Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Variants and Fan Cards => Topic started by: beri on March 04, 2016, 07:51:02 am
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I know this topic comes around now and then. Here are a few tries concerning low- and high-rated cards in Qvist rankings:
Moat
Choose: +2 Actions or +2 cards
Moat
Choose: +$2 or +2 cards
Chapel
Trash this and up to 3 cards from your hand.
Annoying Mountebank $6
Annoying Mountebank
Each other player may discard one Copper. Any player who does not gains two Coppers.
If it turns out to be too weak:
Each other player must either (their choice): discard two Coppers; or discard one Copper and gain one Copper; or gain two Coppers.
Rebuild $6
+2 Cards
+1 Action
You may trash a Victory card from your hand. If you do, gain a Victory card costing up to $3 more than the trashed card.
Witch
+2 cards
Each other player may trash a card from their hand costing $3 or more. Any player who did may gain a card costing at most $2 less than the trashed card.
Any player who did not trash a card gains a Curse. / Any player with more than 4 cards in hand gains a curse.
Soothsayer $6
Gain a Gold. Every other player gains a Curse.
Annoying Goons
Remove +Buy
Throne room and Moneylender: add "you may"
Chancellor
Make it a "choose one" version of Scavenger.
Spy
Every player sets aside the top card of their deck … Any cards thus set aside go back on top of their owner’s deck at the end of your Action phase, or earlier if you decide so.
Damn wordy I know…
Thief
Add "+$2"
… Gain at most one of the trashed cards.
Counting house
Add "+1 Buy"
Farmland
Non-compulsory on-buy effect and "up to $2 more" or "costing $3 more".
Forge
exactly up to
Scout
Take any non-Action, non-Treasure cards in hand.
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Moat is fine.
Mountebank is strong but 6$ is too expensove.
Rebuild can be nerfed in a more simple fashion by making it terminal.
Witch is strong but most Cursers are. No need to mess with it.
Same applies to Soothsayer.
Goons is overpowered but without the extra buy it'd be too weak.
About Forge and Farmland, no need to make them stronger.
Adventurer would be, if you ignore non-base Treasures, a guaranteed terminal +4$ without the Copper clause. Clearly too strong.
I like your Scout variant that draws Curses.
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Mountebank would actually be more unbalanced at $6, because there'd be a far higher probability of just losing the race.
Farmland is priced at $6 for a reason: it's to allow you to Farmland Farmlands into Provinces. It would actually be weaker at $5.
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While Chapel is strong, that is intentional by Donald X. to make games with it play differently than games without it.
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Yes, Farmlands is a tricky Province for $6. For $5, it's nothing.
I'm not sure Donald made Chapel as strong with a plan. A lot of cards in base are grossly mispriced (looking at you, Adventurer). But i guess he knew that, even if Chapel was extremely strong, it wouldn't ruin the game, as trashing on its own isn't a strategy. It's like Alms in that respect.
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I have 'edited' some of my base cards that I don't like.
Scout:
Cantrip + Scouteffect.
Saboteur
Draw until you have 2 cards worth 3 or more.
Put them aside. After you have shuffled your deck, put them into your discard pile.
Spy.
Cantrip.
First time you play it during your turn: draw the first two cards. Discard any worth 3 or more.
Adventurer:
Stays the same, just +1 Buy.
Woodcutter:
+1 buy
choose one:
+$2
or
+1 Action
+ $1
Feast:
Trash this. Gain a card worth 5 or less and a card worth 3 or less.
Councellor
+1 Action
+$2
You may discard your draw pile.
But I don't think these topics are very useful.
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The best fix of Thief that I have seen posted is having it reveal three cards.
I've been playing with nonterminal Adventurer for a long time and it's allright. It becomes compatible with making interesting decks. (it also becomes much more like Venture, but I think it plays differently enough)
Regarding Goons I would like to try it without the attack.
Many fixes for Scout have been proposed, yours is on the conservative side. I think I prefer fixes that do a bit more, like "dig for 4 victory cards" or similar. Or giving it +1 coin.
I don't know Rebuild well enough to try and fix it.
+Buy to CountingHouse is interesting.
Utility fixes like Throne Room are good.
I don't think the other cards you mentioned need a fix. :)
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Pearl Diver
+1 Card; +1 Action
Look at the bottom card of your deck. Discard it or put it on top.
