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[RobertJ]

Chapterhouse
Types: Action
Cost: $5
+1 Action. +$1. Draw until you have 6 cards in hand. Discard 2 cards.
When you buy this, each other player draws a card. When you gain this, each other player with at least 4 cards in hand discards a card.

My card, chapterhouse, got a bit of discussion and moderate success. In case anyone cares here is its Secret History.

I like cards that give a positive benefit to opponents but there aren't many which do this kind of thing on buy/gain (only Embassy?). The first thought was allowing opponents to trash something when you gain the card, but filtering seemed more in the spirit of Hinterlands. Having thought of that, splitting the draw+discard of filtering to correspond to the buy+gain of buying is a natural thing to do and gives an interesting effect when the card is gained in other ways. Possibly in retrospect separating the on buy and on gain is both confusing and makes the card hard to balance. I should probably have left it as an on gain filter one card for opponents. Now, what top works with that bottom? It needs to be strong so that you would be happy to get it despite the opponents filtering, but not super strong because of the potential on gain attack. The first thoughts were something like: Warehouse with +$1, +1 Buy, or Filter 2 cards with +$2. I'd like the on buy/gain effect to happen several times per game so I'd also like the card to stack a bit better that these (incidentally I certainly want it to be non-terminal because of this). A filtering card which maintains hand size (eg +2 Cards, +$1, Discard 1 Card) looks too strong, but the "draw up to x, discard y" idea keeps some of this hand size maintaining feel in a more manageable way and would work better in multiples than say warehouse variants. An extra feature is that the card can counter discard attacks, in particular its own on gain attack. The name is supposed to have a communal feel to it (matching the opponents benefit), also an ecclesiastical one because trashers often do and I thought of it at the same time as the opponent may trash on gain benefit. I'm rubbish at thinking of good card names and didn't have the imagination to come up with anything better as the card evolved.

Anyway thanks to everyone who commented on or voted for the card. Happy to hear other comments.

Looking forward to reading all the dark age submissions. So far I've got two ideas; one which is probably unworkable, and one which doesn't feel quite Dark Agey enough!

[Kirian]

I'm wishing I voted, too, I loved Mountain Dwellers but I feel Diviner is ridiculously overpowered.

I give jet lag as an excuse.

I'm genuinely curious as to why you (and others) feel it is so drastically overpowered. Could someone please explain, because I feel it is very similar in power to Oracle.

As I mentioned in my critique way back on page 6 or 7, the top is worth $3 all by itself.  In a thinned deck, that +1 Buy makes it very powerful if you're likely to draw $3 or $4.  The bottom part, though, is just so, so powerful, not because of the similarity to Oracle, but because it's repeatable, can happen multiple times on the same buy if there are multiples in play (with villages available), and self-synergizes with its own +Buy.  This feels to me like a $5 card.

This isn't a "being too powerful" issue, but like Oracle this card suffers from what I'll call the T4 problem:  it is much, much better to draw this on T3 than T4 if you open Diviner/Silver.  Draw this on T3, hopefully get a $5, discard your top two cards, and you have a (small) chance to draw your $5 or your Diviner on T4.  Draw it on T4, and not only will your $5 miss the shuffle, Diviner will miss the shuffle.  With Oracle that problem is mitigated by the attack.

[A Drowned Kernel]

Wayfarer (B)
Types: Action
Cost: $4
Reveal cards from your deck until you reveal one costing $1 or more. Put all the revealed cards into your hand.
When you discard this from play, gain a card costing up to $1 per Copper you have in play.

My card was Wayfarer B, which was posted a bit late due to a mixup. It started out as an alchemy card that was just the top, gave +1 action, and cost 0P, which meant it wouldn't stop for copies of itself. I decided that was too similar to scrying pool and probably too good, and then when I was working on the Hinterlands contest I thought, what if you had a card that revealed cards and then gained you a card based on how many your revealed? I worked on the idea and decided to delay the gain effect and change it to how many coppers you ended up with total, and there you have it.

Out of curiosity, did people not vote for it because they didn't like it or because it was posted late and they didn't know it existed? I'm rather fond of the card and would consider re-entering it for the second Hinterlands contest with maybe some tweaking.

[Just a Rube]

Trailblazer
Types: Action
Cost: $4
Gain a card costing up to $4.
When you gain this, reveal the top 4 cards of your deck. Put any number of the revealed Victory cards and Curses into your hand. Put the other cards back in any order.

