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[Schneau]

Here's a wacky idea I had last night:

Alms
Types: Action
Cost:$1
Name a non-Victory card in the supply. For each $1 in its cost, reveal a card from your deck. If the revealed cards have a total cost less than or equal to the cost of the named card, gain a copy of the named card. Discard all revealed cards.

The idea is that if you have mostly bad cards, or can make the top of your deck look like you have bad cards, then you can gain good cards. Alms requires you to have a cost-density of <= 1 for the revealed cards in order for it to work. I haven't thought about its cost much, but $1 seemed interesting since then it has a cost-density of 1 itself.

This idea isn't very refined, so it may well be very broken. Now that I think about it, it would probably go very well with cost-reducers, as well as Tunnel.

[LastFootnote]

It's the first Kingdom card I've seen that might be justified at a cost of $0. Right now it has issues, though.

Turn 1: Buy Alms.
Turn 2: Buy nothing.
Turn 3: Play Alms and gain Possession.

[Schneau]

I agree that there are issues, and Potion-cost cards are definitely one of them. I thought about putting something in for drawing 2 more cards for Potion-cost cards. But, there should also be something to make it harder to get Potion-cost cards.

But, even without Potion cards, you could do the same thing for a Turn 3 Platinum, and you could even buy a $3 card Turn 2 without harming your chances of getting it. So, there are definitely issues here.

[soulnet]

If you draw your deck, or almost, you can gain basically anything. Gaining Gold (always available) in turns 3 or 4 is pretty easy, since you only need to have an Estate in hand. Plus, you get to maybe buy something, and get an almost Chancellor effect. I think you should at least make it impossible to buy something more expensive than the number of revealed cards.

I like it like this, which also adds a bit of flexibility that may add some deck-handling tricks:

"Name a non-Victory card. Reveal up to 10 cards from your deck. If the revealed cards have a total cost less than or equal to the cost of the named card and the cost of the card is less than or equal to $1 per revealed card, gain a copy of the named card. Put the revealed cards in your discard."

Notice the text does not trigger when-discard effects (like Scavenger and Chancellor), basically to avoid Tunnel becoming insane. I think it would even be worth it to let choosing the card after the revealing. That cap will make it simply not work with potion-cost cards.

This could be a nice submission for Guilds Treasure Chest contest, especially since Guilds does not have a gainer (Stonemason is probably closer to the Remodel-family).

EDIT: Notice that this can guarrantee a $5 or $6 with similar odds to Baron or Silver, respectively, as an opener (if you double-open it or open this and nothing). That seems reasonably powered. Also, if your engine has good manage of your discard (Scrying Pool/Cellar for instance) you can use this to gain pretty good things, which is nice. As long as it requires skill to make it work, is great that you can make it do great things.

EDIT 2: I would even consider removing the non-Victory clause, or maybe just trash it on Victory-gaining if it ends up too powerful, like HoP does.

[popsofctown]

Why don't you just throw an "if you do" in there so that if you don't reveal the full number of cards, you can't gain anything?  So you wouldn't be able to gain Platinum until turn 5, generally, when you finally get 14 cards in your deck.  Even then you could only successfully get Platinum if you have 3 of your non-starting cards all in one hand.

Doesn't fix the Possession problem without some other fix.  +2 cards for Potion doesn't satisfy me, Workshopping for Vineyards is really good also, hitting Copper Copper.  +3 cards would be enough.