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[GeronimoRex]

Scavenger ($2)
Action
+1 Action
+1 Card
If any kingdom piles have two or less cards remaining, you may gain a card from one of these piles, your choice. If you gain a card this way, return this Scavenger to the Supply.


Would this (or a variation) work? Would it be interesting?

I feel like it's presence could change the pace of midgame strategies, because it might discourage players from grabbing a lot of the same card for fear of allowing their opponent a cheap pickup of some expensive cards... at the same time, if you have a way of gaining cards during your action phase, you might be able to use a couple of these to snap up the last 3-4 cards in a pile in one fell swoop, using these to change the balance of the game.

Obviously, it would be most dangerous / potentially game-changing in kingdoms with $6 cards you want multiples of (Grand Market, Harem, Goons)... Since this is a cheap cantrip, I have the card returning itself to the Supply to make it harder to use this card to three pile the game.

Thoughts on the card? On the concept?

[Asper]

I think it's not that bad, but useless most of the game and maybe sometimes a bit unbalanced/frustrating in games with many players.
Also an official Dark ages card allready is named Scavenger.

[LastFootnote]

I think it might be a pain to track which piles have 2 or fewer cards left in a real-life game.

[RTT]

istn province a kingdom pile too?

[scott_pilgrim]

I'm pretty sure kingdom piles are only the 10 (11 with YW) cards that are randomly chosen every game.  Copper/Estate/Silver/etc. (including Potions, Ruins, and Colonies) are not kingdom piles.

I might comment in more detail on the card later but for now I'll just say that it's an interesting idea, but probably not very exciting to play with.

[qmech]

I'm pretty sure kingdom piles are only the 10 (11 with YW) cards that are randomly chosen every game.  Copper/Estate/Silver/etc. (including Potions, Ruins, and Colonies) are not kingdom piles.

Yes.  If you include the VP and Treasure then you're talking about the Supply.

[scott_pilgrim]

All right, my comments on the actual card...

First off, it's a pretty unique idea.  Having a card which can grab more copies of popular cards is interesting, but in a lot of games (maybe even the majority of games) this will just end up being a pure cantrip.  Often times there won't be a card that gets down to two, and even when there is, you have to "time it" right; you have to draw your Scavenger before the last two copies run out.  I think you generally want to get Scavenger fairly early; if you wait and buy it when you see that a good card is about to run out, then you risk not drawing it in time.  But even though it's a cantrip and doesn't hurt your economy, it doesn't help your economy either when you get it early, and usually there's something you'd rather be buying.  Also, if the good card that's running out is $4 or less, then you probably never even buy Scavenger, you just go straight for the good card instead (especially since it's a one-shot).  If you leave everything else as it is now, I don't think it needs to be a one-shot, although I doubt it makes much difference either way.  I think it's pretty weak as it is, making it not one-shot might slightly improve it.

The main weakness of it is that it's just a cantrip on boards in which there's not a hotly contested card.  That made me consider, what if it picked up cards from kingdom piles with 9+ cards in them?  Obviously, that's a lot stronger, since it can pick up anything right away.  So you might make it more expensive, but then you face the problem of buying a $5 card to turn it into another $5, and that's silly.  So instead of making it more expensive, you could leave the price at $2-ish, and make it harder to get in some other way.  Here is what I came up with:
Scavenger ($2)
Action
+1 Card
+1 Action
If any kingdom piles have 9 or more cards in them, you may gain a card from one of these piles.  If you gain a card in this way, trash this card.
---
You cannot buy this while you have Copper in play.

It still only costs $2, but you can't open with it, and sometimes you'll have S/C/C/C and you'll just buy a $5 anyway.  But with a hand of S/C/C you might buy this, and with S/C it's almost certainly worthwhile.  Gaining from piles with 9+ cards in them encourages diversity (which I like), and gives you lots of options.  It means that you can buy any unpopular card with one Silver, but it's delayed by a shuffle.  If it's too strong, bumping the price to $3 would make it quite a bit harder to get, or you could require that the kingdom piles have 10 cards in them (10+ if you want to allow gaining Rats).

