With apologies for the delays (writing this up has taken more time than I expected, and even then I haven't edited nearly as much as I'd like to):
Coronation
Types: Action
Cost: $5
If this is the first Coronation you have played this turn, gain a Gold onto your deck. Otherwise, you may play an Action card from your hand three times.
I like this one a fair bit because it introduces a meaningful and unique problem to what is otherwise a very powerful card. You need to build a bit before you want to start using Coronation to get its
King's Court effect, while the Gold-to-deck function is new and passable on $5 and causes you to use its
Stockade
Types: Action
Cost: $4
+2 Cards, +1 Buy. You may trash this, for +1 Action.
+Buy is something you don't really want to throw away, so the trashing effect seems like a get-out-of-jail function to toss it when its draw works poorly otherwise, but that "+2 Cards and +1 Buy" function is rare enough and likely well balanced at $4. Pretty good.
Fool's Laboratory
Types: Action
Cost: $2
+2 Cards. If you don't have another copy of this in play, +1 Action.
I do not like the esoteric wording here to combo with
Throne Room variants and Command cards.
The first is a
Laboratory which is a bit silly, while the second is a
Moat which is middling to bad (depending on trashing and junking). So buying the first is trivial, but the question of whether you should buy more than one is virtually identical to every other +2 Cards card. I wouldn't call the card broken, but it's not very interesting.
Courier
Types: Action, Reaction
Cost: $4
+2 Cards. You may play an Action that costs more than this from your hand.
Directly after resolving an Action that costs less than this on your turn, you may play this from your hand.
Getting +2 Actions from it via a $3-cost and $5-cost Action might be difficult enough, but I'm not sure this needs to do both as Laboratory at $4 is already very strong, let alone that it can be even stronger than that. I mostly get into my head how frustrating this card would be, trying to draw it with such a variety of Action costs: The payout for doing so is so large that you might have to try regardless. The paradigm shift of whether the more or less expensive card is the on-play and which is the Reaction also isn't very memorable which could lead to misplaying the card: I would much prefer a name that implies the direction, like Climber as you suggested.
Bridle Craftsman
Types: Action
Cost: $4
+2 Cards. If you have played a Horse this turn, +1 Action. Otherwise, gain a Horse.
The trick here is that you want to be able to play at least one of your Bridle Craftsman terminally so that you don't run out of Horses and end up with a deck full of terminal Bridle Craftsman cards. It seems like trying to find a Horse to turn the other Bridle Craftsman cards into
Laboratories will be difficult enough to make over-buying Bridle Craftsman a real concern. I like it.
Dalmatian
Types: Action, Reaction
Cost: $3
Gain 2 Horses. You may play a Horse from your hand.
When another player plays a Horse, you may discard this to gain a Horse to your hand.
Another 2-Horser along with
Cavalry,
Paddock, and
Sleigh. The reaction is a tad fiddly because you have to pause the first time you play a Horse and ultimately pointless due to the raw strength of Dalmatian. By the time you play Dalmatian 3 times, even without significant support, you can probably expect to trigger the Dalmatian→Horse every time which increases the number of Horses you have. This will drain the Horse pile rapidly, especially in multiplayer, which gives it a dynamic that doesn't seem to be a consideration in other Horsers: Horses being unlimited seems to be the intent of them (regardless of how
Livery goes). I don't hate it, but I'm leery to put it out as I think it will be too game dominating, especially if any Way appears with it.
Commissioner
Types: Action, Command
Cost: $6
Gain a non-Command Action card costing up to $4 and play it.
Unfortunately, having played with cards like this, I can confirm that they don't work well in multiplayer games due to the limitation of the Supply. There needs to be some strong bounding that prevents this from draining piles to nothing (for example Dominion: Season's Ballroom). I might recommend gaining "a non-Command Action card costing up to $4 from a pile with at least 4 cards in it."
Beachcomber
Types: Action
Cost: <5>
Reveal the top 3 cards of your deck and put them in your hand. If there were no Treasures, Actions, or Nights revealed, +1 Action.
