very dynamic since it has implications with a lot of cards.  It's definitely better than Smithy for combos.  It's like, this:Smithy::Smithy:Envoy.  And that's neat!  It burns through your deck faster but gives you less card advantage.  Definitely cost correctly at $4.
Yeah, 5 is too much. But I'm a little worried it's a little too good for 4, 'cause its lesser card advantage amounts to you playing non-cursing witch and then a non-cursing young witch after... well, that warehouse effect can be pretty strong, especially with 8 cards in your hand to choose the 2 least important from.
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Looter
Action-Reaction      4
+1 Card
+1 Buy
+$1
You may discard a card. If you do, +1 Action
___________________________________________
Whenever you discard a card, you may set this aside from your hand. If you do, +1 card and return this to your hand at the beginning of your next turn.

I'm so confused about the name.  Looter should be an attack, right?  I mean, it's a bad guy who takes stuff.

I'll be honest, I don't understand anything about this card mechanically either.  So it's like a Market, but you have to discard to get the Action.  Why?  Oh, but it has a reaction on discard.  Why?  It gives you this self-perpetuating +1 Card.  Why?

Come to think of it, this card is absurdly powerful.  With discard procing cards in your deck, this is almost better than Alchemist.  So it's either a super engine that can't be stopped once it hits critical mass, or it's a mediocre and random $4 grab bag of stuff.  You've got some explaining to do before I bite on this one.
I don't have much explanation for you. I wanted another reaction-to-discard, and this is what I came up with. In all likelihood, you're right about it's strength, and I need to scrap it. I still want another reaction-to-discard, so I'll probably end up designing something from scratch in its place. I don't know what word you mean for 'procing' though, and I don't really understand your alchemist comparison, with the main point being that to get the benefit, you have to set this aside from your hand. Actually, that makes the whole point of the reaction rather useless on your own turn, which is not really what I want. So even more reason to be back to the drawing board.

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Expedition
Action         4
+1 Card
+1 Action
Gain a silver

Hmm, I think I like this.  It's narrow and varies a lot in utility (on a lot of boards it would never get touched), but elegant. 

Does it have to cost $4 though?  It's spammable, but how powerful is it really?  Buying this twice as an opening is not promising at all for your turn 3/4 buys...
Yes, it has to cost 4. I mean, it's honestly going to usually be better than bureaucrat, I think, and that costs 4. And while it would kill your turns 3/4 to open double this... by your third reshuffle, you have tremendous staying power and have caught up all that tempo. Would it be broken powerful? Not usually, I guess, but it just doesn't feel like a 3.

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Exhaust
Action-Attack      4
+1 Card
+1 Action
Every other player gains a copper

Truth be told, I don't think this is probably too powerful, at least on most boards. You guys probably think it is, and I have some nerfs ready when you're proven right.

Yeah, we need to talk.

So first off, cards that give people junk are *really* powerful.  A Copper is not nearly as bad as a Curse (or Estate), but it's still *really* bad!

Second, spammable attacks are both obnoxious and really powerful.  Comparable Spy attack strength to terminal attacks--it's not in the same ballpark, or even the same sport.  Makes sense, since palying 5 Spies is easy and playing 5 Witches is, thankfully, super hard.

Familiar is the exception that proves the rule.  The only way a strong, cantrip attack can exist in any sane way is with a high cost involving potions.  Getting Familiars requires two entire deck cycles, and that's just for one!  Your ability to actually get Familiars to spam as you'd like is super constrained by the economics of Potions.

And here you are proposing a cantrip junker you can get as an opening--any opening!  Sorry chief: Three minutes in the penalty box for this one.
I think you're drastically underrating copper. Copper is often a good card to have, actually. Okay, almost never great, but at the same time, this isn't helping the guy playing it. Maybe this is a little too strong, but I doubt by much. Copper is such less cloggy than estates. Of course, I might be the biggest connoisseur for copper there is - just look at my council room page, I have effect with of 5.33! At any rate, I find it a little harder to believe that this is stronger than sea hag. So you haven't convinced me yet.

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Agriculture
Action         4
While agriculture is in play, victory cards gain the treasure type (in addition to their other type(s)) and can be played as treasures for $2

Okay, this is awesome.  I'm trying to think of a good reason why this sucks and shouldn't exist, and I really hope I fail.  Hmm, gimme a moment, this might take awhile.

