Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Variants and Fan Cards => Topic started by: Davio on October 03, 2015, 03:47:35 am
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Beer Wagon - Action - $4
+1 Action
+1 VP Token
You may spend any number of VP tokens. If you do, +1 card for every VP token spent this way.
Doesn't seem that original, but I haven't seen it before. $3 seems a bit too low for it.
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Possible issues with causing too much analysis paralysis; once you have multiple VP tokens, each play of the card has a difficult decision. Cool idea.
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Another possible issue is that multiple of them would be a way of amassing a good number of VPs without ever having to spend anything, and thus never push the game towards an end.
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Another possible issue is that multiple of them would be a way of amassing a good number of VPs without ever having to spend anything, and thus never push the game towards an end.
Well, Monument and Bishop/Fortress already have that issue to a certain degree and they don't see to hold up many games.
The +1 Action makes it easier to go that route, but the lack of any other resource makes it harder to actually pull it off.
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Another possible issue is that multiple of them would be a way of amassing a good number of VPs without ever having to spend anything, and thus never push the game towards an end.
Well, Monument and Bishop/Fortress already have that issue to a certain degree and they don't see to hold up many games.
The +1 Action makes it easier to go that route, but the lack of any other resource makes it harder to actually pull it off.
Monument is non-terminal and the +$2 is a significant part of the card effect, which is something you don't especially want to go to waste most of the time. Rarely you can build something like KC/KC/Monument/Monument/Monument and never want to add anything else, but it's not common.
Bishop/Fortress is a specific two card combo over two expansions, it's not really something you see very often.
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Another possible issue is that multiple of them would be a way of amassing a good number of VPs without ever having to spend anything, and thus never push the game towards an end.
Well, Monument and Bishop/Fortress already have that issue to a certain degree and they don't see to hold up many games.
The +1 Action makes it easier to go that route, but the lack of any other resource makes it harder to actually pull it off.
Monument is non-terminal and the +$2 is a significant part of the card effect, which is something you don't especially want to go to waste most of the time. Rarely you can build something like KC/KC/Monument/Monument/Monument and never want to add anything else, but it's not common.
Bishop/Fortress is a specific two card combo over two expansions, it's not really something you see very often.
Well, it's not like Bishop and Goons really contribute a lot towards the game ending any time soon if the Bishop and/or Goons player doesn't want it to end.
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Another possible issue is that multiple of them would be a way of amassing a good number of VPs without ever having to spend anything, and thus never push the game towards an end.
Well, Monument and Bishop/Fortress already have that issue to a certain degree and they don't see to hold up many games.
The +1 Action makes it easier to go that route, but the lack of any other resource makes it harder to actually pull it off.
Monument is non-terminal and the +$2 is a significant part of the card effect, which is something you don't especially want to go to waste most of the time. Rarely you can build something like KC/KC/Monument/Monument/Monument and never want to add anything else, but it's not common.
Bishop/Fortress is a specific two card combo over two expansions, it's not really something you see very often.
Well, it's not like Bishop and Goons really contribute a lot towards the game ending any time soon if the Bishop and/or Goons player doesn't want it to end.
But they do contribute, because you need to buy things for both.
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Yeah, the difference there is between the game ending _soon_ (which Bishop/Goons often don't want) versus _ever_ (which they will cause, usually).
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But they do contribute, because you need to buy things for both.
But there are so many things available that it's negligible.
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But they do contribute, because you need to buy things for both.
But there are so many things available that it's negligible.
But it's not negligible. Or are you telling me that you often buy Copper just to feed Bishop?
Goons and Bishop both encourage the player to end the game (eventually) and require progression towards an ending condition in order to produce VP tokens (Fortress and Trader shenanigans notwithstanding). Monument doesn't do the latter, but it does the former. They're also all terminal so it's tougher to make a deck that can abuse their VP production.
With a non-terminal +VP card, it is far easier to craft a deck that does nothing but play them again and again to accumulate more VP, and it is easy to get into a situation where the best option for either player is to just keep doing this instead of working towards game end.
