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[eHalcyon]

Artisans Guild
$4 - Action
+1 Buy
+$1
Move your Artisan token to any other Supply pile.
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Setup: At the beginning of the game, each player places their Artisan token on the Curse pile.  When a card is bought, any player with their Artisan token on that pile takes a coin token.



Each player has their own Artisan token.  They would have to be different colours or something.

Vanilla bonuses don't really matter.  +Buy synergizes, and giving coin makes sense.  These are the same bonuses as Merchant Guild though, which may or may not be a good thing.  The main idea is the coin token gaining, anyway.

The idea is to put your token on a card you think will be bought often, which can discourage your opponent from buying it (and benefiting you) while also giving you a bonus for buying it yourself.  This is sort of variation on the old idea of increasing the cost of cards.  Instead of directly increasing the cost of a card, you can make it so that players who buy that card make it "cheaper" for you to buy something later.

As currently worded, you always have to move the token when you play it.  A buff to the card would be to make the moving optional.

A variation could give each player 2 Artisan tokens instead of one, probably with the restriction that you can't put both of your own Artisans on the same pile.


Thoughts?  I priced it at $4 because the coin token gaining is comparable to Merchant Guild.  This should be weaker because it doesn't stack at all.  It does make for some interesting player interaction.

[ConMan]

This is very, very curious. It's like a cross between Merchant Guild and Embargo, and it's definitely a very strategic play - in some games, I suspect it will just end up with everyone putting their token on the same power card, but in others there'll be some tricky back-and-forthing. In fact, I suspect one of the more interesting ways it will work is if there is a gainer in the Kingdom that will introduce the tough decision of putting your token on the power card or the gainer.

A variation could be to make *this* card the gainer, although I'm not sure how that would work. "Gain the card underneath your Artisan token, then move it to any other Supply pile."? It's a nice way of putting together a guaranteed engine one part at a time, but it takes multiple plays to set it all up and your first gain has to be a Curse, so probably not that great.

[eHalcyon]

This is very, very curious. It's like a cross between Merchant Guild and Embargo, and it's definitely a very strategic play - in some games, I suspect it will just end up with everyone putting their token on the same power card, but in others there'll be some tricky back-and-forthing. In fact, I suspect one of the more interesting ways it will work is if there is a gainer in the Kingdom that will introduce the tough decision of putting your token on the power card or the gainer.

Well if you do that, then this becomes a dead card after the first play.  I made the token moving mandatory to discourage squatting on just one card.

[scott_pilgrim]

At first I read this and thought it was terrible, but then I realized that any player who buys the card triggers your coin token.  I really like that.  In multi-player though, it seems like it would be political.  "Player 2 is not doing so well, so it's fine if I buy this card; but player 3 is a threat to me, so I won't buy his card."  Or maybe you say "If I buy your card, will you buy my card?"  You could make a sort of alliance.  You and another player agree to move your tokens how each other wants, and then buy each other's cards, to gain an edge over the other player(s) who aren't using those cards/don't want to help you out.

If you're just playing normal Dominion and then saying "Hey there's another player's token on this card" and taking that into account, then maybe it's not so bad, but if you're playing to win, it seems like arranging alliances with other players would be optimal.  I can't really think of a good way to fix that (other than by not playing multi-player).

[eHalcyon]

At first I read this and thought it was terrible, but then I realized that any player who buys the card triggers your coin token.  I really like that.  In multi-player though, it seems like it would be political.  "Player 2 is not doing so well, so it's fine if I buy this card; but player 3 is a threat to me, so I won't buy his card."  Or maybe you say "If I buy your card, will you buy my card?"  You could make a sort of alliance.  You and another player agree to move your tokens how each other wants, and then buy each other's cards, to gain an edge over the other player(s) who aren't using those cards/don't want to help you out.

If you're just playing normal Dominion and then saying "Hey there's another player's token on this card" and taking that into account, then maybe it's not so bad, but if you're playing to win, it seems like arranging alliances with other players would be optimal.  I can't really think of a good way to fix that (other than by not playing multi-player).

Hmm, you are right, it could become political.  I am not sure how political though -- my first thought is that it would be minimal.  With the mandatory moving, it's hard to nail down exactly where your token would be when another player makes their purchase.  Of course, you may want the token on whatever you are going to buy this turn, so that you guarantee at least some benefit.  The scenario you describe, where a player will purchase card with player A's token but not the card with player B's token -- that is easy to work around, as player B can just move his token to the same card as player A.

I imagine that forming such alliances would actually be suboptimal because you would be pigeon-holing yourself into buying cards that are not best for you (assuming you honour your word).  Why buy player A's card and trust that they'll buy your card when you can just buy your own card?

[AJD]

I mean, is it more political than Embargo? (Do I Embargo the card Player B needs for his strategy, or the one Player C needs?)

[scott_pilgrim]

At first I read this and thought it was terrible, but then I realized that any player who buys the card triggers your coin token.  I really like that.  In multi-player though, it seems like it would be political.  "Player 2 is not doing so well, so it's fine if I buy this card; but player 3 is a threat to me, so I won't buy his card."  Or maybe you say "If I buy your card, will you buy my card?"  You could make a sort of alliance.  You and another player agree to move your tokens how each other wants, and then buy each other's cards, to gain an edge over the other player(s) who aren't using those cards/don't want to help you out.

If you're just playing normal Dominion and then saying "Hey there's another player's token on this card" and taking that into account, then maybe it's not so bad, but if you're playing to win, it seems like arranging alliances with other players would be optimal.  I can't really think of a good way to fix that (other than by not playing multi-player).