Okay, I found something, but it's an easy fix.  This let's Thief/Pirate Ship trash enemy Victory cards!  Make it only work on yours and we are golden.

This is crazy good with Scout, Great Hall, Nobles, and Harem.  But that's all okay.  Mint and Mine really push it, but we can give it a pass.

I haven't really considered the power level yet.  This might work better as a non-terminal $5+ card?  Just thinking out loud, I have no idea.

Edit--As fun as type modification interactions are, we can remove all the fringe cases by just dropping it: "While Agriculture is in play, Victory cards in play produce +2 money; during the Buy phase, you may put Victory cards from your hand into play."
But that loses all the fun, while also letting you play dual-type victories for both benefits, which isn't something I want you to be able to do. I love the mine/mint interactions, and I don't think they're THAT strong, really. It's good with scout, which I love because scout is dreadful, but as is, it's not really great with great hall or nobles and no benefit at all for harem. And to actually play this with any of the other actions, you need some kind of village. So mostly it just takes an action and makes your pure-greens silver, and I guess your mixed ones too if you want.

[/quote]
Moneybreeder
Action         4
Discard a silver. If you do, choose one: gain a duchy or gain a gold.

I feel like this is sort of an uninteresting alternate economic path.  It's just seems like a really boring way to use your Action and $2?  It's also a surprisingly poor opening, I'm almost certain.
[/quote]
I'm pretty sure it's a terrible opening. But okay, 2 and an action for a gold, is that really that bad a deal? I mean, it's not great, but I think it's possible.

rinkworks

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Re: Conquest - the 4s
« Reply #15 on: October 01, 2011, 10:16:52 am »
0

Exhaust
Action-Attack      4
+1 Card
+1 Action
Every other player gains a copper

Truth be told, I don't think this is probably too powerful, at least on most boards. You guys probably think it is, and I have some nerfs ready when you're proven right.

Definitely too strong, as others have already said.  It might even be a $6 card.

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Agriculture
Action         4
While agriculture is in play, victory cards gain the treasure type (in addition to their other type(s)) and can be played as treasures for $2

An interesting little card, I think, to make use out of your victories. I also had the theought of making all cards into coppers. Originally I actually said that Victory cards became silvers, but this would be totally broken with anything that let you gain a silver. Note that this still does have a cool mine-gold-province-this interaction, though obviously that's too convoluted to really come up with any kind of normal frequency. Great for bank, too though.

Like Silversmith, I suspect this is also dramatically overpowered.  During the greening stage of the game, when basically all other strategies dwindle, this one is just getting rolling.  What incentive is there to do anything in the game besides buying up these and Estates?  Once you choke your deck with enough Estates and a smattering of these, you'll be buying Duchies soon enough, and game over.

The game becomes an all-out race, rather than a calculated one.  Playing Gardens is pretty formulaic, but there are still some judgments to be made, such as when to switch over from Workshops to Gardens.  There's a judgment here, too, like finding the right number of Agricultures to buy, although I suspect there's an easy, unchanging answer to that.

Compare with Coppersmith:  Same price but half the bonus.  More significantly, the card it boosts the value of is a card you don't otherwise even want in your deck and which must necessarily become less concentrated in your deck for you to win at all.  In other words, getting value out of Coppersmith involves weakening Coppersmith for future plays.

If you made the bonus +$1 per Victory card, I think we'd have something worth testing.  The reduced bonus makes it harder to use as a self-sufficient strategy (can't afford Duchies with them in a 5-card hand) but is still absurdly powerful in a drawing engine (as Coppersmith is).  And that, in turn, would give the card the gameplay tension that the +$2 version is missing.  Since the +$1 version needs support, then the act of greening -- to boost the power of your Agricultures -- would weaken the power of the supporting engine, be they Labs or Village/Torturer or whatever.

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Moneybreeder
Action         4
Discard a silver. If you do, choose one: gain a duchy or gain a gold.