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But it's not negligible. Or are you telling me that you often buy Copper just to feed Bishop?
No, I'm telling you that I don't have to because I can keep buying expensive cards without really contributing towards the game ending any sooner than it would if I bought Coppers instead.
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For example, look at this card:
+1 Card
+1 Action
+1 VP
With a deck of as many of these as you can get, why would you ever want to end the game? You amass VP forever, until your opponent is forced to end the game (probably for a loss).
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For example, look at this card:
+1 Card
+1 Action
+1 VP
With a deck of as many of these as you can get, why would you ever want to end the game?
Because you don't actually win the game unless you're able to end it while you have more points than your opponent. There are strategies of varying speeds, and it takes slower strategies more time to reach the point where they want to end the game. That's why it's the job of the faster strategy to end the game before that point is reached, and if it fails at that, then it was the inferior strategy. There's only a problem if
a) the strategy is so strong that it's almost always the best strategy and not particularly interesting to play
or
b) mirror matches usually result in games that nobody wants to end.
A) can be prevented by making the card balanced. Your example card doesn't suffer from problem b) either, since one player is going to win the split and eventually end the game with a ridiculously large point lead (i.e. the other player is going to resign way before that happens), or the split is going to be even and the players need to start building decks that actually do things in order to gain that VP lead.
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But it's not negligible. Or are you telling me that you often buy Copper just to feed Bishop?
No, I'm telling you that I don't have to because I can keep buying expensive cards without really contributing towards the game ending any sooner than it would if I bought Coppers instead.
That is objectively false. Copper is the biggest single pile. If you are buying from expensive piles instead, you are going to get to an empty pile more quickly than if you bought from the Copper pile instead.
For example, look at this card:
+1 Card
+1 Action
+1 VP
With a deck of as many of these as you can get, why would you ever want to end the game?
Because you don't actually win the game unless you're able to end it while you have more points than your opponent. There are strategies of varying speeds, and it takes slower strategies more time to reach the point where they want to end the game. That's why it's the job of the faster strategy to end the game before that point is reached, and if it fails at that, then it was the inferior strategy. There's only a problem if
a) the strategy is so strong that it's almost always the best strategy and not particularly interesting to play
or
b) mirror matches usually result in games that nobody wants to end.
A) can be prevented by making the card balanced. Your example card doesn't suffer from problem b) either, since one player is going to win the split and eventually end the game with a ridiculously large point lead (i.e. the other player is going to resign way before that happens), or the split is going to be even and the players need to start building decks that actually do things in order to gain that VP lead.
Except that if the split is even, it may be that the first person to deviate from the do-nothing-else strategy will fall behind and lose. This kind of situation can crop up with just KC-Monument or Fortress-Bishop. A non-terminal card that does basically nothing but generate VP makes this degenerate situation even likelier, possibly even when somebody wins the split. That's the problem.
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But it's not negligible. Or are you telling me that you often buy Copper just to feed Bishop?
No, I'm telling you that I don't have to because I can keep buying expensive cards without really contributing towards the game ending any sooner than it would if I bought Coppers instead.
That is objectively false. Copper is the biggest single pile. If you are buying from expensive piles instead, you are going to get to an empty pile more quickly than if you bought from the Copper pile instead.
Not really, because the game will end before any of the piles are empty if I'm losing, and I don't mind them being empty if I'm winning.
Except that if the split is even, it may be that the first person to deviate from the do-nothing-else strategy will fall behind and lose. This kind of situation can crop up with just KC-Monument or Fortress-Bishop. A non-terminal card that does basically nothing but generate VP makes this degenerate situation even likelier, possibly even when somebody wins the split. That's the problem.
If both players can have decks that just play 5 cantrip +VPs every turn, there's probably trashing in the kingdom, and with that being the case, you just need the basic Treasures in addition to the trashing to be able to build a deck which ends the game while beating an opponent who just plays his cantrip +VPs and does nothing else.
