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[XerxesPraelor]

search "CAP smogon" and look at the forum they have there. I think that's a good example of what I hoped this would become. They have purpose, and they have good debate. In fact, the point is not the cards, and is the debate, but the point of the debate is to broaden our knowledge, not to attack other people. Debate can be good if it has its goal in mind, and lots of people don't. Let's solidify what we want and go from there.

I actually think we should focus more on the cards than CAP does on its final product, but that's only a matter of degree and not of purpose.

[NoMoreFun]

search "CAP smogon" and look at the forum they have there. I think that's a good example of what I hoped this would become. They have purpose, and they have good debate. In fact, the point is not the cards, and is the debate, but the point of the debate is to broaden our knowledge, not to attack other people. Debate can be good if it has its goal in mind, and lots of people don't. Let's solidify what we want and go from there.

I actually think we should focus more on the cards than CAP does on its final product, but that's only a matter of degree and not of purpose.

The one thing I don't like about that project is the complete disregard they have for the pokemon they create as anything other than to fill holes in the metagame. The fact that they "threw out" all the gen 4 CAPs when gen 5 came around turned me off the whole thing.

Also it only focused on the most used pokemon, and didn't really aim to add variety, fun (beyond balance) or interest to the game. Just balance.

The best thing a Dominion Card can offer is a concept that changes the way you play the game when its around. It's ok if it's so overpowered that it's a must buy, as long as the game that forms around everyone buying that card is interesting and fun. Same goes with weak cards - if they can let you win in interesting ways it doesn't matter if they aren't particularly good at it.

I'm not convinced either the CAP model is the best way to find the good fan cards. The best thing about this competition is the large number of original ideas submitted, and the more the competition encourages such things the better.

On the other hand, cards like "Aqua Vitae" don't look original, but are good, balanced cards that would add good gameplay variety (and IIRC I voted for it). The idea of a spammable card that still depends on having "junk" in your deck to be effective is original and interesting. Cards that look similar can have dramatically different effects on the game.

This is why I proposed saying the concept of a card in another thread. That way we can truly vote for what makes dominion cards interesting instead of making a false choice between simplicity and originality.

[KingZog3]

For those people saying this is contest about arguing, I don't think so. I find people offer constructive feedback. The thing is that this is not face to face, so you don't know the tone someone says something in. WW made a video which was good, because I could here his tone and his meaning with what he said. He said my card was boring, and I don't take offense because that's what he thinks. He didn't say it maliciously, nor did he say I'm not good at making cards or not good at Dominion. He just didn't like the idea. So for those who are complaining that no one votes for your card, or that we all hate you because we trash talked your card, just remember that no one is saying these in anger or hatred. They're saying as remarks and opinions.

This is also why reminders of "the card will likely go through balancing" never stick. People will easily latch on to complaining that they do not like the name of the card or that it is too strong to cost $3. That's because the core mechanic is likely fine but arguing is so fun they need to find something to argue about. Because the back and forth sparing is what they take the most joy in.

People talk about the price because it's there. I don't vote based on the price, and I don't think most people do. It's there because it had to be. Actually, I think we should not put the price of the cards for this vote. It should be about the mechanics. But everyone stop being angry that your cards are not popular or that people don't agree with you. Sometimes your cards (and mine) are not as good as others. It's just a fact. I live with the knowledge that people found my card boring. I wake up every morning knowing this, yet I still make it through the day without getting angry about it.

[dghunter79]

Traitor
Types: Action – Attack
Cost: $4
+$1. Choose one: Name a card costing up to $3 and each other player with 5 or more cards in hand discards a copy of the named card (or reveals a hand without it); or, choose an Attack card from your hand and play it twice.

My card!  It took its knocks this round.  As you'd expect, I liked it more than its detractors.

I started wanting to do a Throne Room for attacks.  There's three ways to do it.

1.  It's a Throne Room for attacks and nothing else.
2.  It's a Throne Room for attacks and it's a vanilla action.
3.  It's a Throne Room for attacks and an attack itself.

(1) seemed wrong, because the card would be dead if there weren't attacks.
(2) is fine, actually.  There's already plenty of cards that refer to attacks and are more fully "themselves" when attacks are on the board, but that do other boring things as well.  Moat, Lighthouse, Horse Traders, Squire.
But, when I was designing the card, I didn't see things this way.  It felt like it had to be (3).  It would be a Throne Room for attacks and would itself be an attack you want to Throne.

