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[Wrclass]

A treasure chest expansion will have cards with themes from all the expansions mixed in in. Card tokens, action tokens and buy tokens will work Guild's coin tokens. Action and card tokens would be spent at the beginning of your turn, buy tokens at the beggining of your phase. If you have any other ideas, please post them here and I will try to add them to the poll.

[hsiale]

I think treasure chest is the best thing to do, and preferably a "big treasure chest" - something like 600 cards expansion, with 45ish kingdom cards making room to explore every mechanic in the game and space for things like new ruins (to accompany new looters), new prizes (for a new card that gives them), some out of supply pile or one with more cards, maybe a new basic card used in some games and so on.

[Polk5440]

I would actually suggest start with Small Treasure Chest (2 winning cards for each large expansion and 1 for each small expansion) THEN expand based on interest and the needs of the set. For instance, last year we found, "oh, we need more villages" -- "eh, we already have so many of those kinds of cards." It was fun to "fill out" the set at the end, but it impacted the theme of each week more than maybe it should have.

I would suggest a starting point as:

Week 1) Intrigue (2 winning cards). Themes: Choice, dual types, interaction....
Week 2) Seaside (2 winning cards). Themes: Durations, Mats, Tokens....
Week 3) Alchemy (1 winning card). Themes: Potion-cost, Potion interaction, "Actiony".....
            Cornucopia (1 winning card). Themes: Variety matters, prizes, additional supply piles....
Week 4) Prosperity (2 winning cards). Themes: "Spendy", Treasures, VP tokens, $7 cost, good in Colony games....
Week 5) Hinterlands (2 winning cards). Themes: gain, on-gain ability, one-time effects....
Week 6) Dark Ages (2 winning cards). Themes: "Trashy", cheap, Shelters, Ruins, Looters.....
Week 7) Guilds (1 winning card). Themes: coin tokens, overpay, "name a card".....
            "Promo" (1 winning card). Themes: Unusual mechanic, thematic.....
Week 8) Base Set (2 winning cards). Themes: Simple to understand, basic mechanics, vanilla bonuses.....

This leaves room for:

Week 9) Best of the Runner Ups (2 winning cards)
Week 10+) Fill in what's needed (2 or more winning cards). Having Base last helps with this, too. Themes: more villages, more draw, more attacks, more interaction, more Potions, more alt VP, more treasures, more reactions.......


This isn't a full set, you say. Unless there are ties!! That happened pretty often last time. And man, that's already 10 WEEKS.

[Nic]

In the last thread, LastFootnote expressed interest in running the contest, so I figure he gets the final say in this. I sent him a PM about this thread so he can chime in; it sounds like his plans are in line with Polk's suggestion.

. . . if I run a contest to make a Treasure Chest expansion, I'm going to have the challenges be less restrictive instead of more. It'll be something like:

Design a Prosperity card. Ideally the card will incorporate one or more of the following:

• Is a Treasure card
• Interacts with Treasure cards (possibly a specific Treasure card e.g. Copper)
• Costs $6 or more
• Uses VP chips

These are just guidelines, though. Submit whatever card you want and the voters will judge the card both based on how good it is and how well it fits the guidelines.

Then, if the card picked were, say, a Treasure card that referred to other Treasure cards, the other Prosperity challenge would favor a card that was expensive and/or used VP chips.

The only thing I would advocate is a focus on the underutilized mechanics of each expansion. Maybe run these parallel to to the big contests, so they don't take up an extra week, but it would be awesome to have a contest where the only restriction is 'passes cards to other players', 'upgradeable cards' or 'kingdom pile is not ten identical cards'. We'll probably need a dedicated contest for the prize-gaining card, we have to have one, probably don't need two, and we don't want voters ignoring good cards just so a prize-gainer wins the Cornucopia contest. The prizes themselves could be all the power cards from Best of the Runner Ups that didn't win.

I do also like the idea of having a contest just for a promo card; maybe the the theme could be 'never been done before'.

[LastFootnote]

OK, seems like the Treasure Chest expansion is the popular choice. I'll follow through and host it unless anyone has objections.

I plan for us to make it a set with 13 Kingdom cards. No more, no less. There will be 2 cards for each of the large expansions (Intrigue, Seaside, Prosperity, Hinterlands, Dark Ages) and 1 card for each small expansion (Cornucopia, Guilds, Alchemy). Ties will be broken by another ballot which includes only the tied winners. If there is still a tie, I will decide the winner, because I am an iron-fisted autocrat.