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Not really, because the game will end before any of the piles are empty if I'm losing, and I don't mind them being empty if I'm winning.
If you're losing, that depends on what the other player is doing. If you're winning then you are purposefully moving towards a game ending condition and proving the point.
If both players can have decks that just play 5 cantrip +VPs every turn, there's probably trashing in the kingdom, and with that being the case, you just need the basic Treasures in addition to the trashing to be able to build a deck which ends the game while beating an opponent who just plays his cantrip +VPs and does nothing else.
If you start buying stop cards, you very well may fall behind. I say again, this situation has come up in real games where you need more pieces coming together to make it happen. Somebody (Stef?) posted a log a while ago. A cantrip +VP just makes it easier.
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Not really, because the game will end before any of the piles are empty if I'm losing, and I don't mind them being empty if I'm winning.
If you're losing, that depends on what the other player is doing.
It doesn't really, since I'm already playing the slowest strategy on the board. Either my opponent is playing something faster, or he's playing the same strategy as I am but he's just ahead.
If you're winning then you are purposefully moving towards a game ending condition and proving the point.
Proving what point? That extremely slow strategies still want to end the game when they're ahead if they can? Yeah, that's the point I'm making. It supports the statement that extremely slow strategies are fine.
If both players can have decks that just play 5 cantrip +VPs every turn, there's probably trashing in the kingdom, and with that being the case, you just need the basic Treasures in addition to the trashing to be able to build a deck which ends the game while beating an opponent who just plays his cantrip +VPs and does nothing else.
If you start buying stop cards, you very well may fall behind. I say again, this situation has come up in real games where you need more pieces coming together to make it happen. Somebody (Stef?) posted a log a while ago. A cantrip +VP just makes it easier.
Right, I forgot that the trasher is still in your deck. Okay, basic Treasures aren't enough to guarantee making it work, but you really don't need a ton of support from the kingdom. You can end up in a stalemate with Bishop/Fortress because you can't have anything in that deck in addition to the combo pieces, but a cantrip +VP lets you have up to 4 dead cards in the deck without having to take even the smallest of risks, so it actually makes it easier to build a deck that does something useful.
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Not really, because the game will end before any of the piles are empty if I'm losing, and I don't mind them being empty if I'm winning.
If you're losing, that depends on what the other player is doing.
It doesn't really, since I'm already playing the slowest strategy on the board. Either my opponent is playing something faster, or he's playing the same strategy as I am but he's just ahead.
It absolutely depends on what the other player is doing. As you buy expensive cards for Goons/Bishop, you are depleting those piles, making it easier for the other player to fully empty them depending on what that player is doing. Yeah if they are going for Provinces then the game may end before any of the piles are empty. But they may be doing something else and empty piles may matter.
If you're winning then you are purposefully moving towards a game ending condition and proving the point.
Proving what point? That extremely slow strategies still want to end the game when they're ahead if they can? Yeah, that's the point I'm making. It supports the statement that extremely slow strategies are fine.
It proves that these cards encourage and enforce progression towards game end. However slow a game you can make out of Goons/Bishop, a cantrip +VP will easily and more often end up slower.
Right, I forgot that the trasher is still in your deck. Okay, basic Treasures aren't enough to guarantee making it work, but you really don't need a ton of support from the kingdom. You can end up in a stalemate with Bishop/Fortress because you can't have anything in that deck in addition to the combo pieces, but a cantrip +VP lets you have up to 4 dead cards in the deck without having to take even the smallest of risks, so it actually makes it easier to build a deck that does something useful.
With most trashers, you'll only have space for 3 cards (or else you risk drawing a hand of your trasher + 4 other stop cards). Even with 4 cards, I think you will regularly end up in situations where it's not enough to maintain a lead and end the game. To end the game, you need to be buying stuff. To keep your +VP consistent, you'll need to trash the stuff you buy. 4 cards isn't much to be doing all that.
Also worth noting, this scenario pretty much assumes a close split, as it would just be too dangerous to let someone drive the pile uncontested and do nothing but generate 10VP every turn. Don't you consider that kind of centralizing monolithic strategy to be a problem?