I'm not sure this giving +1 Action will virtually ever change anything about the way it plays. You typically won't play your Smithy if you have other Actions in hand because those Actions are either non-terminal or payload from which you would expect to gain more benefit than drawing 3 dead cards from your misfiring deck. I guess maybe it would be better in money-focused deck where drawing 2 Beachcombers together has some ghost of a chance of being played non-terminally which would allow you to play the other Beachcomber. If that assumption is correct, this will virtually only be different than
Smithy by virtue of costing debt.
This entry was erased and replaced with Interchange, but I captured it before and wrote a bit on it before it was removed, so it is maintained for posterity.
Terrier
Types: Action, Treasure
Cost: $4
When you gain or play this, +2 Cards, and you may put a card from your hand onto your deck.
This one is very technically terminal, because if you use it as an Action it is a Courtyard- being both more expensive and less effective. I imagine the primary use of Terrier is to simply act as a Laboratory in Treasure form, which is probably too strong at a cost of $4.
Outlaw
Types: Action
Cost: $5
+3 Cards. You may discard 3 cards. If you do, +1 Action.
I've played with a card named Alehouse since 2015 that did this for a bit. It was decent but quite boring and very, very weak whenever you did discard cards. Doing more than acting as a
Warehouse when discarding would make it much more interesting.
Hearth
Types: Action
Cost: $4
Choose one: +2 Cards and add a Villager to the Hearth Supply pile; or take the Villagers from the pile.
When you gain or trash this, add a Villager to the Hearth Supply pile.
This has shades of
Wild Hunt, providing a repeating and communal source of Villagers, which sounds much more fun than
Wild Hunt's often explosive VP.
Ironworker
Types: Action
Cost: $5
+2 Cards. Reveal the top three cards of your deck. You may discard any number of them. If you discarded at least two... Action cards, +1 Action; Treasure cards, +1 Buy and +$1, Victory cards, +1 Card.
The ability to sift Treasures is probably alright to make this a source of +Buy. Discarding Actions for +Actions seems like such a non-starter of a function though.
Sorcerer
Types: Action, Command
Cost: $6
Play a non-Command Action card from the Supply costing up to $4, leaving it there. If the card has no +Cards amount in its text, +1 Action.
So Sorcerer turns the stop-cards it plays either non-terminal or anti-terminal. This seems like a fairly marginal benefit due to the proliferation of cantrips at $3 and $4. Spinning up a few Kingdoms, its only change from
Band of Misfits is that you can often target terminal Silvers or some tempo-trashers at
<$4-cost. Unless it appear with cards like
Watchtower or
Envoy that don't "+Cards" but do "Draw" cards (which is a problem Donald X. wrote about under
Seize the Day in the
Menagerie Secret History), this seems like it will play largely as a weaker version of
Band of Misfits.
Angry Mob
Types: Action, Attack
Cost: $5
+$2. Each other player gains a Curse into hand, and if they did, discards a card. If anyone of them discards a Curse, +1 Action
This has political issues in multiplayer games because discards are asynchronous, but they probably don't matter. Much like
Bard, you likely can't play Angry Mob with the assumption that it will be non-terminal, which makes its non-terminal function circumstantial. I think you want this function on a thing that would be happier to have the +Action.
Prospector
Types: Action, Reaction
Cost: $2
+1 Card, +$1
Whenever any player buys a treasure you may set this aside from your hand. If you do, play it at the start of your next turn.
"+1 Card and +$1" is really bad. The ability to play it later by buying a Treasure doesn't make it a whole lot better: In the situation that players would buy a lot of Treasures, there won't be enough +actions on the board to justify buying Prospectors. The only way it really functions is triggering it yourself to get the additional +Cards next turn, but then it needs additional Buys and the ability to weather accumulating many Treasures, which not many decks can do very well.