Really hard to anticipate how this one will play.  But I do like the combo possibilities with some of the other cards in your set that care about Silver. 
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goober

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Re: Conquest - the 4s
« Reply #16 on: October 01, 2011, 02:52:02 pm »
0

I think the issue with exhaust is not that it is too powerful, but that it will make for an unintersting game on many boards.  As a garbage-giver, it will be popular.  As a cantrip, it is extremely spammable.  And having multiples played against you leaves you with a deck FULL of copper, because unlike cursers, exhaust has an almost in-exhaustable source of garbage.  Many boards don't have a good use for lots of copper, and since both or all players will often want this card, it will often lead to long games where nobody can get enough buying power to buy many power cards, and will have no chance to put together any sort of engine.  This will be exacerbated in multiplayer.  This card has the potental to be game-warping, and in a way I think most players won't find fun.  A copper-giver just can't be a cheap cantrip.
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Conquest - the 4s
« Reply #17 on: October 01, 2011, 03:33:21 pm »
0

The multiplayer point is enough to change my mind I think. So here's some various nerfs:
"Every player (including you) gains a copper" - this hurts you as much as it does them, but presumably too weak, as you're also using tempo on it.
"...gains a copper in hand" -well, this probably makes it too weak most of the time, still probably strong with militia. This may well be a bonus for them without it then.
"Every other player gains a copper. Gain a copper in hand." Well, I'm not sure if this is actually weaker overall, but it probably makes the big problems lessened.
"Every other player discards a card or gains a copper."
Just strictly a little worse than the original card, though still possibly bad for multiplayer. Hmmm, maybe you just can't do this, but... well, I'm still not sure the original one is broken. I am worried about the multiplayer aspect, but... hmm, well, I still wanna playtest the original I guess.

rinkworks

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Re: Conquest - the 4s
« Reply #18 on: October 01, 2011, 03:51:35 pm »
0

The multiplayer point is enough to change my mind I think. So here's some various nerfs:
"Every player (including you) gains a copper" - this hurts you as much as it does them, but presumably too weak, as you're also using tempo on it.

Also, how does it even help you?  It's not just too weak, it's actually detrimental to your own game, since everyone is affected equally, but you're the sucker that blew the opportunity cost on it.

The other nerf ideas are better, but none really jump out at me as the solution.  But, question:  Why does it have to be a cantrip?  You seem to have a lot of cantrips, many of them interesting.  But why this one?  Why not +$2 or +2 Cards or something instead?  If the card can't be spammed, I think it would solve both the power problem and the "uninteresting gameplay" problem.
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Conquest - the 4s
« Reply #19 on: October 01, 2011, 04:11:51 pm »
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Making it a terminal silver is, you know, the obvious answer. The set probably needs some more terminal silvers. I feel extremely dumb for not thinking of that.

Thinkaman

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Re: Conquest - the 4s
« Reply #20 on: October 01, 2011, 09:58:30 pm »
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But I LIKE treasures! One of the things I don't like about now is that there are so many games where very action-heavy strategies are really good. This gives slight help to the money, and it's only really slight. Honestly, you have to do a LOT of work even in BM to make this better than a 4-cost duchy.

But Treasures are static, regardless of how much they can be enjoyed; there is only really one Big Money, with very minor deviations. (Compared to action decks, which there are several archtypes with several major variations.) All this card does is make BM stronger--this is bad not because Treasures or BM is bad/dumb/evil or any nonsense like that, but because it doesn't actually add much of anything to the design space.

It's not strictly better because it costs 4 instead of 3. This is not a problem at all.

Wow, major brain fart.  This is why I get for attempting logical analysis at 5am.  Apologies!

Yeah, 5 is too much. But I'm a little worried it's a little too good for 4, 'cause its lesser card advantage amounts to you playing non-cursing witch and then a non-cursing young witch after... well, that warehouse effect can be pretty strong, especially with 8 cards in your hand to choose the 2 least important from.

Well it's weak card advantage and a gimped Warehouse in one.  The catch is that Warehouse is only a good card because of its non-terminality--"shifting" on a terminal is not very desirable.  I think you will be in the ballpark on this one.

I don't have much explanation for you. I wanted another reaction-to-discard, and this is what I came up with.

Why?

Consider me still super skeptical that this is a beneficial mechanic we want in the game--I am very suspicious that this is a case of novelty for the sake of novelty.

Yes, it has to cost 4. I mean, it's honestly going to usually be better than bureaucrat, I think, and that costs 4. And while it would kill your turns 3/4 to open double this... by your third reshuffle, you have tremendous staying power and have caught up all that tempo. Would it be broken powerful? Not usually, I guess, but it just doesn't feel like a 3.

You have only "caught up" if the Silver/Silver start didn't buy any $5s or $6s on the second cycle. (They have almost a half chance of getting a $6!) In many cases, the Silver/Silver opening starts the 4th cycle at the advantage.