My original thought was that it should be a weak attack, since it also has this other thing that it does.  At first, it was "$1, each player with 4 or more cards discards one."  In other words, half a Militia.  Throne it, and get the full Militia.

But that felt really weak.  You'd like, never buy it over Militia, or Cutpurse, or Urchin.   I realized Throne room for attacks is actually not a great benefit.  It's not just that there have to be attacks on the board -- they have to be attacks you want to Throne.  That's I dunno, maybe 80% of them?  I'm just not sure that there's many boards where you want a Throne room just for attacks.

So, I decided that the attack DIDN'T actually need to be weaker.  It should actually be an attack first, and the Throne Room would just be sort of like the attack's player-benefit, like the 3 cards of Torturer.  (Though you wouldn't be able to get both.)

I explored the space of choose-a-card-for-your-opponent-to-discard that Pillage occupies.  I'd read about an early card that went "Name a treasure, everyone discards one."  (It might have become Cutpurse.)  It was too killer when Gold was named.  So I handicapped it by capping the value of the card at 3, then handicapped it again by having it only attack 5-card hands.

That had the neat effect where you could Throne the attack, name a card you know your opponent doesn't have, force them to reveal their hand, and then choose a card for them to discard.  But then further plays of the attack would be worthless.  So it was an attack that was strongest when played exactly twice!  Heavenly.  I gave it $1 also.  Now it's a good (though swingy) attack -- it can be better than Militia, but it can also whiff.  It has two player-benefits beyond the attack, but neither one is that great, and you can't have all three at once.  It seemed balanced enough to me.

Criticisms
People thought the attack was too strong.  Some thought it was too strong to also have the Throne effect, but a lot of people thought it was too strong an attack just on its own.  The feeling seemed to be: it's just too frustrating to discard a Silver or -- GOD FORBID -- a Village.

That's fine as far as voting is concerned.  It's very subjective, but vote your heart if you like.  This is a card for people who like attacks.  I like them because I like building slow engines and then relying on a barrage of attacks to slow my opponent down once the engine kicks in.  But I also enjoy the brutality of a Traitor-Swindler opening.

As far as gameplay is concerned, I'm not convinced the attack breaks the game.  And that's because no one makes you buy Silver.  No one forces you to build a deck that relies on three-dollar Villages.  So the attack can be built against.  It's unique in privileging 4s over 3s, which I like.  Well, on some boards you just need those Fishing Villages.  On those boards, you want this attack!

The more valid criticism was that the card is political in multi-player.  With my two player blinders on I didn't see that flaw.  But, if everyone reveals their hand, you can choose between force-discarding one player's silver or the other's Village.  That's pretty bad.  I dunno if it kills the card or if the politics will be limited enough.  It's at least an interesting game-play choice.

I wanted the name to be something that meant Informer.  Traitor was my favorite of those.  Of course, my own criticism of the card is that it is a homophone for another card.  If it junked, you could reveal Trader to block Traitor.  Oh, the laughs we would have.

[cluckyb]

Was the government shutdown again and no one was told anything? Only possible explanation for LastFootnote's absence =)

[markusin]

Wait, why is everyone revealing their cards now if there is still another round of voting?

Also, while prices can be changed, I prefer having them be part of the submissions. It's nice to have a suggested price for each card, rather than try to figure out what the price of each card should be. That would be a headache. Also, sometimes the price is important because it highlights self-interaction (or lack thereof).

[SirPeebles]

I feel like "Vote for the concept, we can tweak it later" is cute and sounded great, but in practice I don't feel that it's working, at least for me.  Maybe because we don't seem to have a formal tweaking procedure.  Maybe because "tweaking later" is just so vague.  I'm thankful for this contest, but in the future I would prefer to either stick with voting for cards as submitted or to make the entire enterprise less competitive and more collaborative from the start.  I'm not sure how one would do that though.

[Asper]

Shrine
Types: Action – Victory
Cost: $5
+1 Action. Choose one: trash a card from your hand; or +1 Card.
Worth 2 VP.

Kind of like Landlord, a Victory card that does something special. It's astounding how many votes Landlord got and how few Shrine got. I preferred this over Landlord and still didn't vote for it.

Because Landlord is an interesting alt-VP where as this is just a shitty action with 2 VP slapped on to make it worth more and is as such, super boring. There is no real reason for this to be a victory card, other than "oh its intrigue and I wanted a hybrid"

Hmm... Maybe i have no good reasons to like it, but i still kind of do... I think some cards have to look/be simple to be good. "Rising complexity" and stuff. But i can definitely understand if somebody disagrees with me on this.