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Annoying Mountebank
Any player who does not gains a Curse and a Copper.
Witch
$2 Cards +$2
So your fix is to make two cards such that one is strictly worse than the other?
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I'm not sure Donald made Chapel as strong with a plan. A lot of cards in base are grossly mispriced (looking at you, Adventurer). But i guess he knew that, even if Chapel was extremely strong, it wouldn't ruin the game, as trashing on its own isn't a strategy. It's like Alms in that respect.
This started out "trash any number of cards" and went to the ever-so-slightly weaker "trash up to 4 cards." I tested a version with "trash up to 3 cards." It was horrible. Just, way slower than the current version, like you wouldn't believe.
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I'm not sure Donald made Chapel as strong with a plan. A lot of cards in base are grossly mispriced (looking at you, Adventurer). But i guess he knew that, even if Chapel was extremely strong, it wouldn't ruin the game, as trashing on its own isn't a strategy. It's like Alms in that respect.
This started out "trash any number of cards" and went to the ever-so-slightly weaker "trash up to 4 cards." I tested a version with "trash up to 3 cards." It was horrible. Just, way slower than the current version, like you wouldn't believe.
This quote states that the card changed and that trashing 3 cards was bad, but i don't think it tells us he perceived Chapel to be absurdly good for $2. It actually sounds like he never thought about it.
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He said somewhere that they knew it was crazy good, and they were okay with it, if I remember correctly.
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I know this topic comes around now and then. Here are a few tries concerning low- and high-rated cards in Qvist rankings:
Moat
Choose: +2 Actions or +2 cards
Moat
Choose: +$2 or +2 cards
Chapel
Trash this and up to 3 cards from your hand.
Annoying Mountebank $6
Annoying Mountebank
Any player who does not gains a Curse and a Copper.
Rebuild $6
+2 Cards
+1 Action
You may trash a Victory card from your hand. If you do, gain a Victory card costing up to $3 more than the trashed card.
Witch
Add "Every player who did draws a card."
Witch
$2 Cards +$2
Soothsayer $6
Gain a Gold. Every other player gains a Curse.
Annoying Goons
Remove +Buy
Throne room and Moneylender: add "you may"
Chancellor
Make it a "choose one" version of Scavenger.
Spy
Every player sets aside the top card of their deck … Any cards thus set aside go back on top of their owner’s deck at the end of your Action phase, or earlier if you decide so.
Damn wordy I know…
Thief
Add "+$2"
… Gain at most one of the trashed cards.
Counting house
Add "+1 Buy"
Farmland $5
Farmland
Non-compulsory on-buy effect and "up to $2 more" or "costing $3 more".
Adventurer
Add "non-Copper"?
Forge
exactly up to
Scout
Take any non-Action, non-Treasure cards in hand.
Are these changes supposed to make the cards more fun to play or just different? Very few of these are actually cards that would need tweaked. I especially like that you think Witch is too strong and Soothsayer is too weak; what exactly does moving the other players drawing a card do for Witch? It just makes me not want to play it - I don't ever think "maybe we should all have 6 cards in our hands, but I don't want to play any actions from those 6 cards." Adding a buy to Counting House just makes it boring, and Farmland is just a joke at 5. I'm not here to tear apart your ideas - testing that will show that these won't be fun changes - but DXV tested things and likes how just about everything turned out. I think he said that he would've reworded Throne Room, Moneylender, and Masquerade and made the basic treasures color-coded, but that's virtually nothing. You're welcome to play whatever variants you want, and I play the variant where we never use Rebuild or Saboteur, but not because they're bad for the game, because they turn away new players among other valuable reasons.
So you're welcome to try different versions of cards. Perhaps next time you would inspire better discussion by saying "What would happen if Adventurer couldn't put Copper in your hand?" versus saying "This is the way to make Adventurer better."
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Are these changes supposed to make the cards more fun to play or just different? Very few of these are actually cards that would need tweaked. I especially like that you think Witch is too strong and Soothsayer is too weak; what exactly does moving the other players drawing a card do for Witch? It just makes me not want to play it - I don't ever think "maybe we should all have 6 cards in our hands, but I don't want to play any actions from those 6 cards." Adding a buy to Counting House just makes it boring, and Farmland is just a joke at 5. I'm not here to tear apart your ideas - testing that will show that these won't be fun changes - but DXV tested things and likes how just about everything turned out. I think he said that he would've reworded Throne Room, Moneylender, and Masquerade and made the basic treasures color-coded, but that's virtually nothing. You're welcome to play whatever variants you want, and I play the variant where we never use Rebuild or Saboteur, but not because they're bad for the game, because they turn away new players among other valuable reasons.
