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[Davio]

I love making fan cards just for the heck of it, I rarely print them out or use the blank cards actually, I just like thinking about them in a theoretical sense and discussing them. Often this helps me look at official cards from a different angle and if nothing else, others might enjoy them. It's a fun brain exercise for me.

So without further ado, I'm going to design my own mini-expansion: Seasons.

The fun part is, I'm going to design the cards as I write, I have no clue what's it going to look like, so I will just start...now.

Spring
Victory - Season $4
Worth 1 VP for every different Season in your deck.

Summer
Victory - Season $4
Worth 1 VP for every different Season in your deck.

Fall
Victory - Season $4
Worth 1 VP for every different Season in your deck.

Winter
Victory - Season $4
Worth 1 VP for every different Season in your deck.

At the start of the game, these cards are stacked in the order Spring (top) -> Winter (bottom) twice for 1/2 players and three times for 3/4 players. So if you're playing with 3 players, there are 3 copies of each Season in the pile.

Getting all 8 Seasons in a 2 player game nets 4*4*2 = 32 VP for $32 which is more than Duchy's 24 VP for $40, but of course you need to have different ones and if they're contested by your opponent, it's not that easy. 32 VP is nothing to sneeze at however, that's more than 5 Provinces.

These Season cards are included in every game using at least one card from the Seasons expansion.
Hencefort this pile will be referred to as the Season pile and some cards are dependent on the top card. Just remember: after Winter comes Spring again!
Seasons convey a sense of time. As cards from the Season pile are bought or gained, time advances. You can look at a 2p game as lasting 2 years this way.

You can Ambassador cards back to this pile, which might cause Talisman to be able to gain an extra copy. So you could have Spring following Spring, but that's not a big deal.
Seasonal Worker
Action $3
+1 Card
+1 Action

If the top card of the Season pile is...
Spring: +1 Buy
Summer: +1 Action
Fall: +$1
Winter: +1 Card

Explanation: If the Season pile is empty, you get no bonus
Hourglass
Action $3
You may gain the top card of the Season pile.
You may trash a card from your hand.

Explanation: Gives extra incentive to go for Seasons, but doesn't have the Workshop/Gardens "problem" as you can't gain other cards with it. In essence it replaces a bad card with a Season.
Link-boy
Action $5
Reveal the top three cards of your deck, put one in your hand and discard the other two.

If the top card of the Season pile is...
Fall or Winter: +1 Action
Poacher
Action - Attack - Looter $4
+1 Action

If the top card of the Season pile is....
Spring: Each other player gains a Curse
Summer: Each other player gains a Ruins
Fall: Each other player gains a Copper
Winter: Each other player gains an Estate
Student
Action - $4
+2 Cards
If the Season pile has 4 or less Seasons: +$2
If the Season pile is empty: +1 Action
Hayward
Action - Reaction $2
+$1

The player to your left reveals then discards the top 2 cards of his deck. If he revealed at least one Season: +1 Card, +1 Action and +1 Buy
---------------------
When another player plays an Attack card, you may discard this. If you do and the top card of the Season pile is...
Spring: Gain a Gold
Summer: Gain a Silver, putting it on your deck
Fall: Gain two Coppers, putting them in your hand
Winter: Trash a card from your hand

That's it for now, I might make more cards if I can think of good ones. Thoughts on the theme and the cards?

I just like the idea of time passing and players influencing the workings of each other's cards by gaining Seasons. I tried to make the cards so that there is incentive to actually gain the Seasons by making the Spring bonuses weak and the reaction bonus for Hayward's Spring quite strong. Poacher starts out pretty darn strong, but can be mitigated by getting a few Seasons.

[Qvist]

Cool idea. Would be interesting to try it.

which might cause Talisman to be able to gain an extra copy.

No, it's a Victory card which can't be gained by Talisman.

[Davio]

Cool idea. Would be interesting to try it.

which might cause Talisman to be able to gain an extra copy.

No, it's a Victory card which can't be gained by Talisman.

You're right about Talisman, I had overlooked that fact.
Well, let's say Smugglers then.