[Warfreak2]

I think "tacked on" VP can be appropriate for balancing a card. For example, Nobles without VP is strictly better than Smithy but not by enough to cost $5; it can be made to work either by giving it a reaction, or by making it a Victory card.

By making a card worth VP, it enables an engine player to take a lead so that they won't coming from behind for the rest of the game; the dual-type can also be a fun interaction with a bunch of cards (I remember leaving a Nobles on top of Stef's deck once, only then realising why Fortune Teller wasn't the best choice).

Shrine without VP, though, would be reasonably priced at $2, and would probably get more play that way - an early game trasher that isn't junk later.

[Nic]

Wait, why is everyone revealing their cards now if there is still another round of voting?

Also, while prices can be changed, I prefer having them be part of the submissions. It's nice to have a suggested price for each card, rather than try to figure out what the price of each card should be. That would be a headache. Also, sometimes the price is important because it highlights self-interaction (or lack thereof).

Again, even if we don't know the exact cutoff we still have a good idea of what cards made it to the final round. It's essentially the same list as before, but now LFN can take the top five, nine, or eleven cards to the next round. If your card got eight votes or less, I don't think there's any danger in talking about it. I like the secret histories better when they're spread out, rather than getting them all posted on the same day.


Now that voting's over, I guess I'll give my opinion on the top five.

Landlord - 16 (5.8%)
Types: Action – Victory
Cost: $5
+2 Cards. You may discard a Victory card. If you do, +1 Action.
Worth 1 VP per empty Supply pile.

Yes. It's an alt-VP that's powerful enough to force rushes, but I like this better than Silk Road or Duke. Because those cards power up with the amount of green in your deck, you get penalized for losing the SR/Duchy split, above and beyond the raw point value of each card. If you split the Tunnels or Islands 2-6, you're down (6-2)*2=8 points, while losing the Duchy split 2-6 in a Duke game makes it impossible to win, even if you contest the Dukes and buy a bunch of Provinces. Giving you points for having more points than your opponent is a really stupid bonus, and I like this card because it synergizes with itself without falling into that trap. It's worth the same amount of points for each player, and it gives you more utility in a clogged deck. I would be very happy if this won.

Overseer - 13 (4.7%)
Types: Action
Cost: $4
Put a marker on an empty District of the Overseer Mat. If you put it on the…
Residential District, +1 Card and +2 Actions
Craftsmen's District, +3 Cards
Commercial District, +1 Card, +1 Action, and +$1
Industrial District, gain a card costing up to $4
Logging District, +1 Buy and +$2
If four districts of the mat have a marker, remove all the markers.

Rules Clarification: There is one communal Overseer mat, split into the five districts.

Already given my opinion. I'll vote for it in a future contest, if it gives a useful flat bonus and switches to randomizer cards instead of a mat. Heck, I'll vote for any card that makes the randomizers useful.

Prefecture - 13 (4.7%)
Types: Action – Victory
Cost: $5
Reveal cards from your deck until you reveal a Victory card. If you do, put it and one other revealed card into your hand. Discard the rest.
Worth 2 VP.

 

Homestead - 10 (3.6%)
Types: Action – Victory
Cost: $4
+2 Actions. Reveal cards from the top of your deck until you reveal a Victory card. Put that card into your hand and discard the rest.
Worth 1 VP.

Yes and yes. I seem to be unique in that I like both of them, and I actually like Homestead a bit more. It'd be fun to see what sort of decks people would make if Homestead was the only village, but it is worrying that you might have to shuffle multiple times a turn.

Monastery - 10 (3.6%)
Types: Action
Cost: $4
Gain a card costing up to $6. For each $1 over $4 it costs, each other player may choose one: he trashes a card from his hand; he gains up to 2 Coppers, putting them into his hand; he discards his hand and draws 5 cards.

Not feeling it, sorry. The concept is fine, but the options are way goofier than they need to be. "Draw a card; or trash up to two cards from your hand" would have made me happy, but as is, it just feels bloated. Maybe make the trashing better and toss the second option?

[HeavyD]

This is my first time commenting on the cards. Now that cards have been narrowed down and there is a top 5, I actually have time to comment. 

