Pheasant/Chef
Great payload potential but with deceptive snags, mainly with how Chef loves Gold and Platinum but Pheasants aren't going to get them so it'll be awhile before you do. Nice, but double Pheasant opening could be automatic in some games, almost like Quarry at $3 with an extra Buy; my main concern is the strength of this in building speed, despite the later game setbacks.
I definitely put Pheasant at $3 so that Chef would commonly be uncovered. The question really is if piling Pheasants immediately will typically be the right thing to do because of Chef's combo with it, and if doing so doesn't result in an interesting game state. I was focused on the complexities of building with Pheasant and then timing throwing them away (with Chef particularly) moreso than the question of whether or not your want to buy Pheasant. I mean, you don't usually ask if you want to buy
Goons either. A bump up to $4 might be better for the health of the game (especially since that would make Pheasants will be more limiting for buying other Pheasants), but I'd err on the side of too little before too much.
Also, it's a bit much to consider Pheasant like
Quarry at $3 with an extra buy.
Quarry with a +Buy sort-of provides +$5 for buying Actions, while Pheasant is +$3 for only Actions no matter what.
Pirate Island
Types: Victory
Cost: $8<2>
Worth 1VP per different cost of the cards in your deck.
In order to buy this, you need 2 Buys.
Heirloom: Pouch
The different costs guarantees this is worth 7VP. It becomes 8VP with a $4 Kingdom card, and everything else is edge cases. I'm not sure how much I like it because, like
Fairgrounds, it adds so many more VP to the board that it can make games seem endless. Any other consideration aside though, the Heirloom reuse is clever.
Paper Mill
Types: Victory
Cost: $3
Worth 1VP for every 2 tokens on your Villager mat more than the player who has the fewest tokens on their Villager mat (rounded down), but at least 1VP.
Setup: Each player gets +5 Villagers.
This may cause endless games, e. g . with Necromancer and Acting Troupe.
Necromancer\
Acting Troupe\Paper Mill Sounds more circuitous than
Bishop\
Fortress,
Bishop\
Graverobber,
Bishop\
Lurker,
Bishop\
Rogue,
Bishop\
Treasurer,
Patron\Paper Mill, and, well,
Monument.
Paper Mill only increases in VP if you can outstrip another player's +Villagers. If there is no way to produce +Villagers, then Paper Mill provides +3 Villagers for free, and you can still use the rest of the Villagers if doing so allows you to end the game. Otherwise improving other players' Paper Mills from 1VP to 2VP probably isn't typically worth +2 Villagers.
I'd consider having Paper Mill produce Villagers in some fashion, but that could give it a fairly dull play pattern in comparison to the dynamism of depending on other Villager producing cards and otherwise being an odd free source of +Villagers.
Promenade: Treasure-Victory, $3
$1
+1 Villager
1 VP
I feel like everybody doesn't like
Coin of the Realm. This tastes so similar that I'm not a fan.
Construction Site
Types: Victory
Cost: $4
At the end of the game, just before scoring, players with Construction Sites may exchange them one at a time in clockwise turn order, beginning with the player to the left of the player whose turn the game ended on, for any card in the Supply.
Ignoring any wording issues, I've played with effects like this before (called them End cards that were played in a special End phase). It's a fairly limited shape of thing with a complex rules overhead, so I ultimately dropped the concept. This probably has big scaling issues since 4-player games so commonly end on piles.
Oil Painting
Cost: $4
Types: Victory
Worth 2 VP + 1 VP per Project you have bought.
Setup: Add a Project to the kingdom.
You could probably simplify this as 2VP per Project you have bought. It might be more compelling if it was worth 2VP per Project you haven't bought, but then it would be worth 6VP in games with 3 Projects, which probably isn't reasonable.
That's a very good point. Let's say that in the hypothetical world where this is available as a promo, it comes with an extra set of cubes.
Somewhat amusingly, the rules are more explicit about you having 2 cubes for Projects than playing with only 2 Projects. I wouldn't recommend changing that.
Frontier
Types: Action, Victory
Cost: $6
+1 Action. Put a card from your hand face down on your Frontier mat.
Worth 1VP per differently named card on your Frontier mat that the player to your left does not have on their Frontier mat.
The cap of Frontier is typically 16VP, but it will definitely be dragged down by the Scattergories thing. My big concern is the left-right binding here.
Possession and
Smugglers' turn order issues have nothing on Frontier's. I'd much rather it care about the "differently named cards that no other players have copies of on their Frontier mats."
This indirect usage of Villagers is a very cool idea that avoids outright brokenness via endless token accumulation.
I wouldn't worry about the "outright brokenness via endless token accumulation" unless the card itself is a great source of tokens. The only non-combo infinite sources of +Villagers are
Exploration (which is super slow) and
Patron (which reads very similarly to
Monument if there is a card that cares about the number of tokens you have on your Villager mat), and anything that is a 3-card combo has plenty of 3-card combos with which to contend.
Outskirts
Types: Action, Victory
Cost: $4
+1 Villager
Worth 1VP for every 3 Action cards without +Action amounts in their text in your deck (rounded down).
This ought to be 1VP per 4, to avoid comparing too well to
Silk Road.