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Qvist

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Choice card mechanics
« on: November 04, 2011, 06:31:43 am »
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I don't know if I should make a new thread for that.
If an admin feels that it better fit in my "Reaction Card" thread, than you can merge them. For now I keep them separate.
And this doesn't get so long as the reaction card post.

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I like cards that gives you the choice. They're flexible and nearly fit in each deck.
The basic one I mean is Pawn. I like to buy it if I have $2 left. In the worst case it's a cantrip.
But Steward and Nobles, Trusty Steed, Governor also fit in this category.
More complex examples would be Spice Merchant, Minion or Native Village.

I thought of a card that was like
"Employee $5 Action // Choose one: +3$; +2$ +1 Action; +1$ +2 Actions; +3 Actions"
or more compact:
"Employee $5 Action // Choose three times +1$ or +1 Action" (I don't know if it's worded right)
Each variant should be priced right.
For $5 you get either a terminal gold, an Minion-like card, a Bazaar without +1 card, or a massive Action-boost
Of course the choices are not equivalent in each situation, but sometimes you need that +3 Action-boost more than a terminal gold.
So if you have 2 Employees in hand, you have +$5. If you have 2 Employees and other terminal actions you can choose differently, but you'll have mostly no actions left and the maximum of +coins.
Would that be a good card?

Later I thought: Hm, I think we could expand that to other combinations.
"Another Employee $5 Action // Choose three times +1 Card or +1 Action"
So you have either a Smithy or a Laboratory or a Village or another time the massive Action-boost.
So each variant is already an existing card, but that card would be flexible and no variant is worth more than $5. But would that card be interesting? Is it worth more than $5 because of its flexibility?

I mean you can put that to extreme. Throw both cards together and add +buy and +VP token so you have.
"Ultimate Employee $5 Action // Choose three times +1 Card or +1 Action or +1$ or +1 Buy or +1 VP"
I'm not sure with the +1 VP (that seems overpowered) part but all different combinations can be useful on different boards and none of them would be worth more than $5.
But is the card worth more than $5 because of its flexibility?
Choosing is fun, but would such a extreme flexibility still be fun or would it get boring?
I'm not sure. I'd like to hear your thoughts. Do you like choice cards?

rinkworks

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Re: Choice card mechanics
« Reply #1 on: November 04, 2011, 08:35:05 am »
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The choice cards are some of my favorites as well.  But to answer your pricing concerns, the flexibility should probably increase the price above what you'd price the most powerful option, simply because having that flexibility increases the power level.  Compare with Steward:  none of those choices is individually worth $3, and two of them are strictly weaker than existing $2 cards.  For your first card, a terminal Gold is probably balanced at $5, but a terminal Gold that you can use as something else when necessary is quite another matter.  Even though, in this case, the other options aren't nearly as powerful.  "+1 Action, $2" is roughly a Silver, so that's about a $3-power level.  The other two choices are really only worth $2 apiece.  Nonetheless, they make what's already a $5 card better.

Similarly, you second card has a Laboratory as one of the options, and so it is strictly superior to a Laboratory.  That is, you'd never want to buy a Laboratory if your Another Employee card were available at the same price.  I think that will bear out if you playtest:  these cards will be very strong.  Probably not brokenly strong if you raise the price, but star cards.

Paradoxically, though, you want to make sure your choices aren't many.  Take the idea to a logical extreme -- "This card can do whatever you want" -- and you lose gameplay value, because you don't have to make any difficult choices.  Going back to your first card, there really isn't any difficult choice to be made when playing it:  you just pick however many +Actions you need and take whatever $ comes with that choice.  Once in a while you might rather take an extra $1 to forego playing one of your terminals, but how often is any terminal action not worth the equivalent of at least $1?  I'm not saying the card won't be fun, but it's something to watch out for if you playtest.  But definitely this is a problem with Ultimate Employee.  The player can pretty much take whatever he needs in the moment, and as a bonus problem it may take forever just to figure out what that is, due to the incredible number of choices available:  35, in fact, vs. 6 for Pawn.

I've thought a bit about this kind of card, and I haven't really thought of many great ideas for choices using only vanilla bonuses.  Pawn kind of has the monopoly on that.  I think the two most promising avenues are something like Steward, which mixes in some kind of card manipulation (trashing, in this case, but could also be something like what Cartographer or Scout or whatever does) and is therefore just a little trickier to decide upon.  Or something like Minion, whose two choices directly complement each other, allowing copies to synergize by playing both choices in sync.
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