16 Votes

Landlord
Types: Action – Victory
Cost: $5
+2 Cards. You may discard a Victory card. If you do, +1 Action.
Worth 1 VP per empty Supply pile.

I really like the concept of an alt VP that helps filter (hence my attempt with Pasture during Hinterlands Challenge), which is probably why this was voted over Shrine. It would really shine when there is another alt VP and +Buy cards that help you go for the rush, but in and of itself, not too overpowered. It has nice self-synergy. It is simple (HALLELUJAH!). It fits Intrigue well as it cares about Victory cards and is a hybrid Victory card. I'm an all around fan; my favorite to win.

10 Votes

Monastery
Types: Action
Cost: $4
Gain a card costing up to $6. For each $1 over $4 it costs, each other player may choose one: he trashes a card from his hand; he gains up to 2 Coppers, putting them into his hand; he discards his hand and draws 5 cards.

I'm 50/50. Concept wise, this is up there next to Landlord for me. I love a Workshop that can go over $4 at the cost of benefiting your opponent. But the benefits listed are so wordy, I don't necessarily like them, and there are 3. I know Intrigue has a theme of choices, but (a) most of the cards you are choosing from a card you have in your hand and (b) I can already see myself having to verbally communicate all 3 options to the people I play with every time I play the card. I like Nic's idea of "draw a card or trash up to two cards," and honestly, if that could be a for sure change I would strongly consider putting it above Landlord. If the creator of Monastery doesn't mind that kind of change and tells LFN to inform us, my dreams may come true. If the world revolved around me (which it does on occasion), both of a slightly altered Monastery and Landlord would make a spot in the Treasure Chest set.

13 Votes

Prefecture
Types: Action – Victory
Cost: $5
Reveal cards from your deck until you reveal a Victory card. If you do, put it and one other revealed card into your hand. Discard the rest.
Worth 2 VP.

I know people have tried to sell the "search your deck for your key card" idea, and I think this fixes the major problems of such a card with anti self-synergy, and stopping at a Victory card. I used to really like the idea, but the more I dr-think on it, the less I like the concept.

13 Votes

Overseer
Types: Action
Cost: $4
Put a marker on an empty District of the Overseer Mat. If you put it on the…
Residential District, +1 Card and +2 Actions
Craftsmen's District, +3 Cards
Commercial District, +1 Card, +1 Action, and +$1
Industrial District, gain a card costing up to $4
Logging District, +1 Buy and +$2
If four districts of the mat have a marker, remove all the markers.

Rules Clarification: There is one communal Overseer mat, split into the five districts.

Confession... I marked this one off because of the mats... It's a good idea, I'm just the sour grape that doesn't want mats.

10 Votes

Homestead
Types: Action – Victory
Cost: $4
+2 Actions. Reveal cards from the top of your deck unti you reveal a Victory card. Put that card into your hand and discard the rest.
Worth 1 VP.

Bottom of the totem pole for me. I don't really see much benefit unless there are other hybrids out there. Am I missing something obvious? I probably am... 

[KingZog3]

I don't think you're missing anything about Homestead, HeavyD. It draws itself, while skipping over your good cards. But it's worth 1VP, so you'll have lots of action, you just need other cards to use the action this will give you. It's like an opposite Farming Village but gives you a point instead.

[Robz888]

Is there actually a top 5, is that just it? What is going on with this contest? LFN, we really need guidance!

[KingZog3]

People are just commenting on the 5 cards with the most votes. Other people are telling which are their cards if they have under 8 votes.

[markusin]

I feel like "Vote for the concept, we can tweak it later" is cute and sounded great, but in practice I don't feel that it's working, at least for me.  Maybe because we don't seem to have a formal tweaking procedure.  Maybe because "tweaking later" is just so vague.  I'm thankful for this contest, but in the future I would prefer to either stick with voting for cards as submitted or to make the entire enterprise less competitive and more collaborative from the start.  I'm not sure how one would do that though.

There have been more tweaks to cards during the voting phase than after the winner was announced. I prefer having the final card be as close to the submitted card as possible. Yeah, a vanilla bonus boost/reduction can be made here and there, but I want to know that the card I vote for is the card I get. So far, I've been more pleased with the submissions that I playtested in their final form. I think that, somehow, a card that is well balanced from the start makes a better impression on the voters.

[markusin]

Wait, why is everyone revealing their cards now if there is still another round of voting?

