I really like the concept of trade tokens and what you've done with them here. If you somehow published this expansion I'd buy it (of course I might start using the cards anyway, published or not).
Thanks again for testing Investment! If you want to test any of the others, please do. The more playtesting the set gets, the better it'll end up being. It already has way more outtakes than cards, so it's been in development for quite a while.
I think the Fund could use clearer wording. It's hard to tell if you get still the $2 from the fund on the turn that you trash it in addition to the silver.
I agree that it would be nice if this were clearer. It does still give you the +$2. It's definitely something I would put in a FAQ, but I'm not sure how I would change the card wording itself. Suggestions are welcome, but I'd rather have a clean, concise wording than a messy one.
Hard to tell how well the Barrister/Domain cards would work. Have you tested the Barrister much yet? It would clearly scale in power with number of players, but probably not too much. Is there any reason that you left Domain at $0 cost? Even though it isn't in the supply, it would seem appropriate for it to have a higher cost.
I've played Barrister in a handful of games now, but it's one of the cards I need to playtest the most. I could increase Domain's cost. Really what that would do is encourage you to trash it with Remodel, etc. Which I'm not sure is something I want. It's definitely not off the table, though. It might be cool to shake things up by starting everybody with a $4 card. I'm actually liking the idea more as I think about it.
Dignitary looks especially interesting with a unique mechanic on top and a reaction that works especially well against axeman (like Secret Chamber's reaction works especially well against Swindler and Sabateur). I look forward to finding out how it works in a game.
I'm glad that you like Dignitary's top. Back when I posted just that part to a thread a long time ago (as Valet), people liked it but thought it should cost $3 or even $2. Looking at it, it appears to almost be a weak Steward. But once you start playing it, you realize how much more powerful it is than either +$2 or +2 Cards. So it's sort of, "Come for the Reaction, stay for the Action."
Why is exchange when buy, but the other trade token cards when gain?
Probably because you can use Exchange to trash, gain an Exchange into your hand, trash something else, gain an Exchange to hand, etc. I personally think it would be fine on gain (since you have to have fuel to trash to get each Exchange), but I can understand why you might prefer to have it be on buy.
The reason it's on-buy is Fortress. With Fortress, you can run out the entire Exchange pile in one go (and keep all those Exchanges, too!). It's not often I'll nerf a card because of a single interaction. I'm not nerfing Mill Town just because of Tactician, for instance. But I feel being able to automatically run out an entire pile like that with just a 2-card combo is too crazy.
My thoughts on the set as a whole (trying to keep this as concise as possible): I like it a lot and compared to official expansions, I think it would rank as my 2nd-4th favorite (somewhere in that range). I don't think there are any "problem" cards in the set (too weak or too strong or too uninteresting cards), which is something I don't think can be said of any official expansion (except maybe Guilds, though it's all subjective anyway), so that is very good. The one-shot theme is very clear and well-executed, and many of them are done in unique and interesting ways.
Thanks! I appreciate it. It's easy to look at my own cards and think, "Man, maybe these actually suck." This kind of encouragement keeps me going.
Gambler is one of my favorite fan cards ever. I also like General a lot, I love throne room variants in general (no pun intended), and have always wanted a good $5 TR. General not only fits very well into the set by comboing with one-shots, but it's also still a pretty reasonable $5 TR even on boards without one-shots.
Thanks! General is pretty new, so I hope it works out. Seems like an appropriate $5 cost, right? The main thing I worry about is its complicated interaction with one-shots that draw (Gambler and Vendor). Play General, play Vendor, draw two, trash Vendor, put Vendor on deck. Then play Vendor again, drawing that same Vendor and another card. Then you can play that same Vendor a
third time, but this time the General has lost track of it, so you don't topdeck it when it leaves play. If it turns out to be too crazy, I can change General so that it only topdecks the card if you discard it from play, though obviously I want to keep the one-shot interaction if possible.