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Not really, because the game will end before any of the piles are empty if I'm losing, and I don't mind them being empty if I'm winning.
If you're losing, that depends on what the other player is doing.
It doesn't really, since I'm already playing the slowest strategy on the board. Either my opponent is playing something faster, or he's playing the same strategy as I am but he's just ahead.
It absolutely depends on what the other player is doing. As you buy expensive cards for Goons/Bishop, you are depleting those piles, making it easier for the other player to fully empty them depending on what that player is doing. Yeah if they are going for Provinces then the game may end before any of the piles are empty. But they may be doing something else and empty piles may matter.
What on earth would they be doing in that case, then? There are still 30 cards in the Gold pile, it's going to take a good while before it's empty. Apprentice/Market Square and Rebuild/Tunnel might empty the Gold pile sometimes, but they can do it regardless of how many Golds you've bought for your Bishop, and both can empty the Province pile so fast you probably don't have any business going for a Bishop strategy in the first place, and even if you think you can beat them with Bishop, there's still probably a bunch of different $4 and $5 cards in the supply.
If you're winning then you are purposefully moving towards a game ending condition and proving the point.
Proving what point? That extremely slow strategies still want to end the game when they're ahead if they can? Yeah, that's the point I'm making. It supports the statement that extremely slow strategies are fine.
It proves that these cards encourage and enforce progression towards game end. However slow a game you can make out of Goons/Bishop, a cantrip +VP will easily and more often end up slower.
No, it proves that being ahead encourages progression towards game end. These cards don't usually get there very fast, and that's fine. A cantrip +VP will easily and more often end up slower, and that's fine too.
With most trashers, you'll only have space for 3 cards (or else you risk drawing a hand of your trasher + 4 other stop cards). Even with 4 cards, I think you will regularly end up in situations where it's not enough to maintain a lead and end the game. To end the game, you need to be buying stuff. To keep your +VP consistent, you'll need to trash the stuff you buy. 4 cards isn't much to be doing all that.
Also worth noting, this scenario pretty much assumes a close split, as it would just be too dangerous to let someone drive the pile uncontested and do nothing but generate 10VP every turn. Don't you consider that kind of centralizing monolithic strategy to be a problem?
3 cards in addition to the trasher is a lot of cards. With 4 cards in addition to the trasher, you could do it with just the basic Treasures, but with just 3 cards, you need some support from the kingdom. There are a lot of different cards that can make it happen, though, so it should be available pretty often.
I'm assuming that the card is balanced. As long as faster strategies can end the game before you can start generating 10 VP every turn, there's no problem.
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Didn't read the whole thread, but I suspect the OP's version of the card has looping issues.
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I can tell that this discussion will just go in circles, and I'm not interested in that. Can you stall with Goons/Bishop? Yeah, and it can be slow. But a cantrip +VP will very easily get into an even slower stall with actual potential for unending games, which is problematic.
To show that this is a real concern, not something that I'm just making up, I'll leave this here:
I realized at some point that, if I had had VP tokens as a sub-theme from the beginning, I would have tried out "+1 Card +1 Action +1 VP." So I tried it. It was never slotted into the set; it was an extra card, to be swapped in if I wanted it. I didn't want it. It was okay, but not super-exciting, and had the problem of letting you build a deck that never approached the end-game condition. You know, you Chapel down to just six of this card (plus the Chapel), or whatever, and play them every turn. Bishop trashes cards and Goons triggers on buying; both mean the game will eventually end. Monument does neither, but it gives you +$2, and people don't like to just throw that away. They like to spend it. Monument did make me worry some about endless games, but it sure never happened in playtesting. But this card, bam. Then I tried a version that tried to fix that, but didn't like that version either.
Play-testing doesn't lie.
As for the card in the OP, it's not actually a cantrip +VP so it might be OK, but there is still potential for problems for sure. I think the central concept would be fine with coin tokens instead. I've given it a lot of thought before (especially when Guilds and coin tokens were revealed) and non-terminal +VP just strikes me as an all around Bad Idea. It might be workable, but I just don't think it's compelling enough to be worth the headaches.