I plan to hold the polls in a random order. The first card will be a Prosperity card. I'll post the thread by Monday (August 26th) at the latest.

[Nic]

Just a few questions: will non-Kingdom cards be counted in that total? If someone thinks that Ruins were the most memorable part of Dark Ages and thinks that adding Ruined Chapels to the pile will add interesting choices to the game, would that be allowed? If it wins, does it take half the space allotted for DA cards? I already brought up Prizes in my last post; for a lot of people, that's the most memorable part of Cornucopia, and they might feel that five new Prizes are just the thing to liven up Tournament games. How would that submission be handled in this contest?

Second question: what about cards that use mechanics from multiple expansions? In the last thread, that's what people wanted to see most, and it's obviously the most fruitful space for designing really good original cards. How would the contest handle those entries? If the winners of the first few contests are Duration/(something else)-heavy, will you discourage that card type? If so, how?

 One thing to remember: the last contest was Rinkworks saying "Let's see if this forum can crowdsource an entire Dominion expansion!" while this one was the entire community saying "Let's give Dominion the grand finale it really deserves, and anything that falls short in my eyes will be a huge disappointment!" This was why I wanted a poll set up, because of all the tiny questions like these.

 Again, I'm happy with your plan; I don't think there's anything wrong with keeping this project from getting bloated, and I don't think the people who wanted a large expansion will object either. But before you start, you might want to define your own vision for the project and what you want the thirteen cards to look like, as a set.

[LastFootnote]

Just a few questions: will non-Kingdom cards be counted in that total? If someone thinks that Ruins were the most memorable part of Dark Ages and thinks that adding Ruined Chapels to the pile will add interesting choices to the game, would that be allowed? If it wins, does it take half the space allotted for DA cards? I already brought up Prizes in my last post; for a lot of people, that's the most memorable part of Cornucopia, and they might feel that five new Prizes are just the thing to liven up Tournament games. How would that submission be handled in this contest?

Non-kingdom cards don't count toward the total, but the set will only be 150 cards, so that anybody who wants to go out and buy another copy of, say, Alchemy so that they can sleeve it and transform it into this expansion can do so. Assuming that each Kingdom card pile ends up being 10 cards, this means that there will be, at maximum, 7 empty slots for additional cards. Probably we'll want a Victory card in the set, so really we're looking at about 5 cards.

Second question: what about cards that use mechanics from multiple expansions? In the last thread, that's what people wanted to see most, and it's obviously the most fruitful space for designing really good original cards. How would the contest handle those entries? If the winners of the first few contests are Duration/(something else)-heavy, will you discourage that card type? If so, how?

 One thing to remember: the last contest was Rinkworks saying "Let's see if this forum can crowdsource an entire Dominion expansion!" while this one was the entire community saying "Let's give Dominion the grand finale it really deserves, and anything that falls short in my eyes will be a huge disappointment!" This was why I wanted a poll set up, because of all the tiny questions like these.

 Again, I'm happy with your plan; I don't think there's anything wrong with keeping this project from getting bloated, and I don't think the people who wanted a large expansion will object either. But before you start, you might want to define your own vision for the project and what you want the thirteen cards to look like, as a set.

Thanks for asking this. Ideally, I'd like to avoid mixing too many mechanics for this contest. I'd like to see us come up with cards that could be slotted into their respective expansion without the need to own any other sets. At minimum, this means that Looters and cards that reference Spoils could only be Dark Ages cards, cards that use VP tokens could only be Prosperity cards, etc.

However, this leaves the door open for another similar project in the future where we do mix mechanics. I'm guessing there wouldn't be a ton of overlap for submissions between these two sets and I think it'd be cool to see how each one plays out.

As for what this set will look like as a whole, it would be nice if it worked in its own context, but for me the higher priority is for each card to work in the context of its native expansion. If we end up with (for instance) no Villages in the final set, so be it.

[Asper]

I'm sorry if this is a stupid question, but i never participated in a contest before... Is the plan to make completely new cards for the contest, or are you allowed to participate with cards you allready posted here? While i have no clue whether any of my cards has what it takes, most of them follow the thematic of a certain expansion, and there are several i'd love to send in the race.

[Nic]

Presumably you can't enter any cards that won the last contest, but I doubt there's nothing wrong with cards that you've just talked about on the forums.

[LastFootnote]

Presumably you can't enter any cards that won the last contest, but I doubt there's nothing wrong with cards that you've just talked about on the forums.

