I think it's time to announce my winner! First of all, I want to thank everyone who participated in this weekly contest of mine. Despite the difficulty of the challenge, many of you rose to it and presented some creative tokens and cards. While some entries didn't quite match the guidelines I set, I thoroughly enjoyed pondering every entry.
Before I make the announcement, I would like to contribute my own take on my challenge. While I couldn't enter my own contest for obvious reasons, I did want to show at least one of the ideas I came up with. And since it's not an official entry, I'm breaking my own rules and presenting
four cards that use my token (sorry I don't have an official-looking mat like Kudasai and Fly-Eagles-Fly):
Crafters
Token
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Once per Buy phase on your turns: You may remove tokens from this to gain a card costing up to $2 per token removed.
Holiday Village
Action - $4
-
+2 Actions
Reveal the top card of your deck, then put it into your hand. If it's an...
Attack card, gain a Curse.
Treasure card, gain a Silver.
Victory card, +1 Crafter.
$0-cost card, you may trash it.
Tailor
Action - $4
-
Gain a card costing up to $4. If it costs less than $4, +1 Crafter.
Con Artist
Action/Attack - $5
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Each other player reveals the top three cards of their deck, discards one of your choice, then puts the rest back in any order. +1 Crafter for each differently-named card revealed by the player to your left.
Factory
Action - $6
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+3 Crafters
You may not play any more Actions this turn.
-
While this is in play, when you gain a card using Crafters, you may gain a second card costing up to $1 per Crafter used.
Any feedback on my ideas is always welcome.
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And now, the moment you have all been waiting for! After considering each set of tokens and cards for the creativity of the token and how well the cards fit with it, I have selected a Top 5 (because narrowing it down to 2 was just too hard, and there were so many that I wanted to compliment). From fifth to first, we have:
5th Place: Gubump's Grant and Endurance-
My favorite of the entries with a single card. Quite a neat idea to have a token be able to turn a regular Action into a Duration. A powerful token indeed, softened by Grant's one-shot nature. I would like to see more cards that grant Endurance.
4th Place: hypercube's Science set-
Science is perhaps the most creative token idea of the contest. It effectively turns a potentially dead card into a Laboratory. The cards that gain Science tokens fit the Science theme rather nicely and would potentially make good Science targets themselves.
3rd Place: Fly-Eagles-Fly's Plots set-
Complex perhaps, but I like it like that. The tokens can be strong but the mechanic incorporating the card's cost helps keep this from getting too nutty. The cards themselves have some neat effects and complement the Plot tokens nicely.
And now, the top two. This was
really difficult; I kept going back and forth between these two as the winner and runner-up. Ultimately, my decision is...
2nd Place: Kudasai's Stores set-
A token-esque version of Pirate Ship, but so much better and more intuitive in my opinion. Plus, the cards that went with it had very creative uses of the Stores mat itself.
THE WINNER OF THE CREATE-A-TOKEN CONTEST IS... VIOLET CLM's MUTINEERS SET!-
I fell in love with this the moment I saw it. First, of all of the token ideas I came up with on my own, not a single one of them had a negative effect. As soon as I saw what Mutineers do, I just had to yell, "Why didn't I think of that?!" The nautical-themed cards themselves fit with the Mutineers theme quite well, too. I especially love Diving Bell as a combination of Attack and Mutineers abettor. Still, I do have some confusion over how to spend the Mutineers. At first, I read it as you have to use an Action to do so. Also, make sure it's clear that you must discard a card when you want to rid yourself of a Mutineer. Other than that, though, I had to give this the win due to the cohesiveness of the entire set.
I look forward to seeing what you have in store for the next challenge, Violet CLM. And once again, thanks to everyone for your entries and your comments. I had a lot of fun with this, and I hope you all did, too. See you for Challenge #6!