Unfortunately IRL it would be annoying to count which piles have 9+ cards in them (I don't think that counting to 2 would be a problem, but 9 might be).  Also, the version that I just described plays quite differently from your original card (it pretty much has the opposite effect, getting unpopular cards instead of popular ones), so I'm not sure if that's what you were going for, but it's still a card that gains based on cards remaining in the supply.

Also, it should be noted that all of my comments were assuming 2-player.  Your original version may be better with 3+ players, but then maybe it's swingier.

[Asper]

All right, my comments on the actual card...

First off, it's a pretty unique idea.  Having a card which can grab more copies of popular cards is interesting, but in a lot of games (maybe even the majority of games) this will just end up being a pure cantrip.  Often times there won't be a card that gets down to two, and even when there is, you have to "time it" right; you have to draw your Scavenger before the last two copies run out.  I think you generally want to get Scavenger fairly early; if you wait and buy it when you see that a good card is about to run out, then you risk not drawing it in time.  But even though it's a cantrip and doesn't hurt your economy, it doesn't help your economy either when you get it early, and usually there's something you'd rather be buying.  Also, if the good card that's running out is $4 or less, then you probably never even buy Scavenger, you just go straight for the good card instead (especially since it's a one-shot).  If you leave everything else as it is now, I don't think it needs to be a one-shot, although I doubt it makes much difference either way.  I think it's pretty weak as it is, making it not one-shot might slightly improve it.

The main weakness of it is that it's just a cantrip on boards in which there's not a hotly contested card.  That made me consider, what if it picked up cards from kingdom piles with 9+ cards in them?  Obviously, that's a lot stronger, since it can pick up anything right away.  So you might make it more expensive, but then you face the problem of buying a $5 card to turn it into another $5, and that's silly.  So instead of making it more expensive, you could leave the price at $2-ish, and make it harder to get in some other way.  Here is what I came up with:
Scavenger ($2)
Action
+1 Card
+1 Action
If any kingdom piles have 9 or more cards in them, you may gain a card from one of these piles.  If you gain a card in this way, trash this card.
---
You cannot buy this while you have Copper in play.

It still only costs $2, but you can't open with it, and sometimes you'll have S/C/C/C and you'll just buy a $5 anyway.  But with a hand of S/C/C you might buy this, and with S/C it's almost certainly worthwhile.  Gaining from piles with 9+ cards in them encourages diversity (which I like), and gives you lots of options.  It means that you can buy any unpopular card with one Silver, but it's delayed by a shuffle.  If it's too strong, bumping the price to $3 would make it quite a bit harder to get, or you could require that the kingdom piles have 10 cards in them (10+ if you want to allow gaining Rats).

Unfortunately IRL it would be annoying to count which piles have 9+ cards in them (I don't think that counting to 2 would be a problem, but 9 might be).  Also, the version that I just described plays quite differently from your original card (it pretty much has the opposite effect, getting unpopular cards instead of popular ones), so I'm not sure if that's what you were going for, but it's still a card that gains based on cards remaining in the supply.

Also, it should be noted that all of my comments were assuming 2-player.  Your original version may be better with 3+ players, but then maybe it's swingier.

I like your thoughts and especially agree that gaining unpopular card instead of popular ones is more interesting. For simply tracking the amount of cards left, one could give the card a setup-rule with tokens (VP tokens are the only unused tokens by now, so my example goes with them). The only problem is that together with your Copper-clause this means having two dividing lines on the card, which really looks ugly.

Here's another idea, though:

Pawn Shop
Action, 3$
+ 1 Card
+ 1 Action
Unpopular Cards cost 1$ less this turn (but not less than 0$)
Setup: Put 1 VP token per player on each kingdom pile. Cards from a pile with VP tokens on it are Unpopular Cards. When a player gains an Unpopular Card, he removes a VP token from its pile.

[Gveoniz]

...
Scavenger ($2)
Action
+1 Card
+1 Action
If any kingdom piles have 9 or more cards in them, you may gain a card from one of these piles.  If you gain a card in this way, trash this card.
---
You cannot buy this while you have Copper in play.

It still only costs $2, but you can't open with it,...

You can open it with nomad camp if it cost $2, with baker on board it is possible even if it cost $3.