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I can tell that this discussion will just go in circles, and I'm not interested in that. Can you stall with Goons/Bishop? Yeah, and it can be slow. But a cantrip +VP will very easily get into an even slower stall with actual potential for unending games, which is problematic.
To show that this is a real concern, not something that I'm just making up, I'll leave this here:
I realized at some point that, if I had had VP tokens as a sub-theme from the beginning, I would have tried out "+1 Card +1 Action +1 VP." So I tried it. It was never slotted into the set; it was an extra card, to be swapped in if I wanted it. I didn't want it. It was okay, but not super-exciting, and had the problem of letting you build a deck that never approached the end-game condition. You know, you Chapel down to just six of this card (plus the Chapel), or whatever, and play them every turn. Bishop trashes cards and Goons triggers on buying; both mean the game will eventually end. Monument does neither, but it gives you +$2, and people don't like to just throw that away. They like to spend it. Monument did make me worry some about endless games, but it sure never happened in playtesting. But this card, bam. Then I tried a version that tried to fix that, but didn't like that version either.
Play-testing doesn't lie.
As for the card in the OP, it's not actually a cantrip +VP so it might be OK, but there is still potential for problems for sure. I think the central concept would be fine with coin tokens instead. I've given it a lot of thought before (especially when Guilds and coin tokens were revealed) and non-terminal +VP just strikes me as an all around Bad Idea. It might be workable, but I just don't think it's compelling enough to be worth the headaches.
I don't see why it's a problem. If you have 6 of them and you manage to get ahead enough that your opponent can never catch up, he can just resign because eventually you can somehow end the game anyway. I also don't think that removing cards of the slow strategy player's choice from the supply one at a time has anything more than a negligible impact on how soon the game is going to end.
A non-terminal +VP without +cards is more likely to cause problems than a cantrip +VP, because it doesn't let you have as many stop cards in your deck.
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I don't see why it's a problem. If you have 6 of them and you manage to get ahead enough that your opponent can never catch up, he can just resign because eventually you can somehow end the game anyway. I also don't think that removing cards of the slow strategy player's choice from the supply one at a time has anything more than a negligible impact on how soon the game is going to end.
A non-terminal +VP without +cards is more likely to cause problems than a cantrip +VP, because it doesn't let you have as many stop cards in your deck.
What if we each have 5 (plus Chapel)?
Also, it's generally good game design to ensure your game will end eventually, and not force a player to resign to end it. You'll turn off a lot of people otherwise. It's the same reason you, all else being equal, want attack abilities stronger than defense abilities in game design -- you need the game to progress towards conclusions.
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I can tell that this discussion will just go in circles, and I'm not interested in that. Can you stall with Goons/Bishop? Yeah, and it can be slow. But a cantrip +VP will very easily get into an even slower stall with actual potential for unending games, which is problematic.
To show that this is a real concern, not something that I'm just making up, I'll leave this here:
I realized at some point that, if I had had VP tokens as a sub-theme from the beginning, I would have tried out "+1 Card +1 Action +1 VP." So I tried it. It was never slotted into the set; it was an extra card, to be swapped in if I wanted it. I didn't want it. It was okay, but not super-exciting, and had the problem of letting you build a deck that never approached the end-game condition. You know, you Chapel down to just six of this card (plus the Chapel), or whatever, and play them every turn. Bishop trashes cards and Goons triggers on buying; both mean the game will eventually end. Monument does neither, but it gives you +$2, and people don't like to just throw that away. They like to spend it. Monument did make me worry some about endless games, but it sure never happened in playtesting. But this card, bam. Then I tried a version that tried to fix that, but didn't like that version either.
Play-testing doesn't lie.
As for the card in the OP, it's not actually a cantrip +VP so it might be OK, but there is still potential for problems for sure. I think the central concept would be fine with coin tokens instead. I've given it a lot of thought before (especially when Guilds and coin tokens were revealed) and non-terminal +VP just strikes me as an all around Bad Idea. It might be workable, but I just don't think it's compelling enough to be worth the headaches.
