But while adding more mechanics to a card makes it more strategically rich, it takes away from the simple and elegant design of the card.
Comparing two variables on Appraiser is much more complex than comparing against a fixed list. The sample I posted gave +3 of any given benefit because it's easier to remember.
Part of the suggestion was also to strip the clumsy VP tokens from it that are certainly making it less elegant. Whatever you want if you're attached to having one card that uses VP tokens in an incredibly niche way.
Sacrifice and
Bishop cover much of the "+VP for trashing" concept and in a more compelling way, the former adding other tempo-trashing options and the latter focusing strictly on the VP-tokens.
This way, my opponent will never get a Witch themselves, out of fear my Informer hits it, hehehehe!
Yes, obviously I won't be stupid and not buy any Actions when Actions are good. The point isn't that I buy only money, it's that I play a more money-centric strategy: BM+
Gear is pretty fast, but other things could be faster. A player taking Informers will make their deck weaker against BM+X strategies because failed Informers are really bad, so if you are buying Informers I'll lean more into good money strategies if they are available. Additionally, because it targets the player to your left, multiplayer games get strongly political as Informers also counter Informers.
Informer won't always be beaten by any given BM+X, but any chance of pushing the game in that direction is too much as far as I'm concerned.
[Duality]’s a Village that does not look like a Village at first glance. But it is. It’s a Village where the +1 Card is going to be an Action card.
It seems both time consuming and complicated if you're worried about beginner players parsing card text, let alone that it has a +Card
and +Action hidden in that paragraph. It would be much easier to understand if it put the card into your hand and gave you the +2 Actions directly.
I imagine it is strong, but even if I am wrong I would not want to play a game with a large number of Dualities being gained. Similarly time consuming cards like
Advisor and
Hunting Party are not cards you are gaining in multiple just because you need them to play additional Actions.
Pretty sure that [Arid Village] is too weak. Snowy only hurts non-terminals, i.e. you can play your Smithies afterwards. Arid on the other hand hurts all drawers, i.e. your villages and your Smithies.
I think fundamentally you just can't play Arid Village in a drawing-engine, which makes it quite unique. Certainly among my favorites here since it requires you build your deck so differently when it is relevant.
About Suburb: Couldn't the wording be simpler? For example: 2 Suburbs you have are worth 5 VP together (round down).
A snappier wording might run into issues. If I have 5 Suburbs and each Suburb tells me I get 5VP for 2 Suburbs together, do I get 10VP per Suburb for 50VP (because the Suburbs are each giving me 5VP/2 Suburbs)? The longer wording is more specific and thus preferred.
This comes down to the matter of semantic complexity versus word complexity. More words do not make a concept more complicated.
I like Suburb.
[House]’s an almost Conspirator-like behaviour.
I think we have a fair number of cards really incentivize laying down strings of cantrips, let alone that cantrips are often better than stop-cards generally. I might like House better if its benefit were flipped and it instead gave a stronger bonus for having fewer cards in play. It is likely roughly on-par with
Squire (
Squire's primary advantage being its +Buy option), so I would guess it balanced enough as is.