Just an addendum: I'd like to focus more on the governing mechanic than the actual cards (which I just scribbled down in a couple of minutes), but of course you are free to discuss them freely.

I tried to add a fresh mechanic which combines the variable "empty piles" aspect of City and the "differently named cards in one pile" aspect from Dark Ages.

[Qvist]

I tried to add a fresh mechanic which combines the variable "empty piles" aspect of City and the "differently named cards in one pile" aspect from Dark Ages.

I like the mechanic, but especially in 3-player games I think I prefer another stacking order.
Instead of Sp|Su|Fa|Wi|Sp|Su|Fa|Wi|Sp|Su|Fa|Wi it would be less luck based for some cards if it would be Sp|Sp|Sp|Su|Su|Su|Fa|Fa|Fa|Wi|Wi|Wi

[Davio]

I see your point, and thematically you could just say that a game lasts 1 year with each season split into several months/weeks.

It might make the variance a bit lower and players know exactly what to expect. If you buy a Seasonal Worker, it will never loop around to +1 Buy again and (depending on the board of course) will always get better as it goes from Market Square -> Village -> Peddler -> Laboratory

[KingZog3]

I tried to add a fresh mechanic which combines the variable "empty piles" aspect of City and the "differently named cards in one pile" aspect from Dark Ages.

I like the mechanic, but especially in 3-player games I think I prefer another stacking order.
Instead of Sp|Su|Fa|Wi|Sp|Su|Fa|Wi|Sp|Su|Fa|Wi it would be less luck based for some cards if it would be Sp|Sp|Sp|Su|Su|Su|Fa|Fa|Fa|Wi|Wi|Wi

I agree. These cards would be very interesting. In this way Poacher is very strong to start, but at the end you may be helping your opponent catch up or break a tie. I like Link-boy. It's probably a weak $5 until Fall comes around when it's pretty strong.

[Davio]

I like the name of Link-boy, I didn't know what it was until I came upon it while browsing.
You'd expect some Zelda connection, but it was an actual job.

For those who don't know, a link-boy used to guide people around town in the middle ages with a torch through dark alleys.

[LastFootnote]

It's a cool idea. If you were to print the cards, you'd almost certainly want symbols for, "If the top card of the seasons deck is Spring,", etc. Otherwise the text on the card is going to be pretty crowded.

[sudgy]

Just a random technical note, Ironworks says "If it is:" and you say "If the top card of the Seasons pile is..." on Hayward.

[Fragasnap]

I love making fan cards just for the heck of it, I rarely print them out or use the blank cards actually, I just like thinking about them in a theoretical sense and discussing them. Often this helps me look at official cards from a different angle and if nothing else, others might enjoy them. It's a fun brain exercise for me.

So without further ado, I'm going to design my own mini-expansion: Seasons.

Funny that I've been working on a nearly identical concept.
I will give one primary criticism: Don't make the Seasons pile part of the Supply. If players buy all of the Seasons, seasonal cards become worthless which discourages buying them in the first place. Furthermore, it can get political since different cards are more effective during different Seasons. A player could purchase the Season card only to stop another person's deck from working which could be part of the appeal in 2 player, but in multiplayer it would be terrible. In addition, due to the nature of the idea, the cards will need to have a lot of lists. This often makes cards take longer to resolve because everyone has to refer to the card to figure it out-- this is bad. Lots of people already feel like they have to wait too long for their turn.

Seasonal Worker is a perfect example of the politics I was refering to. They are weak Market Squares during Spring. They turn into Villages that you can't rely on in Summer because if you start relying on them, the other player will buy Summer and your deck will be crippled. They become Peddlers during Fall which is decent. They become Laboratories in Winter which would make anyone who doesn't have the most want to buy the Winter card so the other guy doesn't get to have $3 Labs.