And that's just comparing straight BMU.  +Silver is actually not good for an engine deck, slowing them down considerably. (theory had that good article on this, covering it in detail) And no matter how you slice it Silver is just plain undesirable in Colony games.

You compare it to Bureaucrat, but that's an attack!  And attacks are really good!  Bureaucrat isn't a very potent attack, but it's still non-trivial and the attack half of the card is much, much more significant than the piddly "gain a silver for your next turn" half.

I think you're drastically underrating copper. Copper is often a good card to have, actually. Okay, almost never great, but at the same time, this isn't helping the guy playing it. Maybe this is a little too strong, but I doubt by much. Copper is such less cloggy than estates. Of course, I might be the biggest connoisseur for copper there is - just look at my council room page, I have effect with of 5.33! At any rate, I find it a little harder to believe that this is stronger than sea hag. So you haven't convinced me yet.

I mean, unless it's a Gardens/Duke game or there's Counting House running amok, Copper is *always* a step away from your goal.

You say "Oh, well this doesn't help you, so it's not that good." This would be completely correct, if it were a terminal.  But as a cantrip, all the rules change.  If you pay an Action and get nothing, that's a setback.  If you pay nothing and get nothing, who cares?  You can do it as much as you want with no cost.

BRB playing 5 Familiars.

Sea Hag is the most powerful $4, but there's several reasons why it is okay at a "cheap" price.  First, it's terminal.  Second, it gives no advantage. (Which again, matters when it costs you your sole Action.) Third, it's damage does *not* scale linearly.  If you buy a bunch of Sea Hags and somehow *do* manage to play all of them at once, sure they get 3 Curses but only 1 card lost from their next hand.

Despite all of these checks, some people would *still* have a reasonable argument against Sea Hag as a $4 card. (I don't know how much of it I'd agree with, but the argument could be made.)  Then you've got this card, which has zero of those checks on Sea Hag.

Like seriously, for a fair perspective forget about Sea Hag--comparing non-terminals to terminals is almost always pointless.  Compare it to Spy, and you can really see how it's a magnitude beyond appropriate.  This just not something the game can allow in a spammable format.

Definitely too strong, as others have already said.  It might even be a $6 card.

Yeah, I'd buy this all day at $5 on a lot of boards.  Any Colony game with this (and no Gardens or such) would be so obnoxious...

But that loses all the fun, while also letting you play dual-type victories for both benefits, which isn't something I want you to be able to do. I love the mine/mint interactions, and I don't think they're THAT strong, really. It's good with scout, which I love because scout is dreadful, but as is, it's not really great with great hall or nobles and no benefit at all for harem. And to actually play this with any of the other actions, you need some kind of village. So mostly it just takes an action and makes your pure-greens silver, and I guess your mixed ones too if you want.

No, that loses the token novelty.  Guys like us who spend free type typing paragraphs about hypothetical Dominion cards on message boards, sure--we Johnnies love us some novelty.  But that doesn't automatically make something good.

The Mine case is quite strong yeah.  The Mint case is almost definitely too strong, it's an absurdly powerful combo that is only held in check by the Village requirement.  It even trashes your Estates and Coppers to make the combo easy!

I think hybrid Victory cards should definitely count, simply on grounds that it's sort of confusing and maybe counter-intuitive otherwise.

I like the Scout interaction too, but it's easy to get distracted and compromise broader quality for isolated cases--the job of this card should be to be a good card, not redeem Scout or Transmute.  Obscure card type interactions combos that are actually interesting make up <20% of boards.

In addition to these Mint cases we should be wanting to avoid and the Scout ones we'd like to have, we have a bunch of pseudo-trivial interactions like Farming Village and (Ad)Venture.  These interactions aren't really cool, interesting, bad, desirable, or undesirable in any way outside of token novelty.  All they really are is a minor pain to remember--oh right, when I play these cards, I have to go check if I played an Agriculture yet or not so I can resolve it properly.  It's just a forgettable annoyance.

And of course we've got the Thief/Pirate Ship specter that we *have* to kill, taking with it funky stuff like Tribute and Rabble.

At the end of the day, dynamic type-changing simply turns out to be more bad than good.  Maybe next time, Scout.

I'm pretty sure it's a terrible opening. But okay, 2 and an action for a gold, is that really that bad a deal? I mean, it's not great, but I think it's possible.

