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[Emeric]

What do you think of my Garbage collector.

Name : Garbage Collector
Cost : $6
Type : Action/(Long) Duration
When you play a Garbage Collector, if there is one other in front of a player (including you), he discards his garbage collector and all the cards under the garbage collector.
The garbage Collector stay in play while you or another player play a garbage collector.

When a Garbage Collector is in play and a player trash a card, the owner of the garbage collector chooses if the trashed card go to the trash or under his garbage collector.

At the end of the game, cards under a garbage collector go back in the deck of the owner of the garbage collector.

[Asper]

It has some wording issues. I suppose the idea is that only one can be in play, and will stay until another one is played. The wording can be done, but this is not the right one. Also it's very long.

I think the card will typically be terribly weak. Why? First of all, you usually don't want cards that are trashed. Without trash for benefit or trashing attack cards, the best this card could collect are Estates, which is not a good idea. As soon as another player plays GC, all your Estates go in the discard, greening your deck. For a terminal 6$, this is awful. Without TFB, this is about as good as a Ruins.

The case with trash for benefit is entirely different, of course. This is a strong combo, but might be difficult to set up, considering that GC is terminal and must be discarded when somebody else plays one. It's quite possible though, for example in a Bishop/Province/Village/GC golden deck. without a golden deck, you'll have to hope that if you play GC one round and then draw Salvager/Province on cleanup, nobody plays a GC until it's your turn. Cause the bad side is, you can't play ANY trash for benefit, if another player has GC in play (or at least wouldn't like to). So again, 6$ is too much even then.

The worst part about GC would be that with trashing attacks it's insanely nasty. It makes Possession/Swindler/Saboteur and other cards that can make you trash enemy cards capable of actually stealing other players Colonies.

Edit 1: It's not that terrible of an idea, but i'd recommend to buff the vanilla part of the card (or add one, that is), clean up the wording, lower the price and limit the cards you can get. For example:

Garbage Collector
4$, Action
+1Card
+1 Action
All Garbage Collectors in play except this one are discarded. This stays in play until it is discarded this way.
While this is in play, when a player trashes a card costing from 3$ to 6$, you may gain that card.

Edit 2: It's still only useful in games with TFB or trashing attacks, but neither as useless nor as nasty.

[Warfreak2]

The main purposes would be to power up your own trash-for-benefit of victory cards - and discourage your opponent's - that's Rebuild, Golden Decks, endgame Apprentice/Salvager, and anything with Feodum - but not much else. Normally if you're Remodelling or Expanding, you're turning expensive Actions and Treasures into Provinces, you won't buy a Duchy just to Expand it, you can buy something useful for $5 and Expand it anyway. It wouldn't really discourage other sorts of TfB because they can just not buy or play a Garbage Collector, and then you never get to use all those Actions and Treasures that you grab.

The main problem is that in kingdoms without trashing, which are rarer in these Dark Ages, but of course they do happen, it's a dead card. Dominion cards are designed to be self-contained - e.g. Graverobber gives you a way to grab cards from the trash, so it also gives you a way to put cards in the trash that you'd like to grab. Therefore, it needs some way to trash cards - how about trashing cards when you play it? Then there's a problem, because if there aren't other trashers, then your duration effect is mooted as you'll never collect cards your opponent trashes with it (they'll collect them instead).

If it's a pointless card without trash-for-benefit of Victory cards, then it needs to be in the kingdom with at least one other card which trashes Victory cards for benefit. The obvious solution would be to force that condition by saying "in games using this, add another pile of card X" where card X is some other card you have to design, either in the supply, or not-in-the-supply which you gain by doing something with Garbage Collector - not buying anything when you have a Garbage Collector in play? Having a Garbage Collector in play at the beginning of your turn (so your opponent didn't knock it out with their own one) might be more interesting. Of course you could say that card X is either Rebuild or Bishop, but then it doesn't work for people who don't have either DA or Prosperity (maybe that's OK with you).

I thought about a similar card to this, which just stayed out until the start of your next turn, and simply collected every card to your discard pile, no choice. Obviously it would be cheaper than yours... while less powerful, it would have more use-cases, since remodelling/expanding Gold->Province, Remodel->Grand Market, etc. are more numerous/common situations than using them on Victory cards. Furthermore, it's a hard counter, and also powerup, to trashing attacks like Swindler/Saboteur/Rogue/Pirate Ship, and Knights especially, because if you have one in play, you get to keep the cards they hit, and also their cards that you hit - they hit your Knight, or you hit their Knight, and you keep both Knights. It's also a defense against Thief/Noble Brigand, and solves the problem of having a Mercenary but nothing to trash with it.

[AJD]

Dominion cards are designed to be self-contained - e.g. Graverobber gives you a way to grab cards from the trash, so it also gives you a way to put cards in the trash that you'd like to grab.

It's not quite true that all cards need to be self-contained in that way—consider Conspirator.

