Hi everyone. I've been playing Dominion now for a few years, reading Dominion stuff online (mostly the wiki) just about as long, reading this forum for just over a week, and it's time to make my debut. Online, I've briefly played from every expansion. In person, I've played everything except Alchemy, Hinterlands, and Renaissance (between me and a few family members, we own the rest).
I've recently taken an interest in creating my own cards, which is how I got to this forum. I've read through the Weekly Design Hall of Fame, and I love many of the ideas there. I'm generally less of a fan of using new game mechanics not already in an existing expansion (which is odd, because my entry below does exactly that!), but I do like to try to fill existing gaps that haven't been fully developed. And I am starting to build my own expansion, but it will be a couple weeks until I reveal it on the forums here - I'm about 10 cards into an intended ~30-card expansion, and I want to finish them all, play-test a bit, and adjust a little before I reveal them.
Anyway, my father-in-law and I have been toying around with the concept of Sins in the fan-made expansion Salvation - negative VP tokens (the logical stepchild of Curses and VP tokens). I believe in that expansion, some cards give you sins and some take them away. But my father-in-law is looking at making an expansion that just has cards that give out sins, except for the split pile Prophet/Messiah, below. It could be added randomly to a Kingdom, as it is a supply pile. But its main design is that this would be added as an 11th Kingdom pile if any card is in play that gives out +Sins. Obviously Prophet is on top and Messiah is on the bottom (5 of each).
Old version:
Prophet
Type: Action
Cost: $2
+2 Cards
+1 Sin
You may discard any number of treasures, revealed. For each $2 they would have produced, draw a card. You may play a Messiah from your hand.
Prophet updated:
Prophet
Type: Action
Cost: $2
+$2
+1 Sin
You may discard any number of Treasure cards, revealed, then draw that many. You may play a Messiah card from your hand.
Now it's helpful to discard coppers at the chance of drawing something better (before buying Messiah), and also gives you the option to discard silvers, golds, or other treasures each for only +1 Card after you have bought Messiah.
Messiah
Type: Action
Cost: $5
If you have a Prophet in play, you may trash it and this to remove all your Sins. Otherwise, +$3
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While this is in play, you may not buy Messiah
Messiah is a terminal 5-cost gold until you match it properly. And even mid-game, you still play it as terminal gold since you will continue to get more Sins in the game and the goal is to match it as close to game end as possible. (If you match early, you may need to buy another one, if there are any left). Also, thematically, you should only have 1 Messiah, so it at least prevents the buying of another while it is in play (and in a 3 or 4 player game, it would not be good if 1 person bought out 3 or 4 of them).
But the Prophet, in a stand-alone pile (not added as 11th Kingdom pile), I think even at 2-cost this is still too weak to be worth buying. Maybe it needs different/more vanilla bonuses? Or do I make it 1-cost? But in games with other Sins being given out, you do want to buy as many of the 5 of these as possible, to get to the Messiahs quickly and increase the odds of matching Messiah before the game ends. However, it's a strategic decision of whether you discard additional treasures (giving up buying power this turn) to try and draw Messiah if you don't yet have it in your hand. I may switch +2 Cards to +$2 so it doesn't give you a free extra search for Messiah (thus forcing more decision about discarding)... but then $2 here and $3 for Messiah seems boring.
You would be fairly sure you could time your Messiah removing all Sins near end of game in Engines that draw your full deck. However, neither of these cards helps you build those engines well. Otherwise, you need to plan your deck, and the number of Prophets and Messiahs that you buy (and when to buy them) to give you a good chance of removing all Sins before the game ends.
Looking for thoughts, potential improvements, etc.
[Side note - my images appear to be huge, at least on my screen. Can someone give me advice on how to get them to a reasonable size? I downloaded file from shardofhonor's site, then uploaded to imgur and used the BBCode here]