Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Variants and Fan Cards => Topic started by: convolucid on January 29, 2016, 07:15:20 pm
-
Oh my, four card types! I know, I know, all the fans and their moms have tried to design the Attack card you can play when it's not your turn. Nonetheless I hope you will consider my attempt:
(http://i.imgur.com/GvmjH6g.png)
It took a long time to fix up this concept, but we finally playtested it recently and it was quite fun!
Some key points:
- The reaction is easy to resolve and does not stack; lots of people can play Gladiator all at once and it doesn't matter what order it happens in.
- Also, there's no confusion about what the card does if you play it when it's not your turn. It attacks, then waits until your turn to do normal stuff like drawing and giving actions.
- It's a gentle attack by necessity, because the chance of one being played each round, especially in multiplayer, is very high.
- If it's your turn, the attack hurts a little more- if you trigger a Gladiator with Minion, you get a Copper before drawing.
- Even though the attack doesn't stack, you can still feel OK about picking up lots of Gladiators because they're kind of cantrips. Plus, if you manage to play them out of turn, you get a village!
- The card can be strangely cooperative: if you opt in to the Gladiator war, the Duration cleans up the damage from your opponent's Gladiators, and you are both more likely to have surplus actions.
Resolving the card can still get cwazy with other Reactions, namely Secret Chamber and Caravan Guard itself, but it's no worse than "procession-procession-duration" and it shouldn't come up often.
-
At first glance, at least, it looks to me like it works, and is reasonably priced! You will need to add a line instructing the olayer who reveals a card costing 0 to put it back on top of their deck.
-
At first glance, at least, it looks to me like it works, and is reasonably priced! You will need to add a line instructing the olayer who reveals a card costing 0 to put it back on top of their deck.
Are you sure? Wishing Well and Mystic don't have a line saying that.
-
It seems like a must buy in non slog games.+1 card and +1 action virtually guarantees a non dead hand. Much better with other villages.
-
It can stack if someone plays more than one attack that draws in a turn. (Or more than one of any attack with a draw in between.)
I like it though.
-
At first glance, at least, it looks to me like it works, and is reasonably priced! You will need to add a line instructing the olayer who reveals a card costing 0 to put it back on top of their deck.
Are you sure? Wishing Well and Mystic don't have a line saying that.
Touché. Maybe I just madenthat up entirely.
-
If you followed the card literally, the revealed card would be in "revealed cards land" when you gain the copper, and thus the copper would go on the deck first, followed by the revealed card. I'm sure this isn't the intention though.
This is a cool card. The problem with copper junking is a) it's kind of weak, and b) since there are a lot of copper, it can be painful in the long run. This appears to solve those problems by a) topdecking the copper, b) having diminishing returns.
-
The reaction will still get complicated if the +1 card token is on it.
-
The one complaint I have with this card is the name. It's not very thematic, is it?
-
The one complaint I have with this card is the name. It's not very thematic, is it?
Scout was taken...
-
The reaction is easy to resolve and does not stack; lots of people can play Gladiator all at once and it doesn't matter what order it happens in.
It can matter when the Copper pile is running out.
-
If you followed the card literally, the revealed card would be in "revealed cards land" when you gain the copper, and thus the copper would go on the deck first, followed by the revealed card. I'm sure this isn't the intention though.
Damn, you might be right. I would probably have to add something like "reveals the top card, then puts it back." I can probably justify leaving it to the FAQ to keep the card text shorter. The intention is pretty obvious and the rules aren't super explicit about what happens with a revealed card if no other instruction is given.
The reaction will still get complicated if the +1 card token is on it.
This is true. There are still some gross edge cases but I think they're unavoidable within reasonable card text :-\
Adventures in general makes the hypothetical FAQ like 2 pages longer. You can put +Buy on it, but it doesn't do anything if it's not your turn, etc.
The one complaint I have with this card is the name. It's not very thematic, is it?
Well, I toyed with Skirmisher, but the Attack is giving your opponent money. What are the skirmishers doing, running into the victims' houses and leaving small change?
Gladiator A) fights other attackers, and B) creates additional revenue for the coliseum owners, but maybe not in a good way.
-
Well it's giving a little money to the "less fortunate," so maybe something that invokes spitefully throwing change at a person?