I don't like Floodgate, though I'm not quite sure why. It makes sense that the way to do a "one-shot" victory card is to give it an on-gain effect, but for some reason I don't really like it. If you leave everything else as is though, I feel like it should cost $3 and not $4. The thing is, if I buy it with $4 to set stuff aside, and that stuff would have given me at least $1, why didn't I just buy Duchy? So I'm sure you've playtested it and found that to not be an issue, but I'm at least interested to hear your comments on it. It's at least nice for stopping terminal collision.
Generally, if other players don't buy a card, I change or scrap it. A few cards that are still in the OP died for that reason. Floodgate is probably the card my playtesters buy the least that I refuse to scrap. It's one of my favorite cards and I think it has a lot of value for advanced players, but that value is subtle. The cool thing about it is how many different tricks it can do, not all of which are obvious.
* You can save unspent coin for the next turn. Why would you do that instead of buying a Duchy? Maybe you'll afford a Province next turn. Especially nice if you have $7 to spend.
* You can salvage dead Action cards. Say you play a Smithy and draw a Village and a Smithy. Man, put those into your next hand.
* You can make Victory cards miss the reshuffle. Whenever you have fewer than 5 cards in your deck during your Buy phase (like when you've drawn your deck), you can leave Floodgate itself and up to 4 other cards out of your deck.
And that's not to mention any card-specific combos. Think about how it interacts with various gainers (Workshop, Mill Town) trash-for-benefit cards (Develop, Exchange), and discard-for-benefit cards (Cellar, Lodge).
Investment is really cool, and you probably don't need me to tell you this, but you should playtest it A LOT. Of course it's fine if there are some boards where it's dead and others where it's nuts, but it potentially seems like the kind of card that would either be dead on way too many boards, or nuts on way too many boards. If it turns out to be too weak I think just giving it +$x and +1 buy on play would help "make up" for having gone out of your way to get it. If it turns out to be too strong it will be very hard to fix.
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.
About Craftsman gaining trade tokens:
...
There's just something that doesn't feel right about having only a few cards in all of Dominion that make use of a certain mechanic, and then having them combo well together because of that shared mechanic. Most cards combo well together because of their difference in mechanics, because they complement each other by doing different things, and this also creates a lot more diversity in potential combos (all disappearing actions potentially combo with draw-to-X cards, that's a lot more combinations than if, say, all draw-to-X cards comboed with draw-to-X cards). So with all that being said, I have no idea if there's any reasonable fix, I like Craftsman as it is, as well as the other Trade token cards, and having them use different colored tokens is impractical. I just wanted to share my thoughts on that issue.
Thanks, but I'm not too worried right now. As long as the cards can stand on their own and aren't broken together, I like that there are cool interactions between them. And this sort of rare interaction does already exist in Dominion, for what it's worth. Butcher can play a lot differently when there are other Coin-token cards on the board. You're much more willing to use it for huge upgrades.
I think it's worth saying that I didn't create Craftsman specifically so that it would combo with these other cards. It was just a cool thing I could do with Trade tokens. Also note that even without Craftsman, you have these sorts of combos. You might buy Jubilees because they're a cheap way to get Trade tokens for Lodge.
I agree that it's cooler to have combos that you can discover rather than ones that hit you over the head. But I think Enterprise has plenty of subtle combos too, and that those aren't lessened by having some blatant ones. And what's obvious to one person may not be obvious to another.
If you do manage to get the set published, I would certainly buy it (even with no changes from how it is now). I think your cards are definitely at the quality of official cards, but I don't know what would go into arranging a deal with RGG. Good luck if you eventually decide to go through with that!
Thanks again! If I were to try to get it published, I'd be going through Donald first. For one thing he owns the rights to Dominion, but much more importantly I can't imagine trying to go over his head. He's always been there with answers to questions about rules and Dominion's design considerations. Without his secret histories and other essays on Dominion, there is no way this set would be as good as it is.