CONTEST 63 RESULTS
Since all eyes are on the Menagerie preview today, this leaves me a little bit of breathing room to properly judge the entries for this week’s contest.
Note however that my analysis may be imperfect or outright flawed. If you have any disagreement with my comments, if there is something I didn’t see with your card or even if you want to counter argue with the points I layed out, please, feel free to do so. I’ll take any help I can to improve my judging skills! If you want to talk about the results and stuff, I dunno if this should be done on this thread or elsewhere; I’ll let the elders of this thread decide! But yeah, overall, this is my first time doing this, so bear that in mind. Also, if you guys made edits and I completely missed them, by all means, let me know!
Anyhow, onto the judging:
Tiara (Treasure)
+1 Buy
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When you discard this from play, if you have unused Buys, trash this.
This’ll give Harem and Hoard (two usually “meh” cards) some company up in the
Kingdom Treasure cards club! This probably does what it aims to do well, although I’d probably be tempted to get this over Gold most of the time. Hey, at worse, it’s 2 Estates, no? Then I get to keep this! There has been countless times where I’ve had the dreaded Silver-Silver-Gold hand, which only gets me to
. The versatility brought by Tiara makes it almost too exciting, even if you want to dilute your deck with Coppers to keep this. Plus, it is an excellent contender for Counterfeit. Still, nobody likes to have a
investment trashed, so the consequence of not taking your extra Buys is pretty harsh. All in all, I think this card has a right to exist and probably makes your life easier when you use it.
Beast (Action)
Reveal any number of cards from your hand. If their added cost in is exactly , gain a card costing up to per card revealed. Discard the revealed cards and draw until you have 6 cards in hand.
Holy mother, this one does everything! It’s a sifter, a gainer and a hand-size increaser. And there’s a lot of strategy involved here. Most notably, the dissonance between the number of cards revealed and their cost. I like that the combined price of the reveal cards must be
, no more, no less. This is a very smart way of limiting where Beast can take you. Technically, you could reveal Coppers to increase the cost of the card you’ll receive, which is a pretty neat strategy. Likewise, if this is a Curse or Ruins game, their null cost means you can reveal more cards for a more expensive gained card. So Beast gives some usefulness to those very cheap cards. However, you need to have a big hand size to reveal enough cards to gain a more expensive card. It being terminal too makes me suspect that most of the time, you’ll only reach for a
or
card. In which case… shouldn’t you just Cellar then Workshop for a similar effect? You can always open Cellar/Workshop and are not limited to the puzzler of discarding cards that add up to
.
Lone Knight (Action - Attack)
+
Each other player reveals the top 2 cards of their deck, trashes any costing from to and discards the rest.
Yup, a Knight that escaped from the Knights pile and decided to create its own Kingdom pile. This one is worth
more than (almost) all of the other Knights, because it gives
more than Dame Sylvia AND can potentially trash 2 cards from your opponents, not just 1. That last point is why it irks me though. Getting 2 cards trashed from an opponent is not really fun. It can potentially kill your deck at incredible speed. If you didn’t set up your deck correctly, and if you are playing a game with multiple opponents, then Lone Knights can kill your deck quicker than you can build it back up! There is also a reason why Knights get trashed if they reveal another Knight; to potentially stop this endless cycle of trashing and deck annihilation. Here, a Lone Knight can just trump everything. And even if you add that self trashing clause to Lone Knight, then why invest in an unsafe
card? At
, you do not want to buy something that can just vanish from your hand, out of randomness.
Bridge Builder (Action)
+3 Cards
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While this is in play, cards costs less, but no less than .
Edit: So I completely overlooked this entry when I did the judging yesterday. You done did it, X-tra! Shame too because I love the simplicity and elegance of this card. It is a Smithy that costs more because of the cost reducer aspect. I was thinking that this was overpriced somewhat, that it should’ve been a instead, but that’d make it only more than Birdge. And “+3 cards” is an effect that should, in my opinion, at least be worth over a “+1 Buy, +”. So the pricing here is justified. Big Money goers will probably take this at least once over a Gold when they hit , since it gives them their much-needed Smithy and tosses in a neat bonus that works for them. Maybe at their 2nd or 3rd Gold purchase, they’ll opt for a Bridge Builder instead. Which fits right it in the spirit of this contest! So a pretty cool card that could probably find a spot in an actual Dominion box.
Real Estate Agent (Action)
+1 Card
+1 Action
Discard a card from your hand. If it was a victory card, +1 Coffers for each it costs. If it was a Treasure card, +1 for each it costs.
Once you start buying Provinces, this card says: +1 Card, +1 Action, +4 Coffers. Get 2 Real Estate Agent (they cantrip, so you can play 2 per turn), discard 2 Provinces and you’ll happily afford another. I feel like that part is awfully strong compared to the
per Treasure part. Maybe this card should’ve been a simple +2 Cards (or +3 Cards, not unlike Nobles)? More chance of getting something to discard, no +Actions to chain these powerhouses.
Study Group (Action)
Gain an Action card costing less than this. For each it costs less than this, +1 Villager.
