Reanimate$4 - Action Trash a non-Duration Action card you have in play, for +1 Action and +$2.
For the rest of this turn, when you trash an Action card, Exile it.
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Except for some Actions you don't need anymore after some time (Chapel, Moneylender, Spice Merchant, etc.), I think trash an Action card is more a cost than a bonus. As you already spent an Action to play Reanimate, what you get by trashing an Action card is and transform other Action cards trashed this turn in a kind of pseudo-Fortress (which have to be released from exile). To chain many Reanimates exiling all but the last, gaining for each, doesn't seem to be so much better than play a serie of Stockpiles and has the same limitation, it can't be done anymore when pile is out. In some situations (like TFBs) the pseudo-Fortress feature would shine, but I think many times you wouldn't use it and would end up trashing an Action card to get only a non-activated Mystic playing, which could be a bit weak.
Reanimate has other limitation: If kingdom doesn't have Villages, it can't trash terminals. (edit: after post this, I saw that others cards of this contest that trashes actions in action phase and aren't villages themselves have the same limitation, so maybe it's not a problem).
I wanted to have a card with the following features: 1) make (other) Action cards one-shots (
“trashing” effect) and 2) make Action cards subsequently “immune” to trashing (
“recovery” effect). You have correctly pointed out these features. That the
“trashing” effect is often a drawback was on purpose with the intention that the subsequent
“recovery” effect provides the real benefits. In this context, please note that Reanimate can also trash itself as a last resort.
Before I presented the current version of Reanimate I had a “myriad” of precursors. Some of the differences were a) giving +2 Actions (instead of +1 Action), b) being a Remodel variant for the
“trashing” effect, c) put the subsequently trashed cards into the discard (instead of Exiling them) as
“recovery” effect.
Going through all those versions I encountered various problems until I ended up with the current version. As you have analysed this in great detail, it could well be that when I addressed those issues that I finally ended up with a version that is too weak or too “niche”. With a refreshed look at it, thanks to your input, I may just change the
“recovery” effect back to a “discard” effect instead of “Exile it”. In fact, I have figured out a new way now to avoid the “devastating” effect of Exiling the cards and a potentially overpowered “immediate discard them”, by
temporarily setting the trashed cards aside:
Reanimate$4 - Action Trash a non-Duration Action card you have in play, for +2 Actions and +$2.
For the rest of this turn, when you trash an Action card, set it aside and discard it at the start of Clean-up.
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Edit: I gave
+2 Actions upon trashing instead of
+1 Action. With just
+1 Action as bonus, a line up with other cards is relatively difficult as there is no card drawing included in the trashing benefit.
How does this look?
My rational behind this:
A Kingdom without any support for Reanimate should be fairly rare. Nevertheless, a Reanimate self-combo with two copies of it is still fairly easy. This would resemble a non-terminal +$4 one-shot, which doesn’t look too bad.A Village variant, which should be present in a lot of Kingdoms, would already enable quite beneficial combos, e.g. with Smithies.Edit: Not relevant anymore with
+2 Actions instead of
+1 Action.
The presence of Remodelers, of cards giving benefits when trashed themselves or of one of the few “Gravediggers” in a Kingdom would let Reanimate really shine. Most potential craziness is avoided by the “set-aside” clause. This feature was the important part that I missed when coming up with the version of Reanimate I presented.
Thank you very much for your thoughtful analysis. I appreciate it very much!