The primary theme of the Cornucopia set was reward for having a variety of cards in your deck. This set seeks to reward the opposite: having many copies of the same card in your deck.
I guess my concern here is that having lots of the same card in your deck just isn't very interesting. It's also something that tends to happen anyway -- for example, someone spamming Laboratories or Hunting Parties or Minions. Even in multi-card decks, you don't tend to go for a lot of variety. Lots of Torturers + lots of whatever Village is available, for instance.
That said, you have some interesting ideas about building on this theme, so it's not completely unworkable. In fact, Hunting Party is just such a card (despite being in Cornucopia) and is a lot of fun.
These are creative ideas you have, but I think a fair number of them will need tweaking to make work. My thoughts below:
Agent
Action
Cost: 5
+1 action
+1 card for each Agent in play, including this one.
[/b]
This is the same card as
Collaboration, from this thread. My comments are there.
Inn
Victory
Cost: 5
Worth 1 VP for each Inn in your deck.
This card is actually how Duke started out. When Donald was playtesting, he realized that it had a variance problem and changed it to what Duke is now to fix it. You can read Donald's brief remarks on this in the Duke entry of
The Secret History of the Intrigue Cards.
Loot
Treasure
Cost: 5
Value: ?
Before you play this card, name a card. This card is worth $1 for each copy of the named card that you have in play.
I think this is my favorite idea of yours. I'd be worried that it's just too strong in some cases (for instance, in a Laboratory deck, this card is going to be worth $5+ every time you play it, and probably playable on every turn). But it seems like this should be tweakable somehow. def's suggested nerf seems like a great idea for balancing the card in the early- and mid-game, but still leaves it as a powerhouse in the endgame.
This is a pretty tricky card to balance, actually. It reminds me of what Donald went through to try to balance Horn of Plenty, which is basically the same idea, just inverted. The design of Horn of Plenty is very subtly delicate. As such, it's worth reading its entry in
The Secret History of the Cornucopia Cards, as many of the pitfalls with that card will apply to this one as well.
Abandoned Village
Action
Cost: 2
+1 Card
+1 Action
Reveal your hand. You may discard cards from your hand until you only have a single type of card in your hand. If you do, +1 Action.
Love this. I might spice it up a bit by awarding +2 Actions if you discard down. That would still be only a $2 card, as the situations where that additional action helps would be infrequent, but at least then it would be a card that can do something an ordinary Village can't do better. Still, really intriguing idea.
Mercenary
Action - Attack
Cost: 4
+1 Action
+1 card
You may discard a treasure card from your hand. If you do, each opponent discards his hand down to three cards.
Not a fan of this at all, for the simple reason that it never benefits you. It would be too weak even without the discard-a-treasure requirement, as all +1 Card/+1 Action does for you is give you the hand you'd have had if you hadn't bought the card in the first place. You get a nice attack out of it, sure, but you're not furthering your own deck at all. In fact, you're hurting it. Moreover, there's an excellent chance you'll be hurting your own hand worse than the attack hurts your opponents hands, since often they will have a pair of Victory cards to discard.
Contrast with Militia, which may be a terminal action, but it provides some money instead of taking it away. The only attacks that don't directly benefit you are Sea Hag, Saboteur, and Familiar. The lack of a direct benefit to yourself is compensated for by the fact that the attacks are so harsh. This one isn't severe enough to fall in that category. It's not even severe enough when spammed, which would otherwise be the benefit for making it a non-terminal, because the attack can only hit each player one time, no matter how many of them you play.
Arsonist
Action
Cost: 3
Trash any three kingdom cards from the supply.
Probably balanced and fine, but I'm not sure it's as interesting to trash supply cards as it sounds. Sometimes you'd really want to do it, in which case this card would be outstanding. But you probably wouldn't want to do this very often within the course of a single game, and if you did, you'd probably need to be able to time that move more exactly than random shuffle luck can guarantee.
But I could be very wrong on this, so it's well-worth playtesting. I suppose it could be a great way to counter to rush strategies (even better than as an aid for rush strategies), because you could quickly deny your opponent a lot of Minions or Labs that he might have been counting on.
Still, the fact that it offers no direct benefit to the player makes it highly situational, and perhaps so much so that you'd usually rather buy something else instead.
Double Agent
Action/Reaction
Cost: 4
+1 Card
+1 action
Each other player reveals his hand.
***
Reaction: play in response to another player playing a treasure card. That player discards that card. Then you discard this card.