Hmm, you are right, it could become political.  I am not sure how political though -- my first thought is that it would be minimal.  With the mandatory moving, it's hard to nail down exactly where your token would be when another player makes their purchase.  Of course, you may want the token on whatever you are going to buy this turn, so that you guarantee at least some benefit.  The scenario you describe, where a player will purchase card with player A's token but not the card with player B's token -- that is easy to work around, as player B can just move his token to the same card as player A.

I imagine that forming such alliances would actually be suboptimal because you would be pigeon-holing yourself into buying cards that are not best for you (assuming you honour your word).  Why buy player A's card and trust that they'll buy your card when you can just buy your own card?

You're right, it's probably not bad, but it is something to consider.  It's safer just to buy your own card.  I guess what would probably end up happening is that if 2 or more players want a particular card, they rake in coin tokens while the other players feel obligated to put their tokens on that card to compete.  Maybe it's not a problem at all.

BTW, I'm guessing that often times the best way to play this card is to get it and play it once, then trash it as soon as you can.  That way you're not stuck with a terminal Copper in your deck, and you don't have to move your token around (although sometimes you may want to later; it's probably not worth keeping a terminal Copper in your deck, unless you also need the +buy).

[eHalcyon]

Right now I have it usable on any Supply pile, which means you could move it to Provinces in the mid-game.

[Destierro]

DonaldX has gone to great lengths to minimize the effect of politics on Dominion. There are only 2 cards with politics in the entire game[masq and embargo], all attacks effect everyone equally. The card seems to be too weak to want to play it more than once. +1$ and a buy in order to have to move the token from its previous (most likely good) spot? Not worth it unless your opponent switches strategys. I think this card would just accelerate the game, where the tokens get put on silver / power 5$s in the early / mid game and province duchy at the end.

[Warfreak2]

I don't think this card is more political than Embargo; for sure there are more than two official cards which enable multiplayer politics, Possession being the most obvious one. I lost a political game because of University, someone else decided to end the game on piles in 2nd place, instead of buying Province/Duchy and taking 1st place (they were sure I would win the game on my turn, and for some reason preferred 2nd place ahead of me rather than 2nd place behind me with a chance of 1st if they were wrong).

[Awaclus]

DonaldX has gone to great lengths to minimize the effect of politics on Dominion. There are only 2 cards with politics in the entire game[masq and embargo], all attacks effect everyone equally.

Except Militia only hits players with 4 or more cards in hand (true for most discard attacks), Bureaucrat only hits players with Victory cards in hand (true for Cutpurse), Witch sometimes doesn't deal Curses to everyone if the Curse pile has too few Curses (true for all cursers), Minion can help another player get rid of five Curses or make them discard 2KC3Bridge (it's possible that you've seen those hands with Cutpurse or Bureaucrat), Swindler can replace one player's Peddler with a Province and another player's Province with a Peddler, Thief can make one player trash a Copper and another player trash a Platinum (true for other Thief-like attacks), Spy can make one player discard a Curse and another player discard a Possession (true for other Spy-like attacks), Fortune Teller usually helps people with no Victory cards or Curses and hurts people who have them, you can let other players gain good cards with Jester and gain bad cards yourself, Knights doesn't hurt players who have a lot of Fortresses or Feodums in their decks or players who have a Golden deck, that's also true for Saboteur and also, playing a Saboteur can make the first players on the receiving end of the attack gain the remaining few popular cards that the last players now can't gain, and Rabble helps people who have Ruins or Coppers on top of their decks and hurts the others. Therefore, all attacks in the game are political, and in addition to this, Moat and Lighthouse make them even more political.

[eHalcyon]

DonaldX has gone to great lengths to minimize the effect of politics on Dominion. There are only 2 cards with politics in the entire game[masq and embargo], all attacks effect everyone equally. The card seems to be too weak to want to play it more than once. +1$ and a buy in order to have to move the token from its previous (most likely good) spot? Not worth it unless your opponent switches strategys. I think this card would just accelerate the game, where the tokens get put on silver / power 5$s in the early / mid game and province duchy at the end.

This really depends on how you define "politics".  Most of the cases that Awaclus describes are not what I would consider to be political.  Do they effect people equally?  When I play Militia, you aren't affected if you only have 3 cards in hand while another player has to discard.  However, we could also say that Militia caused everyone to discard down to 3, therefore affecting everyone equally even if some didn't actually have to discard to reach that limit.

Anything with choice that can affect other players CAN be political, e.g. Spy (as Awaclus does point out).

As for the latter criticism -- if you only play it once, it ends up a dead card in your deck.  Is that worth it?  But I disagree -- you'll want to move it to whatever you're going to buy so that you can proc the effect yourself.  Silver isn't purchased THAT much in most games, and many strategies involve multiple different cards.  Some of the strategic choices it presents are:

- Is it worth picking up, or is it better to skip it and pursue another strategy directly?
- Do I put my token on Silver?  A power $5?
- If my opponent's token is on a card I want, should I still buy that card?

The question is whether these are interesting things to have for the card.  I think so.  But if you disagree, I'd like to hear more about why.  Does it really seem so traight forward to you?

[Awaclus]

This really depends on how you define "politics".  Most of the cases that Awaclus describes are not what I would consider to be political.  Do they effect people equally?  When I play Militia, you aren't affected if you only have 3 cards in hand while another player has to discard.  However, we could also say that Militia caused everyone to discard down to 3, therefore affecting everyone equally even if some didn't actually have to discard to reach that limit.

Of course it's not political after you've played it, but you can choose to skip playing it when someone you don't want to attack has 5 cards and another player has three. Yeah, I don't think I've ever done that or seen that done, but it's technically possible.

[Davio]

Not all politics is in the Attack cards.

Just the fact that you're playing with more than 2 automatically makes it political.
Let's say you're losing and can end the game whenever you want. You can just wait for your friend to be in the lead.

Out of the attack cards, Pillage is probably the most political.