Oh don't get me wrong, I'm confident it's a bad opening and a viable card. (Like Mint! Ha!) I just suspect it might be boring and not add much to the game?  I'd want to playtest it not for power concerns, but to see how it interacts with various boards and impacts/creates strategies.
« Last Edit: October 01, 2011, 10:01:44 pm by Thinkaman »
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goober

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Re: Conquest - the 4s
« Reply #21 on: October 01, 2011, 10:41:19 pm »
0

While I don't think exhaust is workable as a cheap cantrip, I really like the idea of a copper-giver.  Giving coppers  is strategically interesting (I think it solves the "alternative curse" card problem) and has the potential to have interesting interactions with cards like coppersmith, counting house, moneylender, venture, and the like.  The way I see it, giving copper is a good deal less powerful than giving curses, but still quite powerful on many boards.  The core issue is that it has the potential problem of not being limited to 10 total cards to dole out.  So I think a copper giver has to have another check put on it to limit the number of times it can be played.  Seems like making it a terminal is almost a necessity.  It could give you more benefit than a curser of similar cost though, so at the $4 level, maybe a simple +$2 or +2 cards, or if those seems too good, maybe +$1, +buy.
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Conquest - the 4s
« Reply #22 on: October 01, 2011, 11:53:27 pm »
0

(This is in response to Thinkaman. Apologies for not quoting him, but it's getting loooooong).
There are LOTS of deviations from big money. Man, I play big money variant in like 3/4 of my games, and I think it's really interesting and a lot of fun. And I also enjoy my action chains (I'm known for them in my IRL play group) and doing this stuff, but I actually do generally go with money strats. Which is why I've said stuff like "Walled village is one of the weakest 4s printed"
Looter: as I said, I don't have a good explanation. You're fully justified in being unconvinced. I don't have much defense here.
Okay, exhaust. I'll give you the cantrip version of this for 5 all day long. In fact, please do take this at 5. I will crush you from 6 in the morning til 3 in the morning. The other three hours you'll get me. It wouldn't be the worst 5 printed maybe, but it's got to be worse than upgrade, which isn't the strongest 5, and pretty significantly so. But some other arguments have convinced me to go with it as a terminal silver.
Agriculture: The way you want it, it makes great hall as strong as great market, and nobles and harem and island and all that stuff (I'm making more here) SO broken strong. Worse than anything I have. The mint thing can't be broken. I need 3 cards from 3 expansions (okay, one just needs to be 'a village'), 4 cards in my hand (one's a cantrip, so 4 cards out of 6 or I need a draw engine) and even then it's not the fastest or strongest thing ever and can be disrupted. Yeah, that's not broken. I mean it's very good, but come on. Mine - need a village and some other, albeit common stuff in hand, and again, it produces basically the expand effect, which isn't all THAT powerful; instead of a 7 cost, you need a combination of cheaper cards. Thief and pirate ship: well, this can be annoying, but you know, it's not SO broken. Doubt it's worse than possession with ambassador or masquerade. Definitely the biggest issue though.

WanderingWinder

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Re: Conquest - the 4s
« Reply #23 on: October 02, 2011, 12:13:15 am »
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Ore
Treasure      4
Worth $1
Name a card type which hasn't been named this turn. Cards of the named type cost $1 less while this is in play.

Love the card. Compare with bridge and quarry. But it's pretty useless without +buy, so it might be better as a non-terminal, non-serial action? Note that you can name any type, so you could get multi-type cards down even more. Or maybe I can actually give this a buy? Can I? Is that not too strong? Issue is, first one's going to be just better than silver too much there I think.

Soldiers' Village
Action         4
Discard 1 card
+2 Cards
+2 Actions

Quite possibly a bit too strong, as if you've got any bad cards of the other four, this is going to be really strong, like a level 2 city. On the other hand, it really might be quite fine.

Mercury
Treasure-Attack      4
Worth $2
Every other player with 5 or more cards in hand draws a card then discards 2 cards.

Could also switch the order if this is too weak, but I have a feeling that would be too strong. I actually think this is pretty likely good where it is.

goober

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Re: Conquest - the 4s
« Reply #24 on: October 02, 2011, 01:22:36 am »
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Ore:

I agree that without the +buy it's very weak as it is almost exactly equivalent to silver in that case (actually slightly worse), and this would make it a dead card on maybe too many boards.  So I think it needs to come with it's own +buy.  I also think a "just slightly better than silver" treasure shouldn't cost 4, as an interesting part of strategy is whether to buy silver with $4, and this is almost strictly better than silver with a +buy.  So maybe you could just give it the +buy and make it cost 5.  Compared to bridge, it isn't a terminal action, can't be chained together to reduce a given card's cost by more than 1 (dual-type cards aside), and costs $1 more.  This may be too similar to bridge for some people's tastes.