Correct. You should feel free to submit cards you've posted to the forum. People may know the card is yours, but I'd like to think that everyone will be voting on the merit of the cards themselves, so I don't think it's an issue.

[Polk5440]

Presumably you can't enter any cards that won the last contest, but I doubt there's nothing wrong with cards that you've just talked about on the forums.

Correct. You should feel free to submit cards you've posted to the forum. People may know the card is yours, but I'd like to think that everyone will be voting on the merit of the cards themselves, so I don't think it's an issue.

Last time around, I was HOPING a certain card would be submitted by its creator at some point.

[Wrclass]

OK, seems like the Treasure Chest expansion is the popular choice. I'll follow through and host it unless anyone has objections.

I plan for us to make it a set with 13 Kingdom cards. No more, no less. There will be 2 cards for each of the large expansions (Intrigue, Seaside, Prosperity, Hinterlands, Dark Ages) and 1 card for each small expansion (Cornucopia, Guilds, Alchemy). Ties will be broken by another ballot which includes only the tied winners. If there is still a tie, I will decide the winner, because I am an iron-fisted autocrat.

I plan to hold the polls in a random order. The first card will be a Prosperity card. I'll post the thread by Monday (August 26th) at the latest.

Sound's great. I can't wait to participate. Another idea: Can we have cards with themes from multiple expansions like duration card with choices on it? Or a card with an on-gain and an on-trash effect?

[SirPeebles]

Are we limited to one submission per alt person per expansion?

[SirPeebles]

This is exciting.  I've been working on my Prosperity card all day; it's a shame I won't have a chance to playtest it for tweaking.

In case it is helpful for others, here are some themes, subthemes, and non-themes that I see in Prosperity.

1) "spendy"
2) treasures that do things
3) victory tokens
4) shared resources (City counts empty supply piles, Trade Route counts "non-full" victory piles -- forager is a later card with a shared resource)
5) topdeck  cards you gain (Watchtower and Royal Seal, although this is probably too narrow to warrant another card)
6) No $2 cards

[Schneau]

One of the biggest flaws that I saw in the last Mini Set Contest (and that others also commented on) was that "safe" cards tended to get more votes and win, and more interesting but possibly less balanced cards wouldn't receive votes because no one could tell how they'd play. This meant that the set ended up without many new mechanics or cards that change the game in significant ways. If cards like Hermit, Poor House, Death Cart, Squire and Band of Misfits (just to name a few from Dark Ages) would have been submitted, they would have likely ended up near the end of the pack because everyone would think they were too strong or too weak or too crazy. But, those are the types of cards that really make the game interesting. I'd love to see new, interesting cards and mechanics in a fan expansion.

That said, I don't have a perfect solution to encourage people to vote for more interesting cards. One idea is to not have the object of the contests be to submit fully-formed cards that seem like they've had major playtesting and are perfectly balanced, but instead to encourage people to vote for interesting cards with a solid core that can be worked with to make a balanced card. Things like cost changes and vanilla bonuses could be adjusted and balanced after the fact, maybe with community involvement. After seeing Donald's Outakes, it's obvious that many cards went through a lot of iterations and playtesting before making an idea work well enough to print. If this expansion is to be better than the last (which I think we should aim for), I think it would be good to encourage interesting ideas and mechanics and not shy away from playtesting and balance changes for winning cards.

[A Drowned Kernel]

This is exciting.  I've been working on my Prosperity card all day; it's a shame I won't have a chance to playtest it for tweaking.

In case it is helpful for others, here are some themes, subthemes, and non-themes that I see in Prosperity.

1) "spendy"
2) treasures that do things
3) victory tokens
4) shared resources (City counts empty supply piles, Trade Route counts "non-full" victory piles -- forager is a later card with a shared resource)
5) topdeck  cards you gain (Watchtower and Royal Seal, although this is probably too narrow to warrant another card)
6) No $2 cards

Don't forget "cards that interact with treasure" i.e. Mint. Not a strong theme because most of the cards in the category are treasures themselves but I consider it a subtheme of Prosperity.

[Polk5440]

One of the biggest flaws that I saw in the last Mini Set Contest (and that others also commented on) was that "safe" cards tended to get more votes and win, and more interesting but possibly less balanced cards wouldn't receive votes because no one could tell how they'd play.

That is not a flaw; you just have a problem with other peoples' preferences.