-
Even though the attack doesn't stack, you can still feel OK about picking up lots of Gladiators because they're kind of cantrips. Plus, if you manage to play them out of turn, you get a village!
Nope, the duration effect of it is equivalent to Village plus Lab aka Lost City.
I like the card quite a bit and it is probably the only Attack-Reaction card I ever saw which is good but I think that it could be mispriced.
Sure, it is a terminal attack which has the Saboteur issue of doing nothing for you on the turn you play it but duration Lost City is non-trivial and makes it easier to get several Gladiators. As you pointed out your version of Copper junking is fairly weak (and Copper junking is the most moderate form of junking, compared to Ruins and Curses) so the card could be OK at 3$ but I'd also test it at 4$.
-
Even though the attack doesn't stack, you can still feel OK about picking up lots of Gladiators because they're kind of cantrips. Plus, if you manage to play them out of turn, you get a village!
Nope, the duration effect of it is equivalent to Village plus Lab aka Lost City.
Not if you play it out of turn.
-
Without testing, I tentatively like the duration effect. If you play it on your turn, it's a terminal attack, but your next turn starts with an extra card and an extra action (aka, Village+Laboratory). When you play it on somebody else's turn, the attack goes off, then your turn becomes just an extra action (aka, Village).
The balancing issue would then be making it actually worth it to attack while it's not your turn. If the strategically correct choice is never to play it out of turn because the Village+Laboratory effect is too good, even though it's delayed, then the entire premise of the card is defeated. During testing, the attack should prove to be better when used on somebody else's turn most of the time.
-
Without testing, I tentatively like the duration effect. If you play it on your turn, it's a terminal attack, but your next turn starts with an extra card and an extra action (aka, Village+Laboratory). When you play it on somebody else's turn, the attack goes off, then your turn becomes just an extra action (aka, Village).
The balancing issue would then be making it actually worth it to attack while it's not your turn. If the strategically correct choice is never to play it out of turn because the Village+Laboratory effect is too good, even though it's delayed, then the entire premise of the card is defeated. During testing, the attack should prove to be better when used on somebody else's turn most of the time.
If you play it of turn, you still get the action/card?
-
Without testing, I tentatively like the duration effect. If you play it on your turn, it's a terminal attack, but your next turn starts with an extra card and an extra action (aka, Village+Laboratory). When you play it on somebody else's turn, the attack goes off, then your turn becomes just an extra action (aka, Village).
The balancing issue would then be making it actually worth it to attack while it's not your turn. If the strategically correct choice is never to play it out of turn because the Village+Laboratory effect is too good, even though it's delayed, then the entire premise of the card is defeated. During testing, the attack should prove to be better when used on somebody else's turn most of the time.
If you play it of turn, you still get the action/card?
If you play it on your turn, nothing happens but the attack, then you get the card and action on your next turn. If you play it on somebody else's turn because of the reaction, the attack happens, then you get the card and action as soon as your turn hits. So in the first scenario, the turn you play it leaves you with 4 cards and no actions left, and the second turn you have 6 cards and 2 actions. In the second scenario, you play it on someone else's turn, leaving you with 4 cards, then you draw one and get an action at the start of your turn, meaning you start your turn with 5 cards and 2 actions. In effect you get the village bonus right away at a cost of a card with your village bonus. The other redeeming feature is knowing if you have two terminals that collided, making it usually more beneficial to play when it doesn't cost you the action. On the other hand, you're less likely to need the second action if you don't use an action to get an action (like Coin of the Realm, which it's often worth losing an action to play what you have left in your hand) where you still have a chance of colliding two terminals in the next hand where you would've gotten the bigger bonus. It's a difficult point to debate, however, because sometimes it would miss the shuffle, or sometimes it's just better to have two 5-card hands than a 4- and a 6-card hand, but you can't tell until it's too late, barring Scouting Party/Cartographer.
The main reason this is more interesting than Caravan Guard is that it doesn't simply replace itself in all cases. The problem is that the attack has to be worth having one less card on the turn the duration works or else the reaction part is just flavor text.
There is also the possibility that the card was supposed to be a cantrip like Caravan Guard, but forgot to put the effect on the card, but I'm just going with it as-written.