Ah, Fragasnap, would that I had more +1s to give you. Thanks again for playtesting my cards.
I've played some games with Clerk. Clerk is probably one of the best $2 cards in the game. It's not Fool's Gold good-- you're not going to lose because you didn't get enough Clerks-- but it's easily better than Hamlet. You used the example of how Vagrant never hurts a deck: That's true, but Vagrant misses a lot more than Clerk and has a much smaller benefit (and especially a less visible benefit).
It is a fun and powerful card at $2, but I encourage increasing Clerk's price up to $3. It would harder to buy but will still be competitive in that price bracket.
Well, as Donald has said, if you can price a card lower without breaking it, do so. That's not to say that Clerk isn't too powerful for $2. Maybe it is. I'm having a heck of a time coming up with good $2 cards, though. I agree that it
could cost $3. If I come up with some more good $2 cards and I need a $3 card
OR if Clerk at $2 eventually proves to be too crazy, I will bump it to $3. It sounds like it hasn't yet led to degenerate games for either of us, though, so I could be happy with it just being a higher-end $2 card.
Jubilee I'm not such a fan of. +2 Actions is something I want to use repeatedly and Jubilee won't let me do that. There are also very limited instances when I want Silvers to disappear from my deck. It will be cool in the games you can buy Jubilees as one-shot Silvers to enable other Trade token cards, but I'm not sure their sustainable enough.
Sure, that's a good call. Jubilee hasn't had that much testing yet. I'm hoping it's worthwhile as a supplemental village/Silver in a deck that already has some other villages/Silvers. But that may not be interesting enough to justify the card. I'm only counting it as half a village as far as set composition goes. Mill Town (1) + Terrace (1) + Jubilee (0.5) + General (0.5) = 3.
I've played with Redistrict. This one I really like. Redistrict I think is best for trashing $4 and $5 cards while building which is really cool since few other trash-for-benefits really work that way. Redistrct can be used to grab $5 and $6 cards with $4 and $5 cards respectively and that can be really strong. I especially like the ability to gain a Gold and a $7 or a $7 and a Province in applicable games. The only thing I would question is again, its price. In the cases where I did bust open my Redistricts, I often had only $2 so it often seemed best to immediately replace my Redistrict. If it cost $3, trashing it would be a harder decision. Though, collecting them by Redistricting Estates would be easier... the cost for trash-for-benefit cards are weird.
It's not…ideal when you trash a Redistrict only to buy another one. But on the other hand, I don't think it's that rare for one-shots. It's not that uncommon to play and then immediately buy a Feast/Island/Pillage/etc.. And yeah, the cost of trah-for-benefit cards are weird, and the cost of one-shot trash-for-benefit cards are even weirder. As I've detailed earlier in the thread, I really don't want to cost Redistrict at $3 because then you can use it as a Remodel for Estates just by running out the Redistrict pile. Play Redistrict, trash Estate, gain Redistrict, trash the Redistrict you played, gain $4 card. It could cost $4, but honestly I think it might be stronger at that price. At $2, it's at least impractical to try a "Turbo Redistrict" strategy.
I've played with Barrister\Domain, but only 2-player games. This one I do not like. Barrister has an interesting sort of mini-game to it in that it becomes practically impossible to hit other players' Domains after the earliest portion of the game, but Domains are just better Coppers in your deck, so stealing them isn't all that great anyway. I do like that one cannot simply trash Domains in Barrister games since Barrister pulls Domains out of the trash regardless of whether it trashed them or not: That's a nice design touch. The big issue I have is that in multiplayer games, I think it is going to be way too swingy. I usually play 3-player games and the opportunity to pick up 9VP from stealing cards from other players (even using an admittedly weak card) is so swingy that I do not appreciate the sound of it. Just the same, it's a very cool idea and well designed card. I'm not going to really knock it, I don't like it much personally.