Instead of Sp|Su|Fa|Wi|Sp|Su|Fa|Wi|Sp|Su|Fa|Wi it would be less luck based for some cards if it would be Sp|Sp|Sp|Su|Su|Su|Fa|Fa|Fa|Wi|Wi|Wi

That might make it harder to justify buying the Seasons cards. You can't really buy them to get to some better effect on a card because then each other player will take advantage of it without the Seasons slowing them down (and if they are stacked that way, you have to buy more of them to make them worth anything since the first 2 or 3 are $4 Estates). It's the Trade Route problem, but for every card in the set!

Just a random technical note, Ironworks says "If it is:" and you say "If the top card of the Seasons pile is..." on Hayward.

No it doesn't.

[Awaclus]

No it doesn't.

It does in the Finnish translation.

[KingZog3]

Perhaps a solution is to not make four piles, one for each season. They are not in the supply, but the Actions cards say "Reveal a Winter card from your hand" or something. That way each card has a possibility for each season, but you need the card in your hand. It also means cards can serve multiple purposes in your deck, as long as you reveal a different season.

[sudgy]

Just a random technical note, Ironworks says "If it is:" and you say "If the top card of the Seasons pile is..." on Hayward.

No it doesn't.

...

[Asper]

No it doesn't.

It does in the Finnish translation.

Same in german.

Student
Action - $4
+2 Cards
If the Season pile has 4 or less Seasons: +$2
If the Season pile is empty: +1 Action

I like what you made out of what originally was just a gag in the Guilds forum
My favourite would be Student, and how it can't get anything done till time has already run out.

[Davio]

Okay, I've been thinking about what was coined the Trade Route problem, namely that a player who isn't buying Season cards, but is buying the others dependent on the pile, is getting the same benefits without needing to have Season cards in his deck.

Maybe a fix could be, instead of the cards specifying the top card of the Season Pile it could be something like:
Reveal and discard a Season from your hand, if you do and it is ...

But that's severely limiting.

Another option: Add a restriction to the non-Season cards (besides Hourglass) that you can only gain them if you reveal and discard a Season card from your hand. The cards' power levels may need to be tweaked a bit.

[eHalcyon]

Scrap Seasons-as-supply cards entirely.  Instead, have a separate circular track that identifies the current Season, which advances in some fashion.  Some possibilities:

Track marker advances at the start or end of every turn.
Track marker advances at the start of p1's turn.
Each player has a personal track which advances every time they use a Seasons-dependent card (slightly less thematic, but I think more thematically interesting; still, you could say each of our Dominions is in a different Climate and the seasons are different for each of us...).

You can also vary how many spaces each season occupies on the track, so that a year cycles quickly or slowly depending on taste.  They don't even have to be uniform -- maybe your Dominion has long winters.  In fact, this might be an interesting thing to change from game to game -- randomly chosen Seasons boards!

Anyway, the personal tracks would play nicest with cards that manipulate the marker by advancing to the next season or something.  With a single track, I would say that such cards are a bit too swingy (I play out my awesome turn with this super powerful Summer card... and now it's Autumn so the card sucks for you).

[Davio]

That's not a bad idea at all, eHalc!

I like how this braintrust is coming along and it's nice to see you guys contributing a lot of good ideas.
Maybe if we can find some final form it would be fun to actually try it out!

Feel free to tinker with anything you think is bad.
I don't see this as my own personal project - other than having kicked it off with a specific theme -, but rather as a group effort. 

Maybe the player has to do something to advance his own track?
Let's assume that advancing is generally good for now, there should be some sort of sacrifice.

Something like: "At the end of your clean-up phase you may discard any number of cards from your hand. Advance your Season marker one step for every card that you discarded this way."

[LastFootnote]

Just a heads-up: this advancing seasons along a track thing has been done. Not that it couldn't be done better. Just thought everyone would like to see the previous effort.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/1i5kwa4so9rl7j2/Ie8eV0fvDS

[Davio]

Just a heads-up: this advancing seasons along a track thing has been done. Not that it couldn't be done better. Just thought everyone would like to see the previous effort.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/1i5kwa4so9rl7j2/Ie8eV0fvDS

That's a great little expansion and slightly different from what I've done.
I just love how much you can do with Dominion/card games when you start leaving the comfort of actual cards behind and start thinking outside the box.