I can't help it if you don't like the types of cards I like. I like simple cards that aren't published yet because it shows there is space in the current design space of Dominion to be explored. Unless the whole contest is come up with wild and crazy cards just because they are mind-bendingly different then try to fix them later, I won't be voting for those cards.

Having said that, I know people had this complaint the last time around. That is why I suggested a "promo" category which would be a dumping ground for (quality) crazy ideas which people would then be forced to vote for because that is the premise of the "expansion."

[GeronimoRex]

Excited about the Treasure Chest content. I think it's a great idea and I'm looking forward to seeing what people come up with.

I'm of both camps in terms of simple vs. innovative card designs. In a perfect world, a card is both: a simple idea that adds something new to the game. The challenge is that a lot of simple cards aren't innovative, and a lot of innovative cards don't add enough to the game to be worth the complexity of playing them.

I expect this community to come up with the best of both worlds for this contest.

Any more guidelines on number of entries, timeline for voting, etc.?

[LastFootnote]

Any more guidelines on number of entries, timeline for voting, etc.?

http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=9245.0

[Nic]

One of the biggest flaws that I saw in the last Mini Set Contest (and that others also commented on) was that "safe" cards tended to get more votes and win, and more interesting but possibly less balanced cards wouldn't receive votes because no one could tell how they'd play. This meant that the set ended up without many new mechanics or cards that change the game in significant ways. If cards like Hermit, Poor House, Death Cart, Squire and Band of Misfits (just to name a few from Dark Ages) would have been submitted, they would have likely ended up near the end of the pack because everyone would think they were too strong or too weak or too crazy. But, those are the types of cards that really make the game interesting. I'd love to see new, interesting cards and mechanics in a fan expansion.

I've been thinking about this for a while, and I'm pretty sure I agree with you and at the same time agree with Polk, so now I'm looking through the winners to see what I actually think. Mountain Pass and Astrolabe are both built out of very simple building blocks of standard Dominion language, but they add entirely new strategies to the game. You're required to take them into account when you see them on the board, even though the optimal strategy will never be to piledrive that particular card. Museum is straight Alt-VP, but requires you to build a very different deck much more carefully than any other VP Rush. Production Village and your own card are the two most concise winners, and just a sliver away from honest vanilla, but they change the focus and the turn-by-turn feel of engines and slogs. Compare that with Soothsayer; easily the most novel card of the bunch in terms of mechanics, but from reading the playtesting thread it sounds like a dud. If you get a curse or four on your mat, there's no way you'll be able to keep them out of your deck every turn for the rest of the game, so why even bother? Even with that wall of text it's not going to play differently than a $4 Witch except in edge cases where you happen to have a surplus copper two turns in a row and want that curse to miss the reshuffle.

The cards I really don't like from that list are the ones that literally just paste two popular cards together and up the price. They'd certainly be fun to play with in actual game: just as fun as the originals were, even if they're harder to get. But they don't add anything new to the game, and I'd also be miffed if a really interesting card got passed over for one of those. Do you have any specific examples from the contests of cards you were rooting for? Now I'm curious.

Also, the fact that voters wouldn't support a card like BoM isn't really a mark against them at all. It's not hypocritical to say that DXV can get away with stuff that DominionFan69 can't, especially since one of them has a job playtesting his cards for months while the other almost certainly thought up theirs on the day of the contest. 

[eHalcyon]

Compare that with Soothsayer; easily the most novel card of the bunch in terms of mechanics, but from reading the playtesting thread it sounds like a dud. If you get a curse or four on your mat, there's no way you'll be able to keep them out of your deck every turn for the rest of the game, so why even bother? Even with that wall of text it's not going to play differently than a $4 Witch except in edge cases where you happen to have a surplus copper two turns in a row and want that curse to miss the reshuffle.

I don't think there is enough empirical data in the Soothsayer playtest thread to conclude that it's a dud.

P.S. Crystal Ball is a good treasure to discard for Soothsayer.

[Nic]

Fair enough. It just sounds impossible for someone to keep the curses out of their deck without hurting themselves far more than the actual curses would. If discarding the treasure won't make a difference at the end of the game, how often would you use that power?

I guess my dislike of the card is the way it seems to promise you the ability to avoid curses, when it's pretty clearly unfeasible. Of course fan cards aren't made for newbies, but when I read this I think of the people (like me) who'll pass multiple turns to avoid getting cursed by Torturers or fill their deck with Chancellors when it's the bane card. Even when you know what the optimal play is, getting hit by a Torturer chain is incredibly unfun, and I guess I lump all "this curse didn't have to go in your deck!" cards the same way. I'm aware that's entirely my own prejudice.

