Back on the subject of Riches, I've been thinking of running simulations* on it. It's slow as just a "Buy nothing but Riches and Provinces" strategy (17-26 turns to get 5 Provinces,) but then maybe there are cases where, say, maybe Workshop + Riches (Edit: it's faster, about 13ish) is broken OP. Also I found that if you introduce Platinums and Colonies, it's pretty easy to collide two Riches and at least one Copper or +$1 Action to get a Platinum while simultaneously removing lesser Treasures from the mix.
I've also tested Riches at $6, that makes it almost too slow to use; the only major benefit here is the aforementioned Platinum strategy.
Bear in mind as well that the thing with Riches is that you can't play it on the same turn as you play any treasures (Golds, Platinums) that you might actually want to keep.
In practice, though, the main feedback I've got with it recently is that it sort of feels like a Chapel that you can later get rid of by buying a Province. Possibly this is super strong.
*Note, these are manual simulations using python code, not the cool automated "play 10,000 games" simulations. I'm looking into how to set up Riches as a card on one of those.
I haven't yet tried the "cost it at 6 and make it give $5" angle yet, that might be better.
In other news, I'm trying the following crazy ideas:
Shipwreck - Action - $2
+2 Cards
+1 Buy
Gain a Discovery onto the bottom of your deck. If you can't, trash this and gain a Treasure onto the bottom of your deck.
Setup: Add the Discovery Kingdom pile to the Supply
I'm also testing replacing "gain a Treasure" with "gain a non-Victory card" or "a card costing $6 or less." This also might need to cost $3.
Boulder Trap - Trap - $4
-1 VP
When you discard this, the player to your left gains it.
-
When you gain this from the Supply, gain a Silver onto your deck.
The "gain a Silver onto your deck" all but fixes the drawback of randomly finding early Boulder Traps. This version also rewards you for building engines to help give it away more effectively. Antiquities as a whole tends to play towards some sort of Big Money ("Green and Gold") strategies so I'm fairly okay with this.
The method of giving it away seems to be lacking somewhat, although it works. One of the cool things about this version is it's better to give away the trap than to trash it; we had some fun coming up with strategies to most effectively pin the trap on the other player. The best, of course, is to make sure that you pick up your whole deck on the final turn
.