Since the card got an understandable amount of mockery for being a workshop-scout (which it is), I figured I might as well explain the thought process behind it (which actually was more than "let's paste 2 cards together").

My second attempt to create an on-gain Scout. My first attempt, which was posted on these forums, had a Woodcutter top; I figured that was too similar to Nomad Camp for a Hinterlands card. I really like the effect when you open with it (improving your opening split at the cost of adding a Workshop your deck; I was disappointed that no one else made the Nomad Camp connection), and late-game during the greening stage it lets you improve your next hand (and can even gain itself with the effect to avoid spending a buy). As I mentioned, I came up with the bottom first, and then needed a top-half. It had to be something that you might want early on (so the opening would be more than just a cute trick), that retained some utility through the mid-game (so you hadn't just clogged up your deck with an entirely useless card), while still being cheap enough to be opened with and readily obtainable during the greening stage. A Workshop effect seemed like a good fit for these, and also guaranteed that someone wanting to use it's scout effect during the greening phase wouldn't have to waste money and a buy to do so. Plus it gave an obvious synergy with rushes.

Sadly, taking two boring effects and combining them still leads to a boring card. The glut of Workshop variants this time around didn't help either. I'm still trying to make the on-gain scout idea work, but this card doesn't seem the right way to go about it. Tricky.

[LastFootnote]

Trailblazer
Types: Action
Cost: $4
Gain a card costing up to $4.
When you gain this, reveal the top 4 cards of your deck. Put any number of the revealed Victory cards and Curses into your hand. Put the other cards back in any order.

Since the card got an understandable amount of mockery for being a workshop-scout (which it is), I figured I might as well explain the thought process behind it (which actually was more than "let's paste 2 cards together").

My second attempt to create an on-gain Scout. My first attempt, which was posted on these forums, had a Woodcutter top; I figured that was too similar to Nomad Camp for a Hinterlands card. I really like the effect when you open with it (improving your opening split at the cost of adding a Workshop your deck; I was disappointed that no one else made the Nomad Camp connection), and late-game during the greening stage it lets you improve your next hand (and can even gain itself with the effect to avoid spending a buy). As I mentioned, I came up with the bottom first, and then needed a top-half. It had to be something that you might want early on (so the opening would be more than just a cute trick), that retained some utility through the mid-game (so you hadn't just clogged up your deck with an entirely useless card), while still being cheap enough to be opened with and readily obtainable during the greening stage. A Workshop effect seemed like a good fit for these, and also guaranteed that someone wanting to use it's scout effect during the greening phase wouldn't have to waste money and a buy to do so. Plus it gave an obvious synergy with rushes.

Sadly, taking two boring effects and combining them still leads to a boring card. The glut of Workshop variants this time around didn't help either. I'm still trying to make the on-gain scout idea work, but this card doesn't seem the right way to go about it. Tricky.

I used to have a pseudo on-gain Scout in my Enterprise expansion.

Aqueduct
Types: Victory
Cost: $4
Worth 2 VP.
When you gain this, reveal the top 5 cards of your deck. Put the revealed Actions and Treasures back in any order and discard the rest.

It was fine, but not terribly exciting. I eventually replaced it with a similar, but more useful and compelling card.

[Fragasnap]

I voted for none of the top 3.

Tribe was my submission:

Tribe
Types: Action
Cost: $3
+2 Actions. +$1. Look at the top 2 cards of your deck. Discard one and put the other anywhere in your deck.When you buy this, you may discard a card. If you do, +1 Buy and +$2.

I know that on-buy +Buy aren't terribly popular, but I thought this was a rather elegant solution to a lot of the problems that on-buy +Buy cards have and it's an obvious on-buy effect that Hinterlands doesn't have.
See: Being able to empty a pile when you drive its cost down to $0 is no fun, so it needs to be capped some way. One could simply say: "When you buy this, if it's the first [CARDNAME] you've bought this turn, +1 Buy," but that somehow seems to require more parsing than a simple discard. Tribe has an obvious cap to it: The number of cards in your hand. Players will never really ask or consider why, they'll just accept that they get buys if they have cards to discard.

