Raven
Types: Action, Reserve
Cost: $4
+1 Card, +1 Action. you may gain a Raven. If you didn't, put this on your Tavern mat.
When you gain a Province, you may discard this from your Tavern mat. If you do, each other player gains a Curse.
I'm not a big fan of the "cantrip that auto-piles itself." I think Port and Magpie are already pretty bad and they don't even pile themselves as quickly as Raven will. This will split strangely in multiplayer games versus 2-player games. In 2-player games it would not be all too strange to give a player 4 or even 5 Curses with your first Province. In 3-player games you will be the lucky one to give 4 Curses. I think losing the Raven split would be an immediate death sentence in most 2-player games: Receiving 6+ Curses in response to another player gaining 1 Province will probably prevent you from doing anything else the rest of the game.
I agree with this assessment. This is the kind of card that gives a big 1st player advantage. Not only are you more likely to win the raven split because you are 1 turn ahead, but if you can get a province 1st, your opponent might have trouble getting a province himself with all those curses letting you get another province and give him the rest of the curses. At this point, you pretty much won the game. You just can't ignore ravens anytime they're out.
Undead Witch
Types: Action, Attack
Cost: $5
Choose one: Each other player gains a Curse; or each other player gains a Curse from the trash; or trash up to 2 Curses from your hand.
In multiplayer games, I worry that the Cursing from the trash will give an uneven number of Curses when it doesn't want to. I'd just have Undead Witch's on-play put all the Curses in the trash back into the Supply and then dole them out normally. Regardless, this looks pretty weak at a cost of $5 without any benefit attached to it except for the unending Cursing. I might want some small value attached to it. Even +$1.
Thanks for the feedback. Both points are valid. I think I'll change the wording so that you can curse from the supply or the trash for each player so it doesn't have this wonkiness.
I was thinking about the lack of benefit when I uploaded this (though the trashing is technically a benefit). I obviously can't add +2 cards, or this will be strictly better than witch and +actions doesn't seem right since non-terminal cursers are very strong. Obviously, the ability to give out curses from the trash is strong so I can't give it too much. I could do +$1. I was also considering raising the number of curses you could trash to 3; what if you got to trash one card unconditionally and then choose cursing or trashing another 2 curses? It would allow this to act a little more like an ambassador (at least in a 2p game). I think I'll make a couple different versions and see which one works best.
Warlock
Types: Action, Attack, Reaction
Cost: $5
Trash 2 cards from your hand. Each other player gains a Curse.
When a player trashes a card, you may reveal this from your hand to return the trashed card to the Supply. Then you may discard this, to gain a copy of the trashed card to your hand.
The wording of the Reaction is confusing, so I hope you don't mind that I expanded it above. I think the ability to duplicate Provinces for yourself with multiple Warlocks is something to be wary of.
Adding a simple "if you do" could fix this
Child
Types: Action, Traveller
Cost: $2
Trash a card from your hand.
When you discard this from play, you may exchange it for a Trainee.
Trainee
Types: Action, Traveller
Cost: $3*
Gain a non-Traveller card costing up to $3. You may put it on top of your deck.
When you discard this from play, you may exchange it for a Sorcerer’s Apprentice.
(This is not in the Supply)
Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Types: Action, Traveller
Cost: $4*
Put a non-Reserve card from your hand onto your Tavern mat. If it is a... ...Action card, gain a card costing up to $5. ...Treasure card, +$2, +1 Buy. ...Victory or Curse card, +1 Card, +1 Action
When you discard this from play, you may exchange it for a Sorcerer.
(This is not in the Supply)
Sorcerer
Types: Action, Traveller
Cost: $5*
Each other player puts their -1 Card token on top of their deck. Reveal the top 4 cards of your deck. You may trash one. Put the revealed Treasures into your hand, put the revealed Actions back in any order, and discard the rest.
When you discard this from play, you may exchange it for a Master.