Well, I definitely think it warrants more testing, especially in 3 and 4-player games. I'm not sure it's going to be all that common in such games for one person to end up with all of the Domains. The more someone has, the easier it is to steal one. I really like the idea of a card that you can only get from other players and I think Domain is probably the most elegant way to do it. I'm starting to really like LibraryAdventurer's suggestion of raising Domain's cost, though. I think it may make Domains more desirable (for their TfB uses) and make them matter in more games. At first I was thinking $4, but that's probably too much swinginess in terms of whether you line up your opening TfB card with your Domain, especially Redistrict. $2 is dull; just another Estate-cost card in your starting deck. Probably I'll try it at $3.
I've played with Mill Town. I stand by Mill Town being ridiculous in any game one can increase his hand size consistently. I love the card to death, but recommend adding a trashing clause like Horn of Plenty's.
You could still be right about that. It will be nice if it doesn't need that clause, but it may very well be necessary. I haven't tested Mill Town all that much lately, so I have no new data on its ridiculousness.
Committee is a decent bit of player interaction, but I'm not a huge fan. I have an extremely similar card that rather than copying or trashing one of 2 cards copies a found card costing from $3 to $6 which I think is more fun since a player can control it with deck manipulation cards. Dropping Duchies on top of the deck explicitly to copy them makes a player feel clever. Still, Committee's trashing is really good at $4, so I wouldn't mind if both my card and your Committee appeared on the same table.
Committee's first version was actually closer to your card, but with the player interaction instead of the cost restriction. It was "Reveal the top 5 cards of your deck. The player to your left names a card. Gain a copy of a revealed card that isn't the named card. Discard the revealed cards." For $5. I found that way too often, you'd be revealing a bunch of dreck and one good card. So it sucked unless your deck was already awesome. It went through a bunch of iterations. Long story short, it's currently as you see it. I think you can still get value out of deck manipulation with Committee. Hopefully you'll like it more if you try it out.
So far I like it a lot in the playtests it's had. It can be powerful, but you need to manage your deck carefully. One of my playtesters bought a few in a game with Haven. He got some early trashing in, but then kept revealing Haven and another card. I kept choosing Haven, so he kept gaining them. Man, you only want so many Havens.
Terrace is alright. It provides a much needed Village variant with a worthwhile, unique benefit. Have you considered letting it gain 2 Trade tokens instead of only 1? It might make it interact more interestingly with other Trade token cards.
I actually recently had a game with Terrace and Tinker (no longer pictured), where it was way too easy to rack up Trade tokens just by gaining Terraces (with Ironworks). Now I've already swapped out Tinker, so maybe that particular issue is already fixed. But my point is that when you want Terrace as a village, you probably want a bunch of them, in which case you're racking up quite a few Trade tokens automatically. And although I haven't yet playtested the new version of Terrace (with the flat +5 Cards), I think its token ability is on the weak side compared to some other Trade token cards. So I think even at one token per Terrace, you're getting that interaction pretty frequently. At two, I fear it would get crazy pretty quickly.
That's not to say that I couldn't have some other card that got you two tokens when you gained it. It would probably have to be a less spammable card, though. There's not much opportunity cost for stocking up on Terraces in most games.
I've played with Vendor and I love it. It is so much better than Enforcer. No complaints with this one.
Thanks, I strongly agree. Enforcer had been around forever, but I finally had a 4-player game where it was just obviously too obnoxious.
I've played with Investment. Investment is really nice with a $2 cantrip but I think is not viable otherwise. It simply costs too much-- both price and momentum since you don't get to play the card you're setting aside (and playing the card makes it significantly more complex to resolve which I don't appreciate). I like the idea of it giving coins. +$3 would make it almost a no-brainer with a $2 cantrip, but would make it so much more attractive with $3 and $4 cards.
I'm going to try it at a lower cost, I think. $4 is obviously a candidate, but I don't think you want to open with it or buy a bunch of them, so honestly I could try it at $3 or $2. If it's still needs a boost at a lower cost, I'll give it +$X or some other bonus.
Have you considered a card that lets you draw by expending Trade tokens? There isn't a Coin token card that does that so I think it would be sufficiently different.