It could be that managing reshuffles is the real power, but if that's the case then the card should reflect that. Now that I've actually wrote that out I have some ideas, but I'll go post them in the relevant thread. 

[LastFootnote]

I don't think there is enough empirical data in the Soothsayer playtest thread to conclude that it's a dud.

I appreciate that, but I designed Soothsayer and even I think it's a dud. It's like a really awkward Torturer. I've designed some decent cards, but Soothsayer wasn't one of them.

[eHalcyon]

Fair enough. It just sounds impossible for someone to keep the curses out of their deck without hurting themselves far more than the actual curses would. If discarding the treasure won't make a difference at the end of the game, how often would you use that power?

I guess my dislike of the card is the way it seems to promise you the ability to avoid curses, when it's pretty clearly unfeasible. Of course fan cards aren't made for newbies, but when I read this I think of the people (like me) who'll pass multiple turns to avoid getting cursed by Torturers or fill their deck with Chancellors when it's the bane card. Even when you know what the optimal play is, getting hit by a Torturer chain is incredibly unfun, and I guess I lump all "this curse didn't have to go in your deck!" cards the same way. I'm aware that's entirely my own prejudice.

It could be that managing reshuffles is the real power, but if that's the case then the card should reflect that. Now that I've actually wrote that out I have some ideas, but I'll go post them in the relevant thread. 

But interestingly, the few playtest reports suggest the opposite of your intuition here.  Apparently the players almost always discarded, all the way to the end.




@LF -- well alright then.

[Schneau]

One of the biggest flaws that I saw in the last Mini Set Contest (and that others also commented on) was that "safe" cards tended to get more votes and win, and more interesting but possibly less balanced cards wouldn't receive votes because no one could tell how they'd play. This meant that the set ended up without many new mechanics or cards that change the game in significant ways. If cards like Hermit, Poor House, Death Cart, Squire and Band of Misfits (just to name a few from Dark Ages) would have been submitted, they would have likely ended up near the end of the pack because everyone would think they were too strong or too weak or too crazy. But, those are the types of cards that really make the game interesting. I'd love to see new, interesting cards and mechanics in a fan expansion.

I've been thinking about this for a while, and I'm pretty sure I agree with you and at the same time agree with Polk, so now I'm looking through the winners to see what I actually think. Mountain Pass and Astrolabe are both built out of very simple building blocks of standard Dominion language, but they add entirely new strategies to the game. You're required to take them into account when you see them on the board, even though the optimal strategy will never be to piledrive that particular card. Museum is straight Alt-VP, but requires you to build a very different deck much more carefully than any other VP Rush. Production Village and your own card are the two most concise winners, and just a sliver away from honest vanilla, but they change the focus and the turn-by-turn feel of engines and slogs. Compare that with Soothsayer; easily the most novel card of the bunch in terms of mechanics, but from reading the playtesting thread it sounds like a dud. If you get a curse or four on your mat, there's no way you'll be able to keep them out of your deck every turn for the rest of the game, so why even bother? Even with that wall of text it's not going to play differently than a $4 Witch except in edge cases where you happen to have a surplus copper two turns in a row and want that curse to miss the reshuffle.

The cards I really don't like from that list are the ones that literally just paste two popular cards together and up the price. They'd certainly be fun to play with in actual game: just as fun as the originals were, even if they're harder to get. But they don't add anything new to the game, and I'd also be miffed if a really interesting card got passed over for one of those. Do you have any specific examples from the contests of cards you were rooting for? Now I'm curious.

Also, the fact that voters wouldn't support a card like BoM isn't really a mark against them at all. It's not hypocritical to say that DXV can get away with stuff that DominionFan69 can't, especially since one of them has a job playtesting his cards for months while the other almost certainly thought up theirs on the day of the contest.

Thank you for your thoughtful analysis. It's been a while since the contests and I don't have time to look through the posts, but I do remember (and Polk evidently does too) that there was at least one discussion about the fact that "safer" cards had much better chances of winning than cards with new mechanics or ones that significantly changed games in interesting ways. I remember many cards that got very few votes (from myself included) because they did something interesting, but were significantly over- or under-powered, even if they could be fixed by simple cost changes or vanilla bonuses. I would encourage people to vote for these types of cards in the new contest, since I personally feel it would result in more interesting results.