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[RobertJ]

Is it possible to have a (not absurdly contrived) card which would be balanced at any one of a wide range of costs?

My entry for Dominion_contests' contest was an attempt at this:

Benefactor
$? - Action
+$2
While this is in play, when you buy a card costing at most what this card costs, gain a copy of it.
---
Setup: Choose a card at random from the remaining kingdom cards in the game; its cost is this card's cost.

It's clearly strong at 5 (and 4?) and the consensus so far seems to be that it is too strong.

Of the official cards Border Village come closest. How would this variant thereon work:

Randomised Border Village
$? - Action
+1 Card; +2 Actions
--
When you gain this, gain a card costing less than this.
---
Setup: Before the game roll a die and add one to the outcome. The result is this card's cost.

I guess it's not ridiculous but probably weak at $5 and a bit strong at $3 or $4.

Maybe either or both of these could be fixed with a bit of tinkering. More generally, I'd be interested to hear other peoples ideas on making a card that would work at any cost.

[SirPeebles]

Randomized Border Village might be workable if the gain is optional.  But I would not want to buy a $3 Border Village on most boards, since I'd generally gain a Copper or Estate with it.

[HiveMindEmulator]

^You might if it's the only village and there's good trashing, or if there are reasonable 2s, or if you're trying to bloat your deck, or if you have Watchtower or Trader, etc...

A card doesn't have to be buyable every time it shows up to be reasonable.

[scott_pilgrim]

I think there was a thread somewhere discussing Band of Misfits at different prices, and I think it works at several different price points ($4, $6, maybe $7).

I think Rats would be quite interesting at other prices.  I've sometimes wondered what it would be like if the top five Rats cost $4, then the next five cost $5, then $6, then $7, or something like that.  But other prices are interesting for Rats even if they're uniform.  I'm guessing Rats is strongest at $4.  At $5 there's too much opportunity cost in passing up other $5's, with not many TfB cards hitting $5 much harder than $4.  But then at $6, I can imagine them being maybe more viable, since they are close enough to $8 that a lot of TfB cards can bump you up to Province (Remodel, Farmland, Butcher).  At $7 you're close enough to be able to Upgrade or Remake them into Provinces.  At $3 they should be much worse than at $4, since you usually only buy one Rats anyway, and the price difference between $3 and $4 is not that great.

[RobertJ]

The gain on $3 Border Village has to obligatory really for it to be not strictly better than Village. I can see it would be rather board dependent but that's not in itself a bad thing. I still think that $5 is the biggest problem price. You're not often going to want a $4 card with a Village thrown in instead of a $5 card.

Rats at different costs (uniform or  varying) is a very interesting thought. Thanks for that. It's given me the germ of an idea for the Dark Ages round of LastFootnote's contest when it comes up!