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[brian22]

These are two fan cards I've been working on, thought they would be cool. Anyway...

Siege
Cost: $4-5
Treasure-Duration

Worth $1 now and your next turn.

--------------------------------------

While this is in play, in your opponents buy phase, cards cost $1 more.


Great Warrior
Cost: $?

+1 card. Each other player discards an action card from their hand (or reveals a hand with no action cards).

How do you think these would do, and what should they cost? Thanks.

[ftl]

Hmm. Siege seems comparable to cutpurse - the 'cards cost 1 more' is pretty similar to 'discard a copper'. It's more potent in the late-game when there might be +buy around and when the opponent might not have copper.

In the early game, it's a little worse than cutpurse because it's +1, +1 instead of +2 up front, and because the duration can miss reshuffles; but it's a little better because it's a treasure and so doesn't collide with your other opening buy.

Seems plausible at 4, possibly on the strong side. Probably on the weak side as a 5, I think 4 is good. You should playtest how it plays if you do simple stuff like Smithy-money with sieges being taken instead of silvers when ever possible, how much does that get in the way of an engine trying to set itself up or something.

Great Warrior I worry a little about. It hits in two ways - it messes up their hand AND makes them trash a good card. It hits harder than Saboteur AND cutpurse COMBINED; they lose a card from their hand which is probably way better than a copper, and they trash a card without getting a chance to gain something instead of it. They may, if they have more than 1 action in hand, have a choice of what to trash, though. At the same time, Great Warrior gives you a benefit (albeit a meager one, +1 card, but still). But the catch - it only hits people going something other than BM.

I suspect that if this costs any less than $6, it would force the game into BM+X in any situation where the engines aren't super-dominant, and sometimes even when they seem to be. So try $6.

[DStu]

I think the problem with Siege is how it scales in multiplayer and/or played in multiples.  I think Donald (or rinkworks) mentioned problems with these kind of cards, because once you have 4 player playing them each round, things get nasty.
Cutpurse has diminishing returns as the probability that you can hit another Copper decreases each time you are hit (and usually also as the game evolves), but this one has not.

It's not throneroomable which is a good thing, maybe it even works, but I would definitely test it with 4 players, or find a hack that it works different there...

Great Warrior I would try with "discard" instead of "trash". Is probably nasty enough, and if that works you might try "trash", but I don't think this is fun. At least, like Saboteur, give the possibility to replace by some lower cost card.

[brian22]

I think the problem with Siege is how it scales in multiplayer and/or played in multiples.  I think Donald (or rinkworks) mentioned problems with these kind of cards, because once you have 4 player playing them each round, things get nasty.
Cutpurse has diminishing returns as the probability that you can hit another Copper decreases each time you are hit (and usually also as the game evolves), but this one has not.

It's not throneroomable which is a good thing, maybe it even works, but I would definitely test it with 4 players, or find a hack that it works different there...

Great Warrior I would try with "discard" instead of "trash". Is probably nasty enough, and if that works you might try "trash", but I don't think this is fun. At least, like Saboteur, give the possibility to replace by some lower cost card.

Thanks for the comment about Great Warrior, I'll change that. Also, even though I have come up with these cards, I can't really playtest them. I guess I need a little help there. But thank you for your comments!

[pst]

I think the problem with Siege is how it scales in multiplayer and/or played in multiples.  I think Donald (or rinkworks) mentioned problems with these kind of cards, because once you have 4 player playing them each round, things get nasty.

Maybe it could be

  While any Siege is in play, cards cost $1 more in the buy phase of a player who doesn't have a Siege in play.

instead, without any accumulation.

[AJD]

I worry about "all cards cost $1 more" card concepts because it seems to be they create unresolvable rules paradoxes. Suppose your opponent plays a Siege and then you play a Highway. How much do Coppers cost? Would the order in which the cost-alterers were played matter (even if they're "while in play" effects)?

[GendoIkari]

I think the worry about Siege is that it's a treasure; meaning fully spamable. I have a feeling that buying as many Sieges as you can possibly get will always be a good idea. Just imagine for a moment that you are able to play 3 Sieges every single turn (which could only happen if you have a good drawing engine, and your opponent ignored Sieges). You have $6 plus whatever other money you got that turn. Your opponent has minus $3... that's pretty significant. You could bide your time building up such an engine; your opponent might already have 3 Provinces by the time you get it; and it won't matter, you will easily buy the last 5.

