Hey guys, let's brush the dust off this thread and bring it back to life, shall we? I was on vacation for a few weeks and then had no internet at home for another two weeks but I kept developing new concepts, discarding old ones and play-testing like crazy. I took out the following cards:
Blackmail: It's similar to Ambassador, not too similar in my opinion, but with the new terminal-Silver Demagogue, I found a more interesting junking attack for $4.
Market Town: The old version looks crammed and the reaction is similar too Horse Traders. I tried another reaction with less text but it turned out to cause a loophole with Ironworks (which I should have seen coming). I want to bring MT back but I need a new idea first.
Mandate and
Courier: The original idea was to have a crossover between Throne Room and Band of Misfits, which was problematic in many ways and the resulting cards I tested turned out to be fiddly, clunky and nigh impossible to balance. I have other, simpler ideas for TR variants which I will present soon.
Siege: Adventures showed how duration-attacks should be made to be reasonable and interesting. Siege is two or three concepts glued together that make the card unnecessarily complicated and clunky. I dropped the case completely.
Before I show any new cards, let's have a look at some tweaking I made recently:
Robber Knight, $3+, Action
+2 Actions. Gain a Ruins. If you do, gain a Gold.[/hr]When you buy this, you may overpay for it. For each $1 you overpaid, look through your discard pile and trash a card from it.
This version works out great. From my experience so far I can deduce this: (1) Robber Knight accelerates games significantly, which means that making gaining the Gold conditional on gaining the Ruins hardly matters, because when the Ruins pile is empty, the game is close to ending anyway. And (2), Robber Knight is a very good card for $3. My friends like it but suggested it costs $4. I am reluctant to raise its cost because I like having the option of overpaying on a 3-4 opening to trash a card before the first shuffle.
In the game we played (3 players) I bought 4 or 5 RKs and played them a lot and also overpaid a lot to complement the trashing from Count. I still only won by a Duchy. We had 4 Provinces each, although one friend only had two RKs so it could not have been the only decisive card (which leads to the assumption it's balanced in power). I probably just won because I played a little better.
Demagogue, $4, Action/ Attack
+$2. Each other player names a card and discards the top card of their deck. If it’s not the named card, they gain a Curse.
With LFN's suggestion, this should be a fun and not too harsh attack.. My friends liked it and wanted to play with it, but we didn't get to it, yet. I think it's cool like this and look forward to testing it.
Valorize, $7, Action
Put a Valorize token on a Kingdom card pile. Trash a card from your hand and gain a card costing up to $2 more than it.[/hr]A card’s cost is permanently increased by $1 per Valorize token on its Supply pile.
Valorize (formerly Capitalize) is now an Expand variant that allows you to build stacks on Kingdom cards but remains a Remodel for basic Supply cards. Since it's so expensive and slow but increases in power over time, it probably justifies a game with Colonies.
That's it for now. I would appreciate your feedback. New cards will follow soon.