I'd get rid of the reaction component and cost this at $2. Knowledge of other players' hands is useful probably less often than you'd think. Here's a
great thread about that.
As for the reaction itself, here's an excerpt from the "Reactions to things other than attacks" section of
this fan card creation guide:
Here's the problem: Do you really want all players to have to wait, every single time they play a Treasure card, to see if anybody is going to play this Reaction to it? Without such a card, players will often lay their Treasure cards down all at once, which keeps the game moving quickly. But with such a Reaction card in play, it's strategically disadvantageous to do this, as then the Reactor will be able to make a more informed decision about which Treasure card he'd like to trash with it.
To date, the existing Reaction cards only react to events that would require that player to do something anyway. When someone plays Militia, there is already a natural pause in the game to wait for the other players to discard down to 3 cards in hand. The natural pause allows for the timely revealing of a Reaction card, like Moat, and not slow the game down any further. Similarly, Watchtower activates when the player holding a Watchtower in hand gains a card -- another moment in the game when the Reactor would be expected to act anyhow.
Assassin
Action - attack
Cost: 5
Name a player and an action card. That player reveals his hand and, if he has any of the named action card in hand, he trashes one of them, then draws a card.
A few problems here: (1) The attack is targeted, which is absolutely fine if you want to play the kind of game targeted attacks result in. But is that what you're shooting for? Targeted attacks mean one player can be ganged up on, and encourage players to launch their own protests and exhortations about who should be attacked next. (2) The attack is super strong. It's good that victory cards are (mostly) excluded, but still, the targeted trashing of other players' cards is brutal and probably unfun. Even Saboteur, one of the least popular cards in the game, at least allows the player to get something back for it. Of course this card can miss, because the player might not have one of the named card in hand, but arguably that only compounds the balance of the card by making it so variable. (3) By specifically targeting attack cards, you're encouraging players to play only Big Money strategies, which is kind of boring. Contrast with Thief and Pirate Ship: they trash treasure only, which encourages players to use more interesting strategies to build up their decks. The other big difference is that treasure is a plentiful resource, whereas specific action cards basically are not.
Sycophant
Action
Cost: 2
+1 card
+1 action
You may gain a sycophant.
Really cool for a few strategies, particularly Gardens, but essentially useless most of the time.
Church
Action
Cost: 3
Name a card. Reveal cards from your deck until you reveal the named card, then trash that card.
This one seems pretty good, though probably a bit weak. I'd price it at $2 or offer an additional benefit on top of this. But the idea is great: it allows you to trash a Curse, for example, without waiting on the luck of drawing it with a trasher in hand.
Minor point: The wording of the card should specify that the other revealed cards are discarded, as is the case with Hunting Party and Golem and Library.
Grave robber
Action
Cost: 4
Choose one:
+$2; or
Gain any card from the trash and put it on your deck.
Gaining from the trash is almost always useless. There was a thread in this forum recently about making a trash-gaining card work. I don't think it was successful, although the ideas there come a lot closer than the usual variations. The problem is that many boards don't trash anything, and most trashing boards only put, you know, trash in the trash.
Castle
Action - Permanent*
Cost: 8
So long as you have a greater number of castles in play than another player, that player's attacks do not affect you.
I'd never ever buy this. Why $8? I think it's actually fine at $2. Contrast with Moat. It offers attack immunity, but you can't rely on it, since you need it to be in hand at the time. Castle, similarly, also only offers unreliable immunity, albeit with a distinctly different distribution. Moat also offers a benefit that applies even in the absence of attack cards (the +2 Cards), whereas this card is ONLY useful if there are other attack cards present AND if those attack cards are strong enough that they're worth spending a buy and action (and potentially multiple buys and multiple actions) to block.
That said, it's a neat idea to offer a benefit that only applies under these circumstances. What about a +$ that you only get if you have more in play than anyone else?
Investment
Action - Permanent
Cost: 7
At the beginning of each turn that this card is in play: +$1
It's tough to know without playtesting, but this is probably fine as it is. Lots of times you'd find more economical ways to roughly guarantee +$1 per turn, such as a Peddler in a deck that's already capable of drawing or cycling itself every turn. But it's correct and appropriate that sometimes there will be a better way to do something.
The particular advantage of Investment is that it continues to provide the same benefit even after you start greening. In particular, that's why it's superior than Treasury, which is basically the exact same card
until you start greening. I'd be inclined to test this card exactly as you've written it. It might still turn out to be too weak or too strong, but I think there's an excellent chance it's correctly balanced. Very nice.