Cooper
Types: Action
Cost: $4
Gain a card costing up to $4. If it costs $3 or less: +1 Card and +1 Action. If it costs $1 or less, +1 Buy and +$1.
Having played with $4
Workshop variants that can quickly drain $3 cards, the size of the Supply is a rather unpredictable problem in multiplayer games: If there are good
Workshop targets a $3, the game ends so fast on piles with such blanket gaining on a cantrip. I'd recommend shifting the benefits incurred so that it only becomes non-terminal when gaining those super cheap cards.
Sparrow
Types: Action
Cost: $4
Choose one: +2 Cards or +1 VP. You may play a Sparrow from your hand.
When you buy this, put all Sparrows from your discard pile on the top of your deck.
I imagine it is typically correct to assume "+1VP play another of this" will be very slow in the average case, the abuse case of a golden "+4VP to +7VP per turn forever," leaves me wondering why this even has +VP attached to it. While the +2 Cards chain is a fairly powerful effect on its own, the ability to shift to +VP attached to it doubles-down the incentive to build a deck that is made of nothing but Sparrows, and that doesn't sound very fun. The top-decking thing is cute though.
Sexton
Types: Action
Cost: $3
You may discard a card from your deck. Look through your discard pile. Choose one: trash exactly 2 cards from your discard pile; or +1 Action and put a card from your discard pile into your hand.
Per the 2019 Errata, you can omit "look through your discard pile." I like the idea of a blanket discard trasher, but as someone who considers Chapel's turn 3\4 variance a bit much, Sexton's is even worse, varying from "trash a Copper out of hand (or +1 Card and +1 Action if you flip your turn 2 buy)" to "trash 2 Estates out of hand". The deck-discard effect is a neat improvement, but I'd much rather it buff itself to a $4-cost that can "discard up to 2" and "trash up to 2".
Friar Types: Action Cost: $4 Look at the top 2 cards of your deck. Trash any number of them and put the rest back in any order. If you trashed a card costing $3 or more and you don't have the Tunic: +1 Card, +1 Action and take the Tunic. | Tunic Types: Artifact
When you play a Friar: +1 Action and put the cards you don't trash into your hand instead of onto your deck. |
Friar begins its life as a terminal
Sentry, but can be upgraded into a
Laboratory+
Sentry. The cost of taking the Tunic is a sort of counter-point to
Flag Bearer: Instead of buying\trashing a terminal Silver, you trash another Silver at minimum. Because you can take the Tunic from a player, it likely pulls Friar back into a moderately reasonable position: If someone takes the Tunic from you, you can trash one of your otherwise troublesome terminal Friars to make the rest non-terminal. It is easier to draw your deck with
Laboratories, so fast-trashing with
Laboratory Friars is probably a bad idea.
This is clever. I like it.
Informer
Types: Action, Command
Cost: $4
The player to your left reveals cards from their deck until they reveal a non-Command, non-Duration Action card, discarding the rest. You may play it, leaving it there. If you didn't, +$2.
The cards that don't specify that the card goes back are all cards that look at or reveal exactly 1 card (even Oracle says how the 2 go back), so this still reads funny. I won't hold that against the card, though. So the ideal of Informer is randomly flipping up a powerful $5-cost Action to play, as otherwise you could have bought and played the Action yourself (because Informer costs $4) without garnering a sifting benefit to the player to your left. I like the player interaction idea, but this just seems terribly weak.
Fixed Horse Race
Types: Action
Cost: $4
Each other player may set aside a card from their hand face down. Reveal a card from your hand. Each other player reveals their set aside card and discards it. If your card costs the most: +3 Coffers, +1 Villager. Otherwise, gain a Curse.
This probably wants to act as a payload to a deck that can already draw itself (or almost draw itself) so you can justify discarding a high-cost card to it or consistently align it with a Province. Even then, that pass-fail to huge: If anyone else has a Province to discard to it, you gain a Curse while it awkwardly holds down other players' Fixed Horse Races. I think the cost of having a terminal dead card that consumes another of your cards is already a big cost without making it Curse yourself.