Also, while prices can be changed, I prefer having them be part of the submissions. It's nice to have a suggested price for each card, rather than try to figure out what the price of each card should be. That would be a headache. Also, sometimes the price is important because it highlights self-interaction (or lack thereof).

Again, even if we don't know the exact cutoff we still have a good idea of what cards made it to the final round. It's essentially the same list as before, but now LFN can take the top five, nine, or eleven cards to the next round. If your card got eight votes or less, I don't think there's any danger in talking about it. I like the secret histories better when they're spread out, rather than getting them all posted on the same day.

I'm just wondering if it's okay to know which players' card is in the top 5. Theoretically, one can deduce that through process of elimination.

I will say now that my card is not in the top 5.

[Qvist]

Okay, now let's tell some truths I hold for myself too long...

You probably should have held onto those truths.  To my eye, this post isn't so much about constructive criticism as the venting of a poor loser.  If this was not your intent, feel free to correct me; either way, I would encourage you to reconsider the parts of your post that perhaps come off too personally or aggressively.  I'm sure we'd all like to see people being encouraged to submit their ideas here, not greeting their efforts with degrees of hatred on a scale.  In the end, different people are going to have different opinions about what works and what doesn't, what's fun and what isn't.  We have to respect that.

Wait, rinkworks is back too. Woot!

[dghunter79]

Here's my thoughts on the other 4 cards in the top ten other than Overseer.

Landlord
Types: Action – Victory
Cost: $5
+2 Cards. You may discard a Victory card. If you do, +1 Action.
Worth 1 VP per empty Supply pile.

I don't know how great the top-of-the-line ability is.  To the degree it "self-synergizes" it still becomes "discard a 5-cost card for +1 Action."

Then, the variable VP part of it is interesting.  But, it's basically a Duchy at best in two- or three-player games.  That's nice, but it's not worth spamming for either the Action or for the VP aspect of the card.  And since it isn't really a card you want a lot of, the pile will rarely run out, and so it doesn't really play into the whole "empty Supply pile" flavor of the card.  Which means it's really just a pretty nice card to have one or two of on boards where you know a 3-pile is likely.

I think maybe it could be stronger.  It could cost 4.  It could draw 3 cards.  Or, it could be "reveal" instead of "discard" a victory card.  But, I think VP cards that rely on universal game states for value are kind of hard to balance.

Monastery
Types: Action
Cost: $4
Gain a card costing up to $6. For each $1 over $4 it costs, each other player may choose one: he trashes a card from his hand; he gains up to 2 Coppers, putting them into his hand; he discards his hand and draws 5 cards.

I agree this could be interesting if it were streamlined into a single, fairly severe, drawback.  Perhaps opponents get a Silver per $-over-four of the card you gain?  Maybe the 2nd one is gained in hand?

Prefecture
Types: Action – Victory
Cost: $5
Reveal cards from your deck until you reveal a Victory card. If you do, put it and one other revealed card into your hand. Discard the rest.
Worth 2 VP.

I have a hard time telling, but it seems like the top part isn't that strong. 

I don't know if Prefecture needs to be a Victory Card itself.  In engines with plentiful actions, that makes the card really good, since your upside is now drawing another Prefecture to play, plus a good card.  But in money decks it becomes really bad to get more than one; you're more likely to draw a dead Prefecture.  If it were just a card that cared about Victory cards, and not a Victory card itself, it would be less polarized bad-for-money/good-for-engine.  More flexible.

Homestead
Types: Action – Victory
Cost: $4
+2 Actions. Reveal cards from the top of your deck unti you reveal a Victory card. Put that card into your hand and discard the rest.
Worth 1 VP.

The Action seems like it's almost always worse than plain Village.  Tough sell at 4.  Maybe it could grab two Victory cards?

[LastFootnote]

Dudes, the results of the initial poll have (finally) been moved to the results post. The poll has been removed and soon (no, really) there will be a new poll for the top 5 contenders.

But now that the authors of all the other (non-top-5) cards have been made public, I'm going to talk about my card, Committee. Post to follow.

EDIT: OK new poll is up. It will run for seven (7) days!

[LastFootnote]

Committee
Types: Action
Cost: $5
+$2. The player to your left names a card. Reveal the top 4 cards of your deck and choose one that is not the named card. Trash it or gain a copy of it. Put the untrashed cards back in any order.

So, Committee. This is another potential Enterprise card that I entered to get some feedback, so I thanks to those of you who critiqued the card!