[Warfreak2]

Scavenger ($2)
Action
+1 Card
+1 Action
If any kingdom piles have 9 or more cards in them, you may gain a card from one of these piles.  If you gain a card in this way, trash this card.
---
You cannot buy this while you have Copper in play.

Way too much First Player Advantage. You open Talisman/Silver, get two of these, and then gain two Kings Courts on your third shuffle. Player 2 weeps. You can also get two of them at once with Baron, Stonemason overpay, Silver/(Nomad Camp/Woodcutter/Bridge), Festival/(Duchess/Embargo), (Market Square/Pawn/Candlestick Maker/Ruined Market)/Quarry. Hermit/Workshop/Ironworks/Armory can bypass the anti-Copper clause to gain them quickly too, with a good chance to play your two before your opponent can play one.

Imagine how much that snowballs when you get the first two Grand Markets.

[GeronimoRex]

Scott and Asper -- I like what you all are thinking. There is some sort of interesting mechanic that could gain unpopular cards. But I also agree with Warfreak that it would be way to swingy and hyper powerful in some games, especially with first player advantage.

What if we combined the two ideas -- a stack of 10 cards, five each of Scavengers (needs a new name,  let's call it "Scrounger" for now) and 5 each of a gainer for unpopular cards... setup: Scroungers on top, unpopular gainers (let's call them "Freeloaders") on the bottom.

That would keep the Freeloaders from grabbing strong cards too early, and would force people to pick up Scroungers early if they wanted to rush to the Freeloaders.

Alternatively, you could set this up with a Hermit/Madman dynamic -- I think that idea is worth teasing out.

Also, I'm thinking that some of the comments here are spot on that these cards would mostly be pure cantrips, cluttering the deck and wiping out a pile early. My thought is to make them stronger on first play, but non-cantrip on subsequent plays to reduce the ability to spam them. This way, too many will slow down a deck, but the on-first-play +Buy makes it easier to pick up more of them -- also means they still have value late in the game for the +Buy. This means every player will want at least one, even if they don't want two.

So here's what it might look like:

Scrounger ($2)
Action
+1 Card
If this is the first time you played a Scrounger this turn, +1 Action, +1 Buy.
If any kingdom piles have two or less cards remaining, you may gain a card from one of these piles, your choice.

Freeloader ($2)
Action
+1 Card
If this is the first time you played a Freeloader this turn, +1 Action, +1 Buy.
In any kingdom piles have 9 or more cards remaining, you may gain a card from one of these piles, your choice.

Setup rule (not written on the card for space reasons): Scrounger and Freeloader are always in play together -- 5 Scroungers on top, 5 Freeloaders on the bottom.

Realistically, I don't think counting the cards is that much of an issue IRL -- it's easy to tell which piles have two remaining, and it's probably easy to know which piles have 9+ cards remaining, since people usually have a pretty good idea whether or not they have purchased anything from a pile. At most, I'd guess there would be one or two stacks on a table that people were unsure of, and counting to 10 in a couple of piles is still much faster than mechanics like Philosopher's Stone... Regardless, that's far easier than putting tokens on piles and then removing them.

Also, I like the the 9+ rule -- it means that in games with 2 people, you'd never be able to use a Freeloader to grab a kingdom Victory card, but in games with 3+ people, if no one were going for the Alt-VP, you could grab up to 4 as freebies...

Thoughts? I really appreciate all the ideas -- I think it's becoming a more interesting and stronger card, and one that I think would require high strategy -- and a lot of attention to how your opponent is playing -- to play well.

[Warfreak2]

I think "you may gain a kingdom card from a pile with 2 or fewer cards remaining" is a simpler, clearer wording.

Either way there's the question of whether it's worth clarifying that you can only gain the top card from the pile - it only matters for Knights - the bottom card is "a card from one of those piles".

[mail-mi]

I think "you may gain a kingdom card from a pile with 2 or fewer cards remaining" is a simpler, clearer wording.

Either way there's the question of whether it's worth clarifying that you can only gain the top card from the pile - it only matters for Knights - the bottom card is "a card from one of those piles".

Knights FAQ says something like "only the top knight may be bought or gained."