Soldier's Village:

Seems a bit strong, as in many setups you often have a card you can't use in your starting hand, making this better than lab even at $4 instead of $5.  Even if the worst card you have is copper (pretty rare case when this isn't true, and if it is your deck may be so tight you can draw it all by end of turn anyway) it is essentially +2 actions, +2 cards, -$1, so it is a lab plus paying a dollar for +action.  As many others have said, mixing +cards with +actions leads to a sum greater than the parts, so +2 of each is very strong.  Imagine this coupled with any good drawer, particularly on a board with minimal trashing.  I wouldn't say broken at $4, but seems a bit too strong.  Not sure what changes could be made here.

Mercury:

Um...Militia?  This card is just about strictly worse, and MUCH worse.  They get to pick 4 cards out of 6 instead of 3 out of 5?  And if they have more than 5 they don't even discard down to 4?  Cool name though.

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Elyv

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Re: Conquest - the 4s
« Reply #25 on: October 02, 2011, 04:22:28 am »
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Mercury:

Um...Militia?  This card is just about strictly worse, and MUCH worse.  They get to pick 4 cards out of 6 instead of 3 out of 5?  And if they have more than 5 they don't even discard down to 4?  Cool name though.
It's a treasure.

My main fear with mercury is some sort of engine deck laying down 3+ of these during the buy phase and locking everyone else out of the game.
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rinkworks

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Re: Conquest - the 4s
« Reply #26 on: October 02, 2011, 09:18:54 am »
+1

Ore
Treasure      4
Worth $1
Name a card type which hasn't been named this turn. Cards of the named type cost $1 less while this is in play.

Love the card. Compare with bridge and quarry. But it's pretty useless without +buy, so it might be better as a non-terminal, non-serial action? Note that you can name any type, so you could get multi-type cards down even more. Or maybe I can actually give this a buy? Can I? Is that not too strong? Issue is, first one's going to be just better than silver too much there I think.

Tough question here.  Let's say Ore offers +Buy and compare with Bridge:

(1) Bridge consumes an action, making it harder to spam.  Ore can be played in multiples much more easily.
(2) Bridge operates on all types; Ore on only one type per play.
(3) Bridge stacks, whereas Ore cannot stack (except with multi-type cards, but I think we can mostly regard that as insignificant for balancing/pricing considerations).

The first two points might seem to counterbalance each other, but I don't think so.  Because how many times do you want to buy two cards of different types?  Obviously it happens.  But lots of times you only wind up using one of your Buys, and when you do buy more than one card, lots of times they're the same time (two Minions, for example; or a Province and a Duchy in the endgame).  The ability to buy different types at a discount doesn't seem like enough compensation for the lost action.  So Ore wins so far.

But now we come to point (3), which is that Bridge can be so game-dominatingly powerful when stacked.  That's far and away anything Ore can do under ANY circumstances.  Ore can be spammed more easily, yes, but when it is, the benefits only accumulate to a point.

So I think that, yes, you can add that +Buy to Ore and be quite balanced at $4.  I think the "average" use of the card will be better than the "average" use of Bridge, but on the other hand Ore has a much weaker upside.

Quote

Soldiers' Village
Action         4
Discard 1 card
+2 Cards
+2 Actions

Quite possibly a bit too strong, as if you've got any bad cards of the other four, this is going to be really strong, like a level 2 city. On the other hand, it really might be quite fine.

It's tough to say, since that Level 2 City effect doesn't stack.  Roughly speaking, you can only get that Level 2 City effect once per green card in your initial hand.  The effect of the card is not a million miles removed from ChaosRed's Village card, which struck me as seeming quite balanced.  His lets you replace a green card you might have drawn; yours requires the bad card to be in your initial hand but allows it to be something besides a green card, like a Curse or Copper.  Ultimately it's probably a wash.  Thus, my suspicion is that it's probably balanced.  I do like it.

Quote
Mercury
Treasure-Attack      4
Worth $2
Every other player with 5 or more cards in hand draws a card then discards 2 cards.

