Are you surprised with the direction cards have gone lately? I mean, did you used to think there was a more limited amount of variable cards before you found new avenues?
Uh, I dunno. Sometimes a concept is a surprise. Debt was in the file since before the game came out; it wasn't a surprise. Split piles showed up during playtesting for the set; I hadn't anticipated them.
I guess the main big surprises, in terms of like actually being a surprise, like I'm remotely thinking of it that way, are when there's a new simple card to do, that doesn't involve new tokens or something.