I'm glad you asked this question. I've been deliberately avoiding doing Trade tokens for +Cards because of the large potential for disappointment. Mostly when you spend Trade tokens, I want you to know ahead of time what you're going to get. Jubliee --> it doesn't get trashed. Exchange --> gained card goes into your hand. Lodge --> +$X where you know what X is going to be. Terrace is the odd one out, but the idea is that you'll use it when you draw Terrace with no other Actions to use it with. It's likely that you'll like your new hand better. Anyhow, if a card let you draw cards by spending a Trade token and you drew a bunch of crap or dead Actions, you'd feel like you wasted your Trade token, and that's something I want to avoid. The closest I had was this:
Types: Action
Cost: $4
You may spend a Trade token. If you didn't, discard 2 cards. +4 Cards.
But I didn't way a bunch of terminal discard-then-draw in the set, and I like Wheelwright better.
I don't like Refurbish. It is a good and simple way to get the concept to work, but it is so incredibly off theme that I cannot associate it with the rest of your set.
I don't like Convocation very much because it is off-theme and I feel too often practically better than Laboratory. It's a fine card and a good way to do non-terminal draw.
Well, I understand that you aren't really a fan of off-theme cards. If I had to scrap two cards from the set to make room for other cards, these two would be them. But that being said, I think there's room for a few off-theme cards, especially in a 25-card set. Especially because I feel you can't just have a full-sized set chock-full of one-shots. I like having a non-terminal draw card in the set (that you don't have to trash to get that draw), and I have yet to come up with a good Trade token (or otherwise on-theme) version of such a card.
If I think of another good theme that complements the one-shots and can accommodate the types of cards I want to fill out the set, I'll do that. Honestly, the set already has sort of a sub-theme of Copper-related cards (Clerk, Mill Town, Wheelwright).
I do like how Refurbish combos with Fund, but that's really the only thing tying it to this set.
I was actually a bit worried when you said you were expanding the set and working with tokens, but now I don't even know why. I cannot wait to see what else you do with this set!
Thanks! I hope I don't disappoint you. Right now I'm struggling for more ideas, but I tend to find them eventually.
It would be really tricky to make the one-shot worthwhile without making the card too powerful when paired with strong trashers. You could make a case for writing Feast this way, to remove the unintuitive interaction with Throne Room while making it more appealing on Chapel boards, but that's a topic for the other thread.
Yeah, this is a good call.
It's unambiguous, it's clear to anyone who's played with Counterfeit, and a whole lot less confusing than TR / any one-shot. If it turns out to be an issue, maybe "While this card is in play, you may trash it" makes the order more clear?
"While this is in play" doesn't really work as a trigger, because it doesn't specify whether you can do it in the middle of resolving another card, etc. But I think you're right that it's unambiguous and doesn't need a change. The FAQ can clarify for anybody who's confused.
Yeah, that combo is bonkers. Getting three uses out of every Embargo you play could also be aggravating, and it might run out the tokens too quickly, but I can't think of any other cards you really have to worry about.
Hmm, that's a good call with Embargo. Especially since I use Embargo tokens as Trade tokens!
It may be that I'll have to take out the one-shot synergy after more playtesting. Hopefully not, but maybe.
If I need to buff it, my top two ideas at this point are reducing its cost to $4 and/or making you play the Action card before setting it aside.
I like that second one much more. It saves you a lot of AP, and makes it viable on a lot more boards. Of course, if Investment turns out to be terribroken as is, that might not be a good thing.
I also like the "play it first" option except for the fact that it makes it not work with other one-shots because the Investment will lose track of the card before it can be set aside. Maybe that's not a big deal. Investment itself is a one-shot and with that change it would kind of make other cards into one-shots. And as you say, it saves a lot of AP, particularly when you have another terminal in hand you'd like to play.
Oh, also, I love your thoughts in the Conscripts Reaction thread. I haven't replied there yet, but I really appreciate the ideas. Hopefully I will yet fit such a Reaction into this set.