Sorry I have been out. My stomach decided it did not like its contents for a while there.
I will get back on schedule this Thursday.
Leper Village looks very strong. It's possible that +2 Actions +1 Buy +$1 would alone be an ok $3 card. Probably weaker than normal Village most of the time, but not all of the time. It would be a really good $2 anyway. Here you have that plus a discard attack. While it's only discarding 1 card, you should be expecting to play 3 of these every turn before too long, assuming some sort of draw engine is available.
I think you drastically overestimate its strength.
Remember that +buys more than any other vanilla benefit have diminishing returns, so the first Leper Village that you play is a very weak Attack with a pretty good on-play, but the second and third Leper Villages are better Attacks with weaker on-play effects, and the fourth and on are unlikely to have an Attack attached to them at all and those +Buys are likely to be worthless sans cost reduction.
And at that point it's stronger than Militia's discard, because it discards 3 cards instead of 2. I'd think it would at least need to be $4. With the built-in buy you don't want it to be that easy to buy up a bunch of these.
This is patently untrue. Leper Village hits thrice, but you have not taken into account that players have larger hands. Even if you play a full suite of 3 Leper Villages, you have rendered other players to the best 3 of 6 cards which is quite a bit better than the best 3 of 5. Don't forget that
Militia would have knocked players down to the best 3 of 6 cards immediately rather than costing 3 slots in your hand.
The more Leper Villages you have in your deck, the higher variance your turns are going to be as is the case with all splitters that do not draw cards. You end some turns playing 2 or 3 Leper Villages with no terminal Actions to play, at which point, you likely have no use for the +buys and you by definition had no use for the additional +actions, meaning you basically had a bunch of crappy vanishing Coppers that at least reduced the hand size of other players (assuming that really mattered).
Seems to me the main problem with Hideout is how wordy & complex it is (then again, my fan cards are often guilty of the same thing).
It reads as complex, but boils down quickly because it is semantically simple. "Take your choice of benefits from a fixed discard, which are trashing and the vanilla benefits other than +card. Discard this to draw a card and ready your Hideout in your deck." It is not insignificant, but in the hands of experienced players (i.e. players who can process Dominion: Adventures) it has not proven to be much of a problem.
I think Hideout's "put this anywhere in your deck" isn't great. You're allowed to count your deck, but not allowed to look through your deck. So I guess you can spend time counting and putting it exactly 6 cards from the top; or 2 cards from the top, etc, but that seems like some unnecessary analysis paralysis. I think it would be better if it just automatically went on top of your deck or something.
Usually players do put Hideout on top of their deck. The exception is when a player has terminal draw in their hand and don't want to draw the Hideout with it, which is trivial to avoid and makes discarding Hideout feel less bad. You are discarding a $5 buy after all.
And I wouldn't think it's a card you can just buy as many as you want of, because immediately after playing it you can't have more than a 4 card hand, which makes it bad for some things.
You would not think, but my recent testing has put Hideout/Big Money in reasonable contention with
Wharf/Big Money.
Also, I think its reaction should be "When you discard this when it isn't your turn", otherwise, you can easily set yourself up for a big hand next turn and the card looks strong enough without that ability.
The above would make Hideout significantly weaker and might be worth doing, though I worry that would increase its not insignificant processing since you have to remember its Reaction only triggers on other players' turns. I only recently have been testing Hideout in Big Money and its effectiveness is undeniable seeing as it is basically better than
Vault until it starts choking on Victory cards, but can get +Buys when it needs to pick up Estates.
It might just need to lose the Reaction and get card drawing on the list of options.
For most of these effects, i feel there should be a special card type. Like Events, just for effect affecting the entire game, without the need to put some card effect on them.
I think many of the cards are extemely complex, and some make it far too obvious that the "in games using this" effect is mostly for the card itself (and possibly a few other cards). Actually, i feel a lot of them are mostly meant to interact with specific cards existing, and while i tried to make that kind of cards myself in the past (with the main idea being to push or harm existing cards) it's not a very good design guideline.
Either way, i like the 6 card hand idea, for example. I just think such grave effects should rather be on their own cards, well visible and besides the supply, so you're less likely to miss out on them. This would also make a good test for whether the effect is too specific: If i wouldn't want it to be a, let's say, "Circumstance" card, because there are too few cards to interact with it, maybe it's not worth being printed the way you do it, either. Because, hey, you could just as well hardcode the interaction in the play effect directly.
The only cards that could have their "in games using this" effects hard coded onto them are:
Arcanum, but that would make the card significantly stronger in the presence of actual trashers since it could run out of Curses to put into players' decks and then it just becomes a stupidly powerful
Laboratory, so the card's power is much more even by using an "In games using this;"
Architect, but that would require an additional exception clause for its interaction with Coppers, so an "In games using this" is ultimately a simpler way to make it function;
or Missionary. Hey, I could see the argument for Missionary's "In games using this" being placed explicitly on the card, but that reduces other fun interactions that occur in games that can gain and trash Silvers (Informant, Patrol, and War Flag all make Missionary's "In games using this" a particularly wild consideration to your strategy in Dominion: Greed alone).
These more situational "in games using this" effects are sure to have a card that interacts with them by placing them on a card that cares about its effect, and the less situational ones still have a card that functions more interestingly for its presence. +1 Card each turn is a mildly interesting effect, but it really only changes valuation when you have cards that explicitly care about hand sizes and Leper Village is just that. +1 Buy each turn is a mildly interesting effect and Street is a card that can really only survive because of it.
There are advantages to not tying the effect to a particular Kingdom card, but I do not think they outweigh the benefits to necessarily having cards that make those effects matter.
Another idea that you might like more: How about having the "game-altering" effect on a single cards and mention using that card in the kingdom card's setup? This way it's easier to see and memorize the effect, the kingdom card becomes more simple, and you could even use the same "circumstance" on more than one kingdom card. It takes up a single slot, and admittedly, you'd have to design something for this new kind of card, but as your effects are far more complex than Duchess' simple gaining question, i think they should get their own spot in the kingdom. I think it's natural to go the same way events went for on-buy.
The card does not actually become more simple, it just means you have to look somewhere else to see its full effect. This idea I think is slightly better than the Circumstance cards, but it is very different than what Dominion: Greed is currently doing. Leper Village and Street are likely the only "in games using this" effects that would be reasonable to see on multiple cards.
If you are so worried about forgetting the "in games using this" effect, set the randomizers for the offending Kingdom card out in an "in games using this" row. Same effect, fewer components.
Having tried out quite a few of these, most are pretty fun and change the game in interesting ways - especially Countess and Tanner. Historian is a great Library variant.
Glad you are enjoying them.
The only issue my group has run into is with War Flag. Specifically, the rare interaction between itself and Swindler (or Saboteur) when there are also duration cards around. Turning someone's Laboratory into a Duchy is already pretty nice; being able to trash a Hireling or Wharf on top of that when they gain the replacement card turns already player-annoying cards into table-flippers.
Firstly, Duration cards remain in play in order to remind players of their effects: The presence of the Duration has no baring on whether or not the effect occurs. You could choose to trash your own
Wharf from play the turn you played it and will still get the +2 Cards, +1 Buy your next turn.
Secondly, this issue is a discrepancy with the wording of the card. It is supposed to trigger "on buy" not "on gain" (and is written as such below the image).
It had "on gain" on it for a very short while, but it was turns to "on buy" due to any tricks or cards allowing players to gain $5 cards in the middle of their turn being unnecessarily neutered (
Count,
Altar, and
University, come immediately to mind). I must have put "on gain" into the editor on autopilot. Thank you and this will be corrected shortly.