Palm Reader
Types: Action, Command
Cost: $4
Play a non-Command Action card from the Supply costing up to $5 (leaving it there). If it costs $4 or more, discard a card.
The value of Palm Reader contrasted to
Band of Misfits is a function of the $4 and $5 cards available: Palm Reader is better at playing cheaper Actions, which vary so wildly from game to game, but is much worse at playing $4
Village-variants (often premier
Band of Misfits targets). The ability to play a $5-card at the cost of discarding a card is mostly reasonable: There are games with
Laboratory-variants (like
Lost City) where Palm Reader will be a powerhouse, but most games will make it middling. This is a unique enough Command card. I like it.
Interchange
Types: Action
Cost: $4
+$2. If you have Actions remaining, +2 Actions
Similarities to
Conclave are not to be missed, where
Conclave is guaranteed to act as a splitter if there are any other Actions in the game, Interchange can only act as a splitter if there is another splitter. It's like a finickier
Conspirator in that way, where it will act as a terminal Silver unless it is supported. You will rarely buy more than one (maybe two) Interchanges, and likely early in the game when you need economy, lest its pass-fail paradigm become frustrating. Seems fine.
Builder
Types: Action
Cost: $4
Gain a card costing up to $4. If it doesn't cost $4, +1 Villager.
As King Leon points out, this seems quite familiar to
Sculptor, though it gains the card to your discard pile and non-terminally gains any card costing at most $3. Playing with $4
Workshop variants that can quickly drain $3 cards, the size of the Supply is a rather unpredictable problem in multiplayer games: If there are good
Workshop targets a $3, the game ends so fast on piles with such blanket non-terminal gaining. It is likely not too much of a problem, but its similarities to
Sculptor are ultimately far too close as far as I'm concerned.
Sculptor asks similar questions, but in a more interesting way.
Investigator
Types: Action
Cost: $2
+2 Cards. Put any number of cards from your hand on top of your deck.
When you gain this, put it into your hand and +1 Buy.
Setting aside the admitted problem of +1 Buy on-gain auto-piling them with decent cost reduction (which is a serious problem: multiplayer games that end on Provinces still often have 2 empty Supply piles) (you could fix this with a
Messenger-like clause), putting "any number" of cards on top of your deck could be a problem as you can theoretically setup further than your next hand with it: I'd "put up to 4 cards from your hand on top of your deck in any order". In play, this seems to adjust the on-play problems of Terrier being so similar to
Laboratory at $4 because it can only be played non-terminally during your Night phase, when +2 Cards is not wildly useful. The larger function of the card is likely to save otherwise missed cards, which is a function handled similarly by
Save and
Delay, but this does it at a theoretical cost of adding a middling card to your deck. It is a solid variation.
Show: BlueHairedMeerkat's CoronationCoronation
Types: Action
Cost: $5
If this is the first Coronation you have played this turn, gain a Gold onto your deck. Otherwise, you may play an Action card from your hand three times.
Place: segura's HearthHearth
Types: Action
Cost: $4
Choose one: +2 Cards and add a Villager to the Hearth Supply pile; or take the Villagers from the pile.
When you gain or trash this, add a Villager to the Hearth Supply pile.
Win: Rhodos' Friar and TunicFriar Types: Action Cost: $4 Look at the top 2 cards of your deck. Trash any number of them and put the rest back in any order. If you trashed a card costing $3 or more and you don't have the Tunic: +1 Card, +1 Action and take the Tunic. | Tunic Types: Artifact
When you play a Friar: +1 Action and put the cards you don't trash into your hand instead of onto your deck. |
The interaction of this card and artifact pairing is novel and ties into itself to theoretically hold itself in check, as opposed to being a brainless piledrive. If it proves to centralizing to have Friar trash Friar, you could always put an awkward on-trash effect (like gaining a Duchy or some such).
You may post the next challenge when you would, Rhodos.