Could also switch the order if this is too weak, but I have a feeling that would be too strong. I actually think this is pretty likely good where it is.

To respond to goober's comments above, Mercury is a Treasure and therefore doesn't consume an action.  Thus, the attack *should* be weaker than Militia's.

To respond to Elyv, the attack doesn't stack, so multiple plays can't hurt anybody worse than just one.

Here's my feeling on the attack:  "Every player with more than 5 cards discards 1 card" is a frightfully weak attack, and this is even weaker.  Think about Vault's "every other player" effect.  That's there because sometimes other players want to do this.  Mercury's attack is basically the same thing, only weaker still, because the players get to draw first.  Of course, Vault's effect is optional, and that's a really big deal.  Still.

But, WW, I've reconsidered since I emailed you about this card.  Yes, the attack is weak, but then again it ought to be.  It's effectively a $4 non-terminal.  The attack really shouldn't be any stronger than Spy's, which draws a card instead of offering +$2.  So I think my initial impulse here, that the attack is too weak, was wrong.

However, there is this.  Not that this is a principle you have to adopt for your own cards.  But I think on a board with Royal Seal and Stash, this is going to look like a bargain at $4.  If it were me, I'd keep this card as written, but price it at $5 just based on Donald's remarks and experience here.

Really enjoying this thread, WW.  Considering your cards are great thinking exercises.
« Last Edit: October 02, 2011, 09:32:00 am by rinkworks »
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goober

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Re: Conquest - the 4s
« Reply #27 on: October 02, 2011, 12:51:35 pm »
0

I missed that Mercury was a treasure rather than an action; my apologies.  I could claim that a treasure-attack is so exotic that I hadn't considered it, but really I just read your post too fast.  Seems like as a treasure it's probably balanced, but presents the new problem of being just not very interesting.  On most boards the attack is just about a wash, and apart from that Mercury is just a "slightly better than silver" priced at 4, which others have pointed out may be a problem.  Seems not really bad, just not really interesting either.  I would like to see a similar card with a stronger attack, but a less money produced than the standard treasure at it's price point. 
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Conquest - the 4s
« Reply #28 on: October 02, 2011, 11:12:41 pm »
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Salt
Reaction-Attack      4
Whenever a victory card is bought, you may discard this from your hand. If you do, every other player gains a curse.

Okay, I'm not going to lie. I wanted the novelty of a reaction attack. But I actually do like this design of card. It's much better obviously with dual-type victories. Once again, you want to note that you can react to yourself. But do you really want to buy that duchy to give a curse? Probably not so often actually. Yes, you gain VP, but you're actually losing tempo here - they have the curse, but you've wasted two buys (one on this, another on the duchy) and have a green card to offset their curse. And late game, curses are not so strong.


Straits
Action-Victory      4
+1 Buy
+$1
__________________________________
Worth 2 VP

Probably quite boring and a touch weak. I originally had this as a card and a buy, but that's probably even weaker. Here it's a worse woodcutter that gives you 2 VP. But this is, honestly, one of the top cards I'm considering replacing.

Logistician
Action         4
+1 Card
+1 Action
Reveal cards from the top of your deck until you reveal a copper. Put the copper in your hand discard the rest.

A lab that guarantees you to have one of the draws be copper. Or if you have no other copper in your deck, a cantrip chancellor. Originally I let you replace the revealed cards, but then if you don't have much or any copper, you might easily get to the situation where you're stacking your entire deck, and that's not something you really want mechanics-wise, mostly for practical reasons, but also somewhat for power reasons.

Titandrake

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Re: Conquest - the 4s
« Reply #29 on: October 02, 2011, 11:28:25 pm »
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I really don't know what to make of Salt. I think my biggest gripe with it is that if no one buys a victory card, it's completely useless. It's not like that doesn't happen with other cards too (ex Lookout in a trimmed deck, Sea Hag with no curses), but Salt seems especially bad in comparison. It seems very much like a late game card with an early game cost (so it's basically a trade route :P)

Straits is yeah, not especially interesting, but I don't think it's unbalanced.