First of all, maybe I’m missing something, but is the “less than this” statement necessary there? You are already gaining a
or under card, soooo... Anyway, this card is an Altar that gives Villagers instead of trashing a card. But you can go up to 5 Villagers. As opposed to trash 1 card. Are those 2 effects worth the same price? I don’t believe so... I think that Study Group is stronger than Altar with that clause.
Edit: I was indeed missing the point of this, like the big doofus that I am. Freddy10 helped me understand what I was missing. You gain as many Villagers as the difference in cost between Study Group and the gained card. So at worse, you'll gain 1 Villager and at best, 6 Villagers if you junk yourself with, say, a Copper. Still, I think my initial commentary stands about how I see this card. Battleship (Action – Duration)
Now and at the start of your next turn, + and +1 Buy.
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While this is in play, when another player plays an Attack card, you are unaffected by that Attack.
Here, we have a Merchant Ship that that grants an extra Buy for 2 turns, with a Lighthouse tossed in. For
more than Merchant Ship, I believe that this card is correctly priced. I… don’t really have more to say about this? This card is fine. If I have
in play, I’d actually be torn between getting this or a Wharf. If there are a couple of Attacks in the Kingdom, then I’d probably go for Battleship.
Army (Action – Command)
Choose one: Put a non-Command Action card from your hand onto your Army mat; or play all cards on your Army mat in any order, leaving them there.
A card named Army’s got to be big, epic and serious. And this is a big, epic and serious card! Militia thematically sounds lesser than the big monster that is Army and this is reflected when you compare those 2 cards’ cost. This is just me talking about the name of this card, but I can’t help but love it, lol.
So first of all, I agree with all the changes you’ve applied to this card. I think this card could’ve benefited from rejecting Duration cards on the Army mat too. There’s a case where you could play an Army and have unresolved Duration effects queued for your next turn on your mat. On that very same turn, you could play another Army (if you have another Action to do so), to add another Duration card on your Army mat. Then, on your next turn, it’d be hard to track which Duration cards have still-to-be-resolved effects, and which ones do not. I mean, granted, you can keep track of that yourself, but I feel like this could get messy. Otherwise, if we forget my out-of-place enquiry with Duration cards, Army is awesome! You bet I’d buy it and try all sort of crazy stuff with it!
Ruby (Treasure - Gem)
+1 Buy
You cannot buy Gems this turn.
Diamond (Treasure - Gem)
While this is in play, Victory cards cost more.
Pearl (Treasure - Gem)
You may gain a Silver to your hand.
Sapphire (Treasure - Reaction - Gem)
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When another player gains a Gem, you may discard this to gain a Gem.
Emerald (Treasure - Victory - Gem)
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Worth 2 per 3 Gems you have (rounded down).
Strong theming with this one! I love the extra effort you took to have the card type match the color of the Gem printed on the card. Reaction for a Sapphire because it is blue and Victory for Emerald because it is green. That’s really cute (in a non-patronizing way)! Faust said that Ruby looks too strong and I agree. Seems strictly better than Gold. Pearl is also too strong imo and scolapasta did a preferable take on that concept with their card, which appears further down this list. Emerald is swingy because of the randomness of the pile. Someone nabs one on their turn, then you’re stuck not receiving those sweet sweet
because the top card is now a Pearl. Then you buy a Pearl and reveal the last Emerald, ready to be taken by your competition! Castles are like that too somehow, though less random because of the set order. Diamond and Sapphire, though, to me, seems a-okay! The whole randomness of the pile makes this a little luck-based for players though. Especially getting that Emerald, which justifies some heavy-investing in Gems (unless, again, Pearl was on top on your turn!).
Creditors (Action - Duration)
At the start of your Buy phase, reveal the top 2 cards of your deck. Put any revealed Treasures to your hand and discard the rest. If you did not reveal any Treasures, discard this (Otherwise, this stays in play).
If this isn’t a card that wants a deck full of money, I don’t know what is! The idea here is really interesting. I wonder why this activates at the beginning of your Buy phase and not at the start of your turn. Maybe so you can get your deck ready in time for you Buy phase so you draw your Treasures? There are cards, like Scavenger, that can do that well. Anyway, Adventurer does the same thing and guarantees 2 Treasures. Except that this can stay longer, and does not require an Action after the first time you play it. But it can fail. And both have the same price. Seems balanced.
Horselord (Night)
+1 Horse per card you have gained this turn.
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This is gained to your hand (instead of your discard pile).
Welp, I suppose Horses are (probably) not what we expected them to be seeing as Donald confirmed today that they are cards and not token. But let’s pretend here that they act as +1 Card tokens. You’ve raised the main concern that comes with this card yourself: its Strength varies too intensively depending on what cards are available in a given game. Sometimes, you’ll have this in a game without +Buys and with no gainers. In that scenario, investing
is a really bad use of your hard-earned money. There are cards that are Kingdom-sensitive in Dominion, granted. But here, the high price of
makes that aspect even worse, imo. But, if the conditions are right, then this card could be pretty awesome, I believe. +Cards token are better spent immediately, oftentimes. It’s hard to see why you’d hold onto them, but there are scenarios where you already reached your payoff or where you’ve drawn your deck. So there is some value to those tokens.
