Well! We haven't been there for a while, guys! Covid-19 and all slowed down expansion releases between Menagerie and Allies and thus this thread gathered dust in-between. Still, let's be hopeful! 2022 is a damn good year for Dominion, and we already have an expansion this fall queued up. In the meantime, let's revisit Allies.
ALLIES CONTEST
Allies has two obvious big mechanics, and I'll argue favorably for a third one as well. We got:
- Liaisons & Allies. Cards that can yield Favors, or Landscape cards that use said Favors for miscellaneous uses. Normally I'd say you could design a pair of these, but I'd really prefer if you could design either a Liaison card or an Ally. It's less taxing for the judge! Besides, if I really like your Liaison card but not your Ally, then you did yourself a major disservice by designing two cards!
- Rotating split piles. These are pretty hefty. I also had to judge Traveler lines earlier in this thread during the Adventures contest, rargh! Still, if you feel creative, go for it! Just... be careful to not fall into "too convoluted" territory here. Judging 4 cards not only for what they are, but how they interact with each other is tough, so uh, try not to shrink the font on these cards, okay? Thanks!
- Recursive cards. Cards that find ways to be played more than once per turn, like Student can. You can also design a Duration card that can be played every turn. Be it because it moves somewhere on its Duration turn (your discard pile like with Highwayman, your hand, onto your deck, etc...), or because it replays itself somehow, conditionally or not. Hireling wouldn't count, by the way. I do not think cards like Merchant Camp are recursive enough, we saw stuff like this before with Scheme.
So uh, there are other "themes" in Allies, according to DXV himself, but I'm not so sure we should focus on them. Ex: Choice cards. Yes, this is a heavy aspect of Allies, but it was also a big focus in Intrigue, and I do not think it's sufficiently unique for us to submit cards using that mechanic.
EDIT: Remember that we are doing a SET EXPANSION contest! This means, do not incorporate any mechanics from other expansions in your submissions. No Horses, no Night cards, no Tavern mat, etc etc...
Judging will be done on the 12th of July 2022 (2022-07-12). Happy contest y'all!