All of this. In fact, Plaza originally also let you spend a Coin token for +1 Card, but it lost that ability because it didn't need it (and it added complexity). I guess you could make a (Coin token) version that didn't have Village, though, so this "spend Coin tokens for +Cards" was the primary concept.
I think that it's a bad idea with VP tokens. Either it'll be strong enough that you'll just want to amass these and that's it, or it'll be weak enough that it's just not worth buying. It might be too strong in some games and too weak in others. That's my guess, anyway. The potential for just treading water while amassing points is too great. Yes you can do that with other cards, but it's way harder.
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I think that it's a bad idea with VP tokens. Either it'll be strong enough that you'll just want to amass these and that's it, or it'll be weak enough that it's just not worth buying. It might be too strong in some games and too weak in others. That's my guess, anyway. The potential for just treading water while amassing points is too great. Yes you can do that with other cards, but it's way harder.
Like Goons which can lead to games with 20 VP tokens or more?
People who worry about fan made VP token gaining cards leading to a stall might wanna stop playing with the very official VP token gaining cards which actually do break the game.
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Like Goons which can lead to games with 20 VP tokens or more?
People who worry about fan made VP token gaining cards leading to a stall might wanna stop playing with the very official VP token gaining cards which actually do break the game.
How does Goons break the game? It doesn't lead the game to a stall.
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Like Goons which can lead to games with 20 VP tokens or more?
People who worry about fan made VP token gaining cards leading to a stall might wanna stop playing with the very official VP token gaining cards which actually do break the game.
How does Goons break the game? It doesn't lead the game to a stall.
Goons breaks the game because among the three VP token gaining cards this very card amasses on average by far the most VP tokens. Bishop Fortress is just one combo that occurs infrequently and Monument provides on average the fewest VP tokens but Goons leads to a huge pile of them in many different kinds of decks.
Now you are of course right, Goons does not technically lead the game to a stall (neither would a non-terminal VP token gaining card as the player who does not use them still buys cards). But the player with the smoothly Goons engine has no incentive to end the game so he might e.g. still buy further villages and Goons for his engine and green fairly late.
Theoretical worries like Monument + KC that rarely occur or the lack of incentive to end the game in the presence of non-terminal VP token gaining cards are kinda strange when the elephant in the room, Goons, is ignored.
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Now you are of course right, Goons does not technically lead the game to a stall (neither would a non-terminal VP token gaining card as the player who does not use them still buys cards). But the player with the smoothly Goons engine has no incentive to end the game so he might e.g. still buy further villages and Goons for his engine and green fairly late.
But buying further villages and Goons for his engine IS ending the game. Once he empties three piles, the game is over. A non-terminal VP token gainer doesn't make you progress towards ending the game to increase your score; to increase your score with Goons, you have to move the game towards ending (barring corner cases like refilling piles with Ambassador + opponent's Lighthouse, or Trader + empty Silver pile).
EDIT: You could certainly argue that Goons is too centralizing, in that any board with Goons on it almost certainly involves playing Goons as part of a winning strategy. But that's true of other cards, too (Chapel being the most obvious one), and I wouldn't call them "game-breaking".
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neither would a non-terminal VP token gaining card as the player who does not use them still buys cards
As it says in the Secret Histories, Donald X. tested it and the cantrip +VP leads to unending games where players actively avoid buying cards.
Amassing a giant pile of VP tokens with Goons is not a problem. A never-ending game is, and Goons happily avoids it by requiring you to progress the game towards an end condition in order to gain VP.
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neither would a non-terminal VP token gaining card as the player who does not use them still buys cards
As it says in the Secret Histories, Donald X. tested it and the cantrip +VP leads to unending games where players actively avoid buying cards.
Yep. But here we talk about a non-cantrip, non-terminal VP token gainer.