[UNNAMED] (Treasure)
Gain 2 Silvers to your hand.
For the same price, better than Gold in the moment, worse than it in the long term (usually, because of the deck diluter aspect). This won’t be the most in-dept commentary of this post, but this is because, to me, it is fine where it is. There could be a funny variant to weaken it that could give you 1 Silver and 2 Coppers to your hand. Same net gain of
but for a more diluted deck. More consideration needed when taking this card. Just an idea though!
Sepulcher (Night - Duration)
While this is in play, at the start of your Clean-up phase, if there are fewer than 7 cards on this, set aside 2 cards you have in play on this. At the start of your turn, if there are 3 or more cards on this, you may put them into your hand and discard this.
I’m glad you changed the wording on this. Before, it was really ambiguous (as kindly put by Aquila). But I still think it’s missing the necessary “each” in the first part of this card (“While this is in play, at the start of
each of your Clean-up phases, […]”). Maybe adding an “otherwise, this stays in play” clause in the second part of the card would’ve helped too. I dunno. This card looks fun, but involves a lot of counting. It doesn’t seem like much. More than 3 cards, you may take ‘em. Less than 7, put some onto this. But... it could potentially slow the game down if each player must do some book keeping for their Sepulchers. Especially if some (or all) players have more than 1 of them in play. In a way, Sepulcher acts like a more efficient Native Village, and this is reflected by its price. I wonder what sort of crazy combos you could pull of with this! How about putting a bunch of Coppers in play under this + a Coppersmith and doubling their value the turn you pick ‘em up for an easy Province? That sounds cool!
Commissioner (Action)
Gain a non-Commissioner card costing up to . If it is an Action, Treasure, or Night card, play it.
It is true that it can still be looped, a concern raised by Snowyowl. Making it a Command type would indeed fix the potential loops. I also believe playing a Night card shouldn’t have been included. I like my phases to be clearly distinct from one another and Commissioner breaks this convention. A Treasure can be played on your Buy phase anyway, so Commissioner could drop the “play that Treasure” clause too. So all in all, I believe this should’ve simply said “Gain a non-Command Action card from the Supply, costing up to
and play it”.
But anyway. In a way, this card fits right into the Workshop “gain a
or under card” lineup. At...
: We have the Workshop itself who simply gains a card.
: We’ve got the Armory and now, the card goes onto your deck, ready to be played next turn.
: The gainer is now Cobbler, which allows you to analyze your next hand before gaining a card to it.
: At the top of the line, we now have Commissioner, who does the same as Cobbler (essentially), but allows you to play the gained card the very same turn you play this.
So all in all, I believe this to be priced correctly. It’s simple, efficient. It works.
Wizard (Action - Command)
Play a non-Command Action card from the Supply costing up to , leaving it there.
+1 Horse per +1 Card it produces.
+1 Villager per +1 Action it produces.
+1 Coffers per it produces.
(You do not get the Cards, Actions, or ).
Another Horse mishap! But that’s okay, let’s pretend, again, that they act as +1 Card tokens. Hum, this card’s got a lot going on. But the idea is pretty neat! My concern is as to what is being “produced” by a card. Vanilla bonuses are okay, that’s easy enough to understand. But when the card becomes conditional... Poor House gives you -
per Treasure in hand, is that -1 Coffers if played with Wizard? Storeroom tells you to “draw” as many card as you’ve discarded, are these draws converted into Horses? Dominion says that “drawing” is synonymous to “+ Cards”, but will that be obvious in practice? Despite my enquiries, this seems like a fun Emulator and I’d like toying a bit with it, see how far we can take it.
Bridleway (Action)
+1 Buy
This turn, card costs less, unless you’ve gained a copy of them during the turn.
Ach, I did a big commentary on Farm before you changed it, haha!
Anyway, for Bridleway: The usage of the word “unless” is strange. I could be wrong (and correct me if I am), but I believe no other Dominion card employs this word. But I get it, I’m not trying to be dense on purpose, lol. Bridleway is a cool cost reducer. Fits right into
this page for a cost reducer that does something else than what already exists. If you get some sort of Village in a game using this, I wonder what kind of ramifications playing 2 Bridleways would entitle (although, Bridleway costing
, I suppose this wouldn’t happen often). I like that card, I’ll say that much!
Semifinalists: [UNNAMED] ; Wizard ; Bridleway ; Commissioner ;
Edit: Bridge BuilderFinalists: Creditors ; Battleship
Winner: Army
Congrats Kudasai! There might be a bit of personal bias because to me, Army seems like a really fun idea and triggers that “little kid in front of a candy store” feeling. I’ll say however that it was a struggle to pick this card over the other finalists as they all charmed me so much. This isn’t fair that we’ve got to pick only one card for a winner, hahaha!
And now the anxiety of correctly doing this judging thingy is slowly fading away from my body. Oof! I need a drink dangit.