It started with its on-buy effect giving two Buys, but otherwise being the same (It lost the second buy in testing with Highway). Then it needed a top effect. It either needed to give +Buy or +Actions (both of which Hinterlands needed). I figured an engine piece would be a nice component to be able to buy without expending buys, so +2 Actions it was. Since I set it up to give coins when you bought it, it made more sense for it to give coins when you played it so I could put it at a cost of $3 (rather than with +1 Card which would make it strictly better than Village).
I had to give it some other effect, so I started trying to think up a name: A gathering of people (for the splitter effect) with an emphasis of either a market (for the +Buy) or a celebratory event (such as Festival). Tribe seemed to make a lot of sense: The tribe has a big hoopla when you buy them if you bring gifts and give you actions and coins later. From there, a Tribe sounds somewhat like Native Village, so its extra effect needed to be a way to get cards in your deck to collide (which is great for Hinterlands). It started out top-decking one card and putting the other anywhere, but that was annoying, so I made it discard the other and, in retrospect, that's too strong for $3.
Making it give coins with its on-buy seemed cute. When it gave $2, you could buy 2 of them for $4 with an extra card in hand. Clearly too much. Dropping that down to $1 would probably have fixed that problem. Having it net you coins when you drop its price to $0 I thought was a nice combo. With it giving only $1, it could transform your useless cards into +$1 when you nullify its price.
So here's what it would change to:

Tribe
Types: Action
Cost: $3
+1 Card. +2 Actions. +$1. Put a card from your hand anywhere in your deck.When you buy this, you may discard a card. If you do, +1 Buy and +$1.

That's enough of my card though.

Oh and Fragasnap, I'll claim that respect now, thank you very much.

I am nothing if not truthful. +1.
I ended up not voting for your card only because the number of Victory cards allowed in the set is limited.

I wanted the top part to at least be a cantrip, so that you wouldn't be afraid to get multiples of these. It needed a bit more than that, but a simple $1 coin would be too strong. I figured I can make the coin conditional so as to favour large handsizes and sifting.

I don't think a simple $1 would be too strong (Peddlers at $5 are moderately weak but infinitely practical), but a flat +$1 would have made it into nothing more than a Peddler on play, for which I also would not have voted favorably.

I'm wishing I voted, too, I loved Mountain Dwellers but I feel Diviner is ridiculously overpowered.

I give jet lag as an excuse.

I'm genuinely curious as to why you (and others) feel it is so drastically overpowered. Could someone please explain, because I feel it is very similar in power to Oracle.

As I mentioned in my critique way back on page 6 or 7, the top is worth $3 all by itself.  In a thinned deck, that +1 Buy makes it very powerful if you're likely to draw $3 or $4.  The bottom part, though, is just so, so powerful, not because of the similarity to Oracle, but because it's repeatable, can happen multiple times on the same buy if there are multiples in play (with villages available), and self-synergizes with its own +Buy.  This feels to me like a $5 card.

This isn't a "being too powerful" issue, but like Oracle this card suffers from what I'll call the T4 problem:  it is much, much better to draw this on T3 than T4 if you open Diviner/Silver.  Draw this on T3, hopefully get a $5, discard your top two cards, and you have a (small) chance to draw your $5 or your Diviner on T4.  Draw it on T4, and not only will your $5 miss the shuffle, Diviner will miss the shuffle.  With Oracle that problem is mitigated by the attack.

The Turn 4 problem is quite prominant with Smithy as well, isn't it?
The fact that it synergizes with its own +Buy is largely moot because you have to be buying cards in order to use it. If I have $5 and 2 Buys, I often will want a $5 card anyway. Flooding my deck with Coppers only to use a sifting effect would be poor long-term planning.

Wayfarer (B)
Types: Action
Cost: $4
Reveal cards from your deck until you reveal one costing $1 or more. Put all the revealed cards into your hand.
When you discard this from play, gain a card costing up to $1 per Copper you have in play.

...
Out of curiosity, did people not vote for it because they didn't like it or because it was posted late and they didn't know it existed? I'm rather fond of the card and would consider re-entering it for the second Hinterlands contest with maybe some tweaking.

I don't like it much for how variable it is. Sometimes I'll only draw my Mountebank dead (+1 Card) or I'll get 4 Coppers, 2 Curses, and a Silver (+7 Cards). Then I get to use all my Coppers twice which can get pretty silly. LastFootnote has a great Workshop\Village in his Enterprise expansion called Mill Town and using all your Coppers more than once is a strong effect on boards in which you can draw your deck. Though this one is terminal, it lets you wait until the end of your turn to use those Coppers.

Trailblazer
Types: Action
Cost: $4
Gain a card costing up to $4.
When you gain this, reveal the top 4 cards of your deck. Put any number of the revealed Victory cards and Curses into your hand. Put the other cards back in any order.