[GendoIkari]

I think the card will typically be terribly weak. Why? First of all, you usually don't want cards that are trashed. Without trash for benefit or trashing attack cards, the best this card could collect are Estates, which is not a good idea. As soon as another player plays GC, all your Estates go in the discard, greening your deck. For a terminal 6$, this is awful. Without TFB, this is about as good as a Ruins.

I think you're missing something, or I'm misreading the card... if you have a garbage collector in play, you can trash your Estates, Duchies, Provinces, Colonies.. as well as any other alternate VP that's in the Kingdom, without losing the ponts. Yes, if someone else plays a GC then you'll get them all back into your deck... but you're no worse off than if you hadn't been thinning/trashing your VP to begin with. If you have one of these in play, and a Watchtower in hand, then every VP you buy gets self-Islanded.

[GendoIkari]

Dominion cards are designed to be self-contained - e.g. Graverobber gives you a way to grab cards from the trash, so it also gives you a way to put cards in the trash that you'd like to grab.

It's not quite true that all cards need to be self-contained in that way—consider Conspirator.

I wonder, is Conspirator the only example? Perhaps Rats as well. I mean, you can use Conspirator in a Kingdom with no +action cards... it won't be useless, it will just be strictly worse than a Silver. GC in a Kingdom without trashing would be like a Curse that you can spend an action to get rid of. I agree with Warfreak2 that it should have an option on there that lets you trash somehow.

[eHalcyon]

What do you think of my Garbage collector.

Name : Garbage Collector
Cost : $6
Type : Action/(Long) Duration
When you play a Garbage Collector, if there is one other in front of a player (including you), he discards his garbage collector and all the cards under the garbage collector.
The garbage Collector stay in play while you or another player play a garbage collector.

When a Garbage Collector is in play and a player trash a card, the owner of the garbage collector chooses if the trashed card goes to the trash or under his garbage collector.

At the end of the game, cards under a garbage collector go back in the deck of the owner of the garbage collector.

Wording issues have been pointed out.  I presume you are trying to do this:

Garbage Collector
$6 - Action-Duration
If any other player has Garbage Collector in play, he discards it and moves cards from the Garbage mat to his discard pile.
------
While this is in play, when any card is trashed you may move it to the Garbage mat instead.  Return them to your deck at the end of the game.

Using a mat isn't necessary, but it makes the wording a little easier by making use of existing mechanics.  The end of game stuff should work out because it is wrapped up with the "while in play" clause, and there should only be one in play at any given moment.




The biggest problem with this card is that it is entirely useless if there is no trashing on the board.  Conspirator has been brought up, but that still does SOMETHING even without non-terminal actions.  This does nothing without trashing.

Asper has brought up some good points.  I disagree that the card would be weak, at least when trashing is available.  It allows you to Island multiple cards simultaneously, and it's even better when you do it with TfB.  That opponents can steal away control of garbage collection keeps that power in check, but it also makes it somewhat swingy in terms of how much benefit you see out of it.  Probably less luck-dependent than cards like Counting House, though.

Asper's point about trashing attacks is excellent.

I mean, you can use Conspirator in a Kingdom with no +action cards... it won't be useless, it will just be strictly worse than a Silver.

Conspirator can still work with TR, KC, or Golem without needing actual +action cards.

[Asper]

I think the card will typically be terribly weak. Why? First of all, you usually don't want cards that are trashed. Without trash for benefit or trashing attack cards, the best this card could collect are Estates, which is not a good idea. As soon as another player plays GC, all your Estates go in the discard, greening your deck. For a terminal 6$, this is awful. Without TFB, this is about as good as a Ruins.

I think you're missing something, or I'm misreading the card... if you have a garbage collector in play, you can trash your Estates, Duchies, Provinces, Colonies.. as well as any other alternate VP that's in the Kingdom, without losing the ponts. Yes, if someone else plays a GC then you'll get them all back into your deck... but you're no worse off than if you hadn't been thinning/trashing your VP to begin with. If you have one of these in play, and a Watchtower in hand, then every VP you buy gets self-Islanded.

Yes, but being off the same in turn 6 as in turn 3 IS awful. You could have done something good, but no, you didn't. If at least one other player uses GC before you reshuffle, the use of yours is zero. So the more green, that is, the later in game, the longer your opponents have to give you trouble. Considering the effort of buying GC and trashing your victory cards, this is awful. Which is why i didn't consider it as a possible strategy in the first place.

[Warfreak2]

Thinking about it more, if the counter is simply not buying or playing Garbage Collector (so they can never use that stuff you're Expanding), then of course the Island effect is permanent. I suppose it does have a little more use, then, and there's a a race to collect a lot of valuable garbage before your opponent can play one, because by then they won't want to give you back all those Border Villages you remodelled. However, in the absence of Rebuild, I'd probably still just ignore it.