Most of the responses seemed to be along the lines of, "This seems too powerful." Preliminary playtesting indicates that the card isn't nearly as powerful as it seems. Yeah, it can be powerful, but you need to work to make that happen. Or get really lucky. Sometimes both. All of the incarnations of the card that I've tried always look a lot more powerful than they are. So I can either have a good card that looks overpowered or a really mediocre card that looks powerful. I chose the first one. I'm not entirely sure why the card is weaker than it looks, but it's probably because people think, "Oh, I'll turn over a bunch of awesome cards and pick the second-best one!" But that's not how it goes unless you've used some other strong trashing card to trim all the junk out of your deck. Sometimes you're turning over the card your opponent named and a bunch of dreck. The trashing really is the consolation prize compared to the gaining.

One of the most common comments is that it should disallow gaining (and possibly trashing) Victory cards. If I were to add this clause, it would probably have to be instead of the player to your left naming a card. With both stipulations, the card is really weak and bums you out because you think it's going to be strong. I could somewhat counteract this by having it reveal more cards, but that gets unwieldy once you get beyond 5 cards. I think the naming is way more fun/interesting than a flat "can't gain Victory cards". It allows the player to your left to name Province once you have a Province in your deck. This seems to be enough of a check on the card's power. It's kind of clunky in that you'll often be naming Province once they buy a Province, but this means that it makes you want an early Province (kind of a cool thing) and it's an interesting decision until you get that Province. Sometimes it's an interesting decision afterward because you know the top 4 cards of his deck (from the last Committee he just played).

Another comment is that the card would probably be fine at $5 without the +$2. Trust me, it would not. I could potentially cost it at $3 or $4 without the +$2, but I think that would be a worse card. You usually don't want to open with it anyway and without the +$2, the trashing option is really abysmally bad. It's like an extra-crappy Doctor. At $5 with the +$2 it's comparable to Jester, Explorer, and Rogue. It's probably better than Explorer and Rogue in most games, but not always. Rogue is way better when you can play enough of them to destroy your opponent's deck or when you're fighting over a key card that's going to be bought out fast. Jester gets much better with more players, which Committee does not. Explorer is better when you can draw your whole deck, whereas Committee is useless once your deck is empty.

I played a couple of mock games with this version of Committee the other day to test it. The first game had Swindler and Minion. I thought, "Oh, I'll use Committee to gain Minions faster than the opponent!". LOL NO. The other player named Minion until the Minions were gone and then named Curse so that the Committee player couldn't trash the Curses from Swindler. The Committee player lost incredibly badly. Then the next game had some sort of strong trashing (Chapel or Remake, etc.), and the player with Committee took off. Overall it seems on the powerful end of the $5 spectrum, but it's good in some games and bad in others without being terribroken. I doubt it's more powerful than Wharf, etc. Overall I'm happy with the card so far, although more playtesting may very well reveal that it needs more tweaking.

/rambling

[Jack Rudd]

Enter Seaside contest, submit serious card: get 1 vote
Enter Intrigue contest, submit Scout joke: get 6 votes

Such is the way of this forum.

[eHalcyon]

Re: Committee -- what if, instead of +$2, the "gain" option gains the card to your hand?  Overall this would be a nerf, but sometimes it is equivalent (gain a Silver) and sometimes you can do some neat things with it (gain an action card, play action card).

[LastFootnote]

Re: Committee -- what if, instead of +$2, the "gain" option gains the card to your hand?  Overall this would be a nerf, but sometimes it is equivalent (gain a Silver) and sometimes you can do some neat things with it (gain an action card, play action card).

Interesting idea, but on a terminal Action card, I think it just encourages you to gain Silver and Gold with it, which I think would make it less interesting in practice.

EDIT: Besides, I already have a (non-terminal) Remodel variant in the set that lets you put the gained card in hand.

[soulnet]

Courtier
Types: Action – Attack
Cost: $4
You may gain a Duchy. If you didn't, gain a Silver. Each other player may gain an Estate. If he didn't, he gains a Copper.

I made Courtier and I just want to say it is incredible how off some predictions on power are. I guess this is probably true for many, if not all, cards, but of course, I just felt it on my own.

The most accurate I have seen is that it is similar to Marauder in power, which it certainly is. It gives less crappy junk, but it never runs out. Silver gaining is comparable to Spoils gaining, although I would say in an engine game is worse, but in BM is better. So, in Intrigue alone is probably a bit better, which is reasonable (better within its own expansion) but with all the expansions, were engines are usually the way to go, the Silver gaininig is worse than Marauder's Spoils gaining.