I do like Logistician, but it might be a tad strong. I don't have much experience with Tournament-chains in the early/mid game, but that + deck cycling might make it worthwhile. Still, power level seems safe.
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Conquest - the 4s
« Reply #30 on: October 03, 2011, 12:00:44 am »
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I really don't know what to make of Salt. I think my biggest gripe with it is that if no one buys a victory card, it's completely useless. It's not like that doesn't happen with other cards too (ex Lookout in a trimmed deck, Sea Hag with no curses), but Salt seems especially bad in comparison. It seems very much like a late game card with an early game cost (so it's basically a trade route :P)
How often do you play games where nobody buys any victory cards? And how often do YOU not have the ability to buy a victory card - this is the way I assume it's going to get activated most often. It may be a bit weak, but it *is* a non-terminal curse-giver for 4.

rinkworks

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Re: Conquest - the 4s
« Reply #31 on: October 03, 2011, 09:35:41 am »
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All three of those seem balanced to me.  Logistician is more or less Peddler + cycling, which feels strong for $4 until one realizes that the cycling effect will grow as the game goes on and the Coppers spread out in your deck.  That's exactly what you don't want -- to be cycling in those greens faster in the end game.  So I think the power level is fine.

Straits is balanced and kind of boring, yeah.  It seems like it would be really fun to have as a extra card in the kingdom, but I'd be disappointed to see it take away a slot that a more interesting card could have filled.

Salt, for example, is that interesting card.  I agree with all your thoughts on this and concur that it would add a really interesting dynamic to the game.  This might be my favorite card of yours so far, assuming it plays like it seems it would play.
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Conquest - the 4s
« Reply #32 on: October 03, 2011, 11:38:48 pm »
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Last 2 4s
Regroup
Action         4
+1 Card
+1 Action
You may discard a victory card. If you do, +$2.

I thought 'this is probably broken with chapel'. Then I realized bishop is probably moreso. But I still think this is almost assuredly broken.

Veteran
Action         4
Do this twice:
Choose one: +1 Action, +1 Card, +1 buy, +$1

A card I've wanted to make for a long time. It's pawn, except: you can pick the same thing twice, and you can make the second choice after you've received the benefit from the first. So you can draw a card then see if you need the action or not. Is this a 4? Probably not a great one, but it's very versatile, and I think it's too strong for 3 probably.

rinkworks

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Re: Conquest - the 4s
« Reply #33 on: October 04, 2011, 09:56:23 am »
0

Can you walk through your line of thinking on Regroup being broken?  I'm not really seeing why it's broken with Chapel in particular.  Sure, a Chapelled deck means it's easier to chain those Regroups together, but the discard requirement puts a limit on how much you can do that.  I can see how unstoppable a deck with a bunch of these and a Tactician would be.  But moreso than a bunch of Conspirators, a Tactician, and a Village?

Veteran is a great idea.  $4 is probably right, considering how versatile it is.  But I think it would not be very economical in a deck without extra actions, or you'd probably usually still use it like a Pawn (e.g., Action+Buy or Action+Coin).  In a village-based engine, though, the versatility would be fantastic.
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mith

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Re: Conquest - the 4s
« Reply #34 on: October 04, 2011, 11:52:27 am »
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Sure, a Chapelled deck means it's easier to chain those Regroups together, but the discard requirement puts a limit on how much you can do that.

You can get around the limit for a very small deck (or a deck that can draw itself before playing the Regroups), because the victory card you discarded for one Regroup will be drawn again by the next.

If you get your deck down to four of these, a Chapel, and a green card, you're guaranteed Province buys until you hit four green cards, at which point you can alternate between trashing your worst green card and buying another Province. Whether or not that's game-winning depends on how fast you can get your deck to that point, and what your opponent is doing.
« Last Edit: October 04, 2011, 11:59:25 am by mith »
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rinkworks

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Re: Conquest - the 4s
« Reply #35 on: October 04, 2011, 11:59:46 am »
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OH!  Of course, yes.  Thanks for pointing that out.
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Re: Conquest - the 4s
« Reply #36 on: October 04, 2011, 01:33:04 pm »
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(Looks like best case you could get down to the 6 card deck after 6 turns... which means 3 Provinces in 9 turns, 4 in 11, and a 4-3 split turn 13 - though of course there's a chance of a 5th Province on turn 12.)
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Re: Conquest - the 4s
« Reply #37 on: October 04, 2011, 01:53:06 pm »
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(And actually, you don't need to trash to keep the engine going; you can just buy more Regroups on turns you don't make it to 8. As long as you draw 4 Regroups before your hand is full of Chapel/green, you are guaranteed a Province.)
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