I think it could be a Terminal action though.

[DStu]

I think the worry about Siege is that it's a treasure;

Oh, that was not my worry, I didn't realize... But yes, now that you say it it is really a problem, this has to be a terminal I think.

[brian22]

I think the worry about Siege is that it's a treasure;

Oh, that was not my worry, I didn't realize... But yes, now that you say it it is really a problem, this has to be a terminal I think.

Thank you again. Maybe it should be "Now and at the start of your next turn: +$1" Is that good?

[DStu]

Thank you again. Maybe it should be "Now and at the start of your next turn: +$1" Is that good?

Edit: Thinking about it I think you already have understood this. But now it's written, so anyway...

The problem with it being a treasure is that you can play many of them without problems, even easier as if it is an action that gives +1action.

Consider the strategy where you buy a Smithy/Councilroom and otherwise just Sieges. You can now play the drawer each time it's in your hand, and when you do it's quite likely that you end up with 2 or more Sieges, which more or less destroyes you opponents turns. If it was a terminal, it is much more difficult to play more than 1 per turn. As Siege can get problematic when stacked, you at least want to make the stacking as difficult as possible.

Siege being a Duration kind of makes it more difficult, because you can at most play it every second turn, even in a perfect engine. But it being a treasure makes it easier, because you don't need that perfect engine, just something that let's you draw many cards, when they are in your hand there is nothing that prevents you from playing them.

Beside form the non-commutativy problem Gendolkari mentioned and scaling in >2 player I would guess that at $5, Siege might maybe be a balanced card (for 2 player), it can be a nasty, stackable attack, but it's a huge investment to reliable play 2 or more of them every turn, you have to buy 4 $5-cards whose non-attacking benefits are about the ones of a terminal Lighthouse without the defense, and you need the engine or trashing to draw and play them. When they are treasures, you don't need the engine, terminal draw is enough, and it's easier than to invest in the Sieges.

[petrie911]

I worry about "all cards cost $1 more" card concepts because it seems to be they create unresolvable rules paradoxes. Suppose your opponent plays a Siege and then you play a Highway. How much do Coppers cost? Would the order in which the cost-alterers were played matter (even if they're "while in play" effects)?

I would say that all cost changing effects are applied simultaneously.  Then, if the result is less than $0, the cost is set to 0 because of the "but not less than $0" clause.  That would be the simplest way that would cause the least confusion.

[rinkworks]

Siege seems fine to me.  You do have to worry about multiples in play and how to resolve combos with other cost-changers, but I've played quite a bit with this card and enjoy it just fine.  The stacking problem is certainly an issue, and I don't think I'd have wanted to publish it if I were Donald, but as a fan card for my gaming group, it works just fine.

I missed the first version of Great Warrior you had up, but the current version ("+1 card. Each other player discards an action card from their hand (or reveals a hand with no action cards).") still has problems.  First, it doesn't help you at all.  The +1 Card just replaces itself in your hand, and now you're down an action.  Having +1 Card is better than not having it, but nevertheless the full game value of the card rests entirely on the attack portion, which is only the case with the official cards in two special situations.

But the main problem is that the existence of an attack like this promotes boring money play.  An attack like this is pretty significant, as most of your key cards are going to be actions, and so to avoid getting burned by it, you're simply going to forego actions and buy money.  So games using this card are liable to degenerate into simple Big Money races even if no one buys the card.   Because the moment someone starts building up an interesting action-heavy engine, his opponents are going to pick up one or two of these to counter.   And certainly they won't buy these before anybody tries to build an action strategy, because then they'll be dead cards.

In a nutshell, even though the card itself is interesting, games using it will tend not to be.  This is probably why there are official cards that punish money strategies (Cutpurse, e.g., and maybe Tribute) but none, really, that specifically target action strategies.

[GendoIkari]

Siege seems fine to me.  You do have to worry about multiples in play and how to resolve combos with other cost-changers, but I've played quite a bit with this card and enjoy it just fine.  The stacking problem is certainly an issue, and I don't think I'd have wanted to publish it if I were Donald, but as a fan card for my gaming group, it works just fine.

But your card is a terminal action. If you wanted to play multiple per turn, you'd have to combo it with a few other things. Siege being a Treasure makes playing multiple per turn way easier than your card.

[rinkworks]

You're right; I missed that.