About the Duchy gaining. Yes, it is much nicer than Marauder's spoils in the endgame. But it also gives Estates to the opponents (for 2 players at least, it gets better with more players as Estates will run out faster than Duchies, but is a bit counteracted by the fact that Duchies are usually more likely to be bought than Estates). So, I gain Duchy, you gain Estate. Basically a terminal action for +2VP, since we both got a dead card in our decks. I don't think +2VP an nothing else is a lot, although it is flexible.

As WW and maybe some else said, it is pretty good in slogs, because both Silver and Duchy are good cards. But you are also giving Copper first and Estates later to the opponent, which are also good cards in slogs if the board is good for a slog. It may force a mirror, though.

The only absolutely amazing combo is Rebuild, since the Duchy gaining is incredible, and the Estates are sometimes ok and sometimes bad for the opponent.

Overall, I don't think this would be an extra powerful $4, and I think especially that it fits Intrigue really well (I like that even more than I like the card in a vacuum). I believe this aspect does not seem to be taken into consideration so much, at least on average.

[scott_pilgrim]

My card was Dungeon:

Dungeon
Types: Action – Victory
Cost: $5
+1 Action. Trash up to 3 cards from your hand.
Worth 1 VP per $ in the cost of the cheapest card in your deck (in Coins).

This is the first time I've submitted a card that I've actually playtested.  I think Dungeon is one of my favorite cards I've made.  The thought process went: What ideas for alt-VP haven't been done yet?  Maybe something based on cost.  What measure would be easy to track when the game ends?  Either maximum or minimum cost in your deck.  Maximum cost doesn't work at all, because that's almost always going to be $8, so minimum cost it is.  But then it's dead in all games that don't have a heavy trasher in them, so it will need to be a heavy trasher so that it's often viable.  I had trash up to three just because there's not already a card that does that (Count is kind of similar though) and it seemed reasonable.  Eventually I worried that it was too weak and added the +1 action, though I'm not sure it's necessary.

Some people seemed worried that it's swingy, but I'm not convinced it's so bad.  If you have only one Dungeon, then you're looking at a Duchy's worth of point difference, which probably won't make a difference.  If you have several Dungeons, then you should pretty easily be able to trash any incoming junk.  Also, if there's a chance that Dungeon is going to be worth more than 0 VP, then you're running a pretty thin deck, so again you should be able to trash incoming junk.  It's possible for someone to Curse you and end the game in the same turn to negate all your Dungeons, so just don't get into a situation where that can happen.  Dominion already involves a lot of late game tip-toeing so I don't think it breaks anything there.  In most games with Cursers the Curses will be out before the game ends anyway, so it's not such a big deal.  Mountebank and other Copper junkers might be an issue, but I think those are more like counters to the card as a whole.

As I mentioned before I have played two games with Dungeon and it seemed fine, though probably on the strong side.  My biggest concern with it was that there would be a strategy of grabbing 1-2 Provinces and then piling Dungeons and trashing everything else in your deck so that the Dungeons are worth 5 VP, but man that's hard to do, so I think if you pull it off then you deserve to win.  It might work with $5 Peddler variants, but still, that's more like a combo than a broken strategy.

Anyway, I don't want to make it sound as though I think my card is perfect, because I don't.  The concerns that people brought up are valid; I just think they're not as big as some people made them out to be.  But since it didn't make it to top 5, I'll start talking about my favorite of the top 5 now, Homestead:

Homestead
Types: Action – Victory
Cost: $4
+2 Actions. Reveal cards from the top of your deck unti you reveal a Victory card. Put that card into your hand and discard the rest.
Worth 1 VP.

At worst it's a Necropolis that's worth a victory point, but it can also dig for itself, so it may be more like +3 or more actions.  I think it may be overpriced at $4, and even at $3 it may be weak, but I like weak cards, and it's definitely not so weak that it will never get bought.  There are games where you'd probably buy Necro for $3, and this is a decent amount better than Necro, so I think it's fine at $3, maybe comparable to Great Hall.  Of course it also combos with the other dual types in Intrigue.  Homestead+Great Hall turns your Homestead into a Village, but together they are worth 2 VP, which is cool I guess.  I think a Homestead+Nobles engine would be fun.  If you trash your Estates, it's like +1 action and then +1 action per Homestead in your deck.

Might comment on the others later.