This thread of existing Card Bugs provides some evidence/context for this discussion:
http://forum.shuffleit.nl/index.php?topic=1226.0
Excellent, I like evidence, much approved. Maybe what we can learn from this list is how
subtle some cards and interactions are, which is different from how much
effort it took to implement them. This is a list consisting only of bugs that were
not caught before the cards were released—we can't really know from the outside how many Possession bugs were discovered and fixed before Shuffle IT went live.
Here's my take on whether the bugs are due to the cards inherently presenting either deeply tricky issues, many finicky issues or otherwise demanding lots of effort and thought:
- BoM/
Overlord bug (VP Calculations): Inherent to BoM/Overlord/plays-as-another-card
-
Blessed Village (Boons out of turn): on-gain abilities and gaining cards on someone else's turn, not inherent to Blessed Village.
Ambassadoring a
Border Village is the same kind of timing; the Boons deck is new, maybe attribute this to the boons deck.
-
Changeling (autoplay bug): really an autoplay thing, not inherent to Changeling, though Changeling is probably unique in having an on-
gain exchange ability (the others are on-discard on Travelers and on-play on Vampire/Bat.)
-
Crumbling Castle and
Haunted Castle: finicky timing and UI issues, landmarks.
-
Fool: purely a UI issue.
-
Governor: seems like a simple mistake rather than Governor being hard.
-
Inheritance (with Fortress): sounds like it might be related to the essentials of Inheritance. Maybe half a point to
Fortress as well.
-
Inn: really about
Possession.
-
Magic Lamp: seems to be about tricks in relation to double-playing cards and is maybe mainly because Magic Lamp is new? Let's give a full point to Magic Lamp and half a point to Crown and Counterfeit. And maybe action-throners are hard as well for the same reason, except they've already bug-fixed that by now? I notice there's no bugs about Tragic Hero, another conditional self-trasher.
-
Possession (UI stuck): yep, that's Possession being long-haired for you.
-
Prince (with Scheme): yep, that's Prince being tricky.
-
Quarry (cost-reduction with Inheritance): that's really about Inheritance.
-
Royal Carriage: yup, that's about the essentials of Royal Carriage being tricky to get right in all cases.
-
Sauna: that's really about autoplay.
-
Scheme: that sounds like a poor UI but no rules misinterpretation? If you play Village, Wharf, Scheme, go to cleanup phase, you should be able to choose Wharf with Scheme even though that doesn't do anything, right?
-
Small Castle: seems like a simple oversight.
-
Stonemason: a scenario is made impossible by an unfortunate UI choice; it's only relevant thanks to a quirky interaction between Villa and Storyteller.
-
Temple: I'm not sure whether to attribute that to Temple being tricky or an only-very-bad Dominion AI being tricky. I think Vault had a similar soft lock bug a while ago and Vault wasn't on any one's list of tricky cards.
-
Villa: going to your action phase with pending effects being resolved in your action phase, yeah, that's Villa being sneaky.
-
Wall: hard to reproduce, so it's hard to judge.
Cards with 2 bugs due to inherent finicky-ness: Possession, Inheritance.
Cards with one such bug: BoM/Overlord, Prince, Royal Carriage, Villa, probably Magic Lamp, somewhat Scheme, maybe Stonmason, arguably the Boon/Hex mechanic.
The rest I counted as minor bugs and simple oversights, not due the card in question being inherently complex.