(This is not in the Supply)
Master
Types: Action
Cost: $6*
+$1
You may put your +1 Card, +1 Action, +$1, or +1 Buy token on the Master pile. (When you play a Master, you first get that bonus). Each other player gains 2 Curses. For each Curse they didn’t gain, they gain a Copper instead.
(This is not in the Supply)
I think raw "trash a card" is also too good on the first level of a Traveller: It speeds up your deck and makes it easier to continue the Traveller line. If you want Master, I see little reason you wouldn't open with 4 (or more) Child cards considering it gives so much tempo towards what your deck is trying to do.
Also Sorcerer's Apprentice's ability to tuck Victory cards away forever is trying to slip under the radar here. That effect is pretty ridiculous. I think it should not be able to put Victory cards away, let alone giving a benefit for doing so.
Why doesn't [Sorcerer's Apprentice] just trash the card? Is it just so that it can interact with the Tavern Mat? There's no way to get it back right? The only way I can see this being different from trashing is with Miser.
A Victory or Curse card on your Tavern mat is still a part of your deck and will influence your score. Actions and Treasures typically won't matter, but the wording would become more complex if you treated them differently. Maybe the semantic complexity (players wondering what cards sitting on their Tavern mat are doing) would be worth alleviating with word complexity.
Usually the card at the end of a traveler line has to be powerful (note the current ones Teacher and Champion) and be powerful even if you only have one because getting more is a lot of work. Master just doesn't seem worth it. At best, you get all your tokens on master and now it's a grand market; you probably only have a few of these anyway and it's very likely it's late in the game by the time this happens. The fact that it double curses is cool, but considering all the different cards in this line give you some way to trash or remove cards from your deck
and that this would be very late in the game by the time this happens, it doesn't really seem worth it to go for a master. Sorcerer's apprentice on the other hand is a cantrip card that lets you tuck away victory cards and doesn't tuck away itself (like island). It would seem worth going down this line and stopping at sorcerer's apprentice (maybe getting a sorcerer if need be). I agree with fragasnap, this probably should be tweaked.
Greedy Witch
Types: Action, Attack
Cost: $2+
+$2. Use a coin token so that each other player gains a Curse.
When you buy this, you may overpay for it. For each $1 you overpaid, take a Coin token.
You need an image to apply for the contest.
Overpaying for Coffers is an issue fraught with huge problems. You can functionally set aside coins to buy Provinces very, very fast. I'd steer clear of the concept of overpaying for Coffers.
You should probably fix up the wording
Put a coin token back in the supply; if you do, each other player gains a Curse.
Sorceress
Types: Action, Attack
Cost: $3
+$1. Name a card. Each player (including you) may reveal a copy of the named card from their hand. Each player who does gets +1 Coffers. Each player who doesn't gains a Curse, putting it into their hand.
This seems a bit swingy. If I name a card and my opponent doesn't have it (something that will be reliant on luck) he gets a curse (which is -1 point and clogs his deck); if he does have it, not only does he not get a curse, but he gets a coffer. Considering that people consider Hexes swingy because some effects (all of which are pretty much negative) are not as powerful as others at certain times, a positive/negative effect would qualify as swingy too.
I think this is a fair characterization, but is somewhat sidestepping the inherently swingy nature of Curse-centered games. If you have Curses, you have more stop cards, which means the random order of your deck becomes more important.
The original version had no "name a card", always triggering off of Curses (which makes it less Guildsy) and the Cursing was unconditional. Do you suppose making the Cursing unconditional to other players (and therefore increasing the cost to $4) be a major improvement? To do that, I'd probably need to change the "name a card" thing to ensure that it still involves opportunity for other players to get Coffers, but that can be approximated.
I'm not really sure what your proposal is. Do you mean give each other player a curse and a coffer? That woud definitely be less swingy, and needs to cost $4-$5 (it would also be the only $4 unconditional curser that also gives a benefit if you priced it at $4). You could also allow for naming a card but not give coffers out; either the player gets the curse or doesn't (like a bane card), though I guess that loses the guilds theme even more.