...
Sadly, taking two boring effects and combining them still leads to a boring card. The glut of Workshop variants this time around didn't help either. I'm still trying to make the on-gain scout idea work, but this card doesn't seem the right way to go about it.

You hit the nail on the head: I like the idea, but it's overall rather boring and I voted for interesting ideas. Armory is one of my most loathed Dominion cards, not because its impractical, but because it's so boring.

[markusin]

I wanted the top part to at least be a cantrip, so that you wouldn't be afraid to get multiples of these. It needed a bit more than that, but a simple $1 coin would be too strong. I figured I can make the coin conditional so as to favour large handsizes and sifting.

I don't think a simple $1 would be too strong (Peddlers at $5 are moderately weak but infinitely practical), but a flat +$1 would have made it into nothing more than a Peddler on play, for which I also would not have voted favorably.

But, when you consider that mining a Copper into a Silver increases the net coin in your deck by 1 without adding any additional bloat, it's as if you're buying 2 Peddlers for 5, at least early, except 1 of them can only draw treasure and is tied to the mined treasure card. I think the on-play has to be pretty weak to make that work. It also has to cost 5, otherwise a Mountain Dwellers/Silver opening eclipses a Silver/Silver opening.

I only playtested it after submitting it. What would really make this better is to make the effect on-gain and give it the ability to mine cards in hand as well, but with the mined card being discarded. I don't feel much like resubmitting the card for the next challenge without popular demand, though.

[eHalcyon]

I'm wishing I voted, too, I loved Mountain Dwellers but I feel Diviner is ridiculously overpowered.

I give jet lag as an excuse.

I'm genuinely curious as to why you (and others) feel it is so drastically overpowered. Could someone please explain, because I feel it is very similar in power to Oracle.

As I mentioned in my critique way back on page 6 or 7, the top is worth $3 all by itself.  In a thinned deck, that +1 Buy makes it very powerful if you're likely to draw $3 or $4.  The bottom part, though, is just so, so powerful, not because of the similarity to Oracle, but because it's repeatable, can happen multiple times on the same buy if there are multiples in play (with villages available), and self-synergizes with its own +Buy.  This feels to me like a $5 card.

This isn't a "being too powerful" issue, but like Oracle this card suffers from what I'll call the T4 problem:  it is much, much better to draw this on T3 than T4 if you open Diviner/Silver.  Draw this on T3, hopefully get a $5, discard your top two cards, and you have a (small) chance to draw your $5 or your Diviner on T4.  Draw it on T4, and not only will your $5 miss the shuffle, Diviner will miss the shuffle.  With Oracle that problem is mitigated by the attack.

I don't it's too powerful.  Consider:

+2 Cards alone is not even worth $2, let alone $3.  Moat gets a pretty strong reaction attached to it and it's still $2.  I contend that +1 Buy is not a strong enough effect to make it worth $3.

Also consider that Market Square is cantrip +Buy for $3, and it's still weak enough that a decent reaction is attached to it.  For lots of bonuses (including +Buy), I think cantrip is better than terminal +2 Cards.

On Diviner specifically -- yes the effect can stack, but now you have multiple terminal +2 Cards in your deck, and that's generally not very good.  If you're going to invest in villages to support it, you'd rather be playing much stronger terminals than this.  The sifting is still contingent on a Buy, and you're not going to be making use of your +Buys unless you also have economy from somewhere else, because Diviner certainly isn't giving you any.  If you manage to pull together an engine that stacks multiples of these and can still buy multiple useful cards... well, I think you deserve some good sifting then.  Except, of course, most of your engine pieces will be in play anyway so is that sifting really doing that much for you?

There's no way that Diviner is powerful enough to be a $5 card.  $4, maybe, but $3 is probably fine.  I doubt I'd want to open two of these.


I used the same vanilla bonuses on Landfall (code name: Euchre), my submission to the MSDC #18 (Reaction Cards).  Everyone who commented agreed that it's really weak. 

As an aside, looking back on those comments, it's surprising that most of them were basically, "not exciting" even though it tied for first in the end.  Maybe it was because it was "safer" than other cards?  I'm submitting crazy cards this time around though.   Or possibly it's because the set desperately wanted a +Buy.  Also likely that voters liked it enough but didn't comment, which is a shame.  Analysing and commenting on fan cards really helps you improve your own design process, I think.