This very card most likely gains far less VP tokens than Goons as the VP tokens it gains will be used often enough to draw cards. Goons is after all, besides being by far the strognest VP token gainer, a Militia with an extra buy and thus clearly overpowered at 6 whereas the card in this very thread does just gain VP tokens that can be spent to draw cards
I think that the this is simple trade-off but a new one that is IMO quite interesting. If the card is too strong one could price it at 5.
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Perhaps the best way to think about it is that it is either a cantrip or a vp gainer per play. On its own either is pretty weak, together there is a bit of synergy. Cantrip vp is perhaps gamebreaking but this isn't cantrip vp.
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Perhaps the best way to think about it is that it is either a cantrip or a vp gainer per play. On its own either is pretty weak, together there is a bit of synergy. Cantrip vp is perhaps gamebreaking but this isn't cantrip vp.
It could be, though. Scrying Pool will just draw them all and you can play each one every turn. Or you can put your +1 Card token on this pile with Teacher or Pathfinding.
I've used Lost Arts on Monument before, and that's pretty insane. But the +$2 I got from each Monument made me buy other stuff and end the game. I still wanted Laboratories and Provinces. There's no such incentive here.
I think the general idea of spending tokens to draw cards is good, but I think it'd be better if they were either Coin tokens or just some new kind of token altogether.
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My initial motivation was that I wanted to present the player with a non-straightforward decision: keep the VP token, or draw (a) card(s).
The lack of any other resources (+Buy, +$) were specifically to weaken the card. +1 Action / +1 VP in itself isn't that great. Sure it gets better when you combine it with certain cards like Scrying Pool, but even Pearl Diver gets better with Scrying Pool.
The main question is: Would you really lack the incentive to end the game if you would just bank the VP tokens? I have a feeling that if you play this+BM, you'll get smoked by just about any other BM. So, you need an engine. But engines are pretty good at ending the game.
How about if I turned it around?
+1 Card
+1 VP token
Spend VP tokens for actions.
You draw the card before deciding to spend, so that makes that part more powerful, but overall it seems weaker if it doesn't give free actions.
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I think that this is too weak for a 4. +1 Card is most likely weaker than the +2$ of Monument and I doubt that you'd use this card as pseudo-village except perhaps in decks without any villages.
So I suggest to stick to the original version. If it is too strong / abusive you can still price it at 5.
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My initial motivation was that I wanted to present the player with a non-straightforward decision: keep the VP token, or draw (a) card(s).
The lack of any other resources (+Buy, +$) were specifically to weaken the card. +1 Action / +1 VP in itself isn't that great. Sure it gets better when you combine it with certain cards like Scrying Pool, but even Pearl Diver gets better with Scrying Pool.
The main question is: Would you really lack the incentive to end the game if you would just bank the VP tokens? I have a feeling that if you play this+BM, you'll get smoked by just about any other BM. So, you need an engine. But engines are pretty good at ending the game.
How about if I turned it around?
+1 Card
+1 VP token
Spend VP tokens for actions.
You draw the card before deciding to spend, so that makes that part more powerful, but overall it seems weaker if it doesn't give free actions.
The problem isn't the card + BM. It's in a trimmed deck that does nothing but play this as much as possible. Cantrip +VP is proven to be problematic. This card, as a non-terminal +VP, is less scary but still holds similarly dangerous potential. Traditional engines are pretty good at ending the game, but an engine (or just a slim deck) designed solely to play this card may not be.
This new version is definitely better. Making it semi-terminal puts it back in the realm of official +VP cards, where it's not so easy to abuse. In games without villages, it becomes an interesting decision in how to stockpile VP tokens in order to fuel bigger turns with this as village. Is it worth the effort? It may well be, but it would be a tricky (and therefore interesting!) path to walk.
I expect it would function more as a mostly-nerfed village than a VP gainer, so I would start testing at $2. It might occasionally be a viable source of VP (in games awash with other villages), but that would probably be rare. It would be most interesting with Goons and maybe Bishop, where a better source of +VP would make this into a far more consistent village.