I also liked that Dice Expansion.

[eHalcyon]

Just a heads-up: this advancing seasons along a track thing has been done. Not that it couldn't be done better. Just thought everyone would like to see the previous effort.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/1i5kwa4so9rl7j2/Ie8eV0fvDS

Mmmm, interesting.  I don't like their implementation though.  The events seem extremely high variance, not to mention that two seasons really mess with things a lot.  Winter prevents any actions from being played?  What?  That is insane and heavily skews the game in favour of BM.  Granted, Winter comes at the end.  Perhaps an engine strategy could succeed before Winter begins?  Welllll, it'll be way more difficult because Autumn makes all the VP cards cost $2 more.

[gman314]

Here are some of my thoughts.

Seasonal Worker
Action $3
+1 Card
+1 Action

If the top card of the Season pile is...
Spring: +1 Buy
Summer: +1 Action
Fall: +$1
Winter: +1 Card

Explanation: If the Season pile is empty, you get no bonus

Should probably cost $4. In spring it's Market Square - reaction, so likely a $2, in Summer it's Village, a $3, in Fall it's Peddler, probably $4, and in Winter, it's a $5 (Lab). So, I'd say it should probably be a $4.

Hourglass
Action $3
You may gain the top card of the Season pile.
You may trash a card from your hand.

Explanation: Gives extra incentive to go for Seasons, but doesn't have the Workshop/Gardens "problem" as you can't gain other cards with it. In essence it replaces a bad card with a Season.

It only replaces a bad card with a Season if you use both abilities. You can choose to do nothing if you want.

Link-boy
Action $5
Reveal the top three cards of your deck, put one in your hand and discard the other two.

If the top card of the Season pile is...
Fall or Winter: +1 Action

This feels weak to me. It becomes a selective cantrip, but in some seasons you really just get self-replacing terminal cycling. I think going with the SpSpSp...WWW order would help this card, so that it gets better towards the end of the game.

Poacher
Action - Attack - Looter $4
+1 Action

If the top card of the Season pile is....
Spring: Each other player gains a Curse
Summer: Each other player gains a Ruins
Fall: Each other player gains a Copper
Winter: Each other player gains an Estate

I like it. It definitely provides other players with incentive to buy some Seasons to stop you cursing them. Although, with the SSS...WWW order, it would get weaker towards the end of the game.

Student
Action - $4
+2 Cards
If the Season pile has 4 or less Seasons: +$2
If the Season pile is empty: +1 Action

I like it!

Hayward
Action - Reaction $2
+$1

The player to your left reveals then discards the top 2 cards of his deck. If he revealed at least one Season: +1 Card, +1 Action and +1 Buy
---------------------
When another player plays an Attack card, you may discard this. If you do and the top card of the Season pile is...
Spring: Gain a Gold
Summer: Gain a Silver, putting it on your deck
Fall: Gain two Coppers, putting them in your hand
Winter: Trash a card from your hand

This is a really neat reaction!

[AJD]

Poacher
Action - Attack - Looter $4
+1 Action

If the top card of the Season pile is....
Spring: Each other player gains a Curse
Summer: Each other player gains a Ruins
Fall: Each other player gains a Copper
Winter: Each other player gains an Estate

I like it. It definitely provides other players with incentive to buy some Seasons to stop you cursing them. Although, with the SSS...WWW order, it would get weaker towards the end of the game.

Cursers already get weaker toward the end of the game, because Curses run out. If anything, I'd guess this one gets less weak toward the end of the game, since it's still handing out junk (although in the real endgame, handing out Estates is a benefit).

[Davio]

I'll see if I have some time today to redesign some things, I like working on this mini project.
Until then, keep it coming, guys! 

[SCSN]

Maybe a fix could be, instead of the cards specifying the top card of the Season Pile it could be something like:
Reveal and discard a Season from your hand, if you do and it is ...

But that's severely limiting.

You could make it "either from your hand or your discard pile", like Hermit.

[Awaclus]

The name should be changed to "Seachildren" for gender neutrality and equality!