So you're welcome to try different versions of cards. Perhaps next time you would inspire better discussion by saying "What would happen if Adventurer couldn't put Copper in your hand?" versus saying "This is the way to make Adventurer better."
I don't think that the fact that DXV tested the cards and liked them back in 2007 means that they are perfect (blasphemy, right?) and I don't think he considers the base set cards perfect either. In my opinion it's a bit dull, has a high dud ratio and a bit too many terminals so that you often find yourself doing BM+stuff.
I do think Rebuild is bad for the game. :)
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General reminders: these ideas are for people who find the original cards too strong/weak/annoying and need inspiration to adapt them and have fun with them.
They concern only cards that are at the top or bottom of their price ranges in Qvist rankings, i.e. cards that are notoriously weaker/stronger than nearly all others.
Rebuild can be nerfed in a more simple fashion by making it terminal.
Witch is strong but most Cursers are. No need to mess with it.
Same applies to Soothsayer.
Goons is overpowered but without the extra buy it'd be too weak.
About Forge and Farmland, no need to make them stronger.
Rebuild once was terminal and was clearly too weak. Even if it was ok, Rebuild is just boring.
I have tried a few times my suggestion for it and it did work well. Forces you to green a bit earlier and therefore makes for more interesting gameplay than the current, brainless one, by changing the way most games are played (don’t buy VPs too early). And it remains a decent card (Lab) when it does not hit VPs.
Most cursers are too strong for my taste, so although I like the idea of curses, I like them better if they’re a bit toned down because they’re real nasty obstacles.
Farmland has always been the second bottom card in its price category. I must admit I didn’t see how it comboes with itself, which seems to require some luck + 2 buys + $12 for 8 VP. Would it be terribly OP at $5 and an Expand ability (if not being worth 1 VP)?
Forge: whenever I went for it, I had poor ROI. That’s just my experience and I find Forge boringly unflexible.
While Chapel is strong, that is intentional by Donald X. to make games with it play differently than games without it.
Not everyone has to like what the lord likes :). I just notice Chapel is a must-buy in most games and I’d rather play more games where cards are equally often strong or weak.
Saboteur
Draw until you have 2 cards worth 3 or more.
Put them aside. After you have shuffled your deck, put them into your discard pile.
Adventurer:
Stays the same, just +1 Buy.
Woodcutter:
+1 buy
choose one:
+$2
or
+1 Action
+ $1
I like these. Your councellor is almost strictly better than Silver. And I like the topdeck version of Feast better.
The best fix of Thief that I have seen posted is having it reveal three cards.
I've been playing with nonterminal Adventurer for a long time and it's allright. It becomes compatible with making interesting decks. (it also becomes much more like Venture, but I think it plays differently enough)
Regarding Goons I would like to try it without the attack.
Many fixes for Scout have been proposed, yours is on the conservative side. I think I prefer fixes that do a bit more, like "dig for 4 victory cards" or similar. Or giving it +1 coin.
For thief, I like the fact that my try makes it scale better for all player counts (gain only one card), while boosting it on the other hand.
Non-terminal adventurer, I fear might be a bit OP but ready to try.
Ready to try unattacking Goons and digger Scout too. I did see the +$1 versions of Scout so I suggested something different.
Pearl Diver
+1 Card; +1 Action
Look at the bottom card of your deck. Discard it or put it on top.
Like. I’m not sure how powerful an inverted Pearl diver would be – i.e. look at your top card, you may put it at the bottom. So you will potentially draw it one time fewer than other cards.
[Changes to Witch and Mountebank]
So your fix is to make two cards such that one is strictly worse than the other?
Well spotted. I might try the discard clause of Mountebank on Witch.
He said somewhere that they knew it was crazy good, and they were okay with it, if I remember correctly.
Here. He’s ok with it. Not me. And not a number of other players. :)
1) Are these changes supposed to make the cards more fun to play or just different?
2) I especially like that you think Witch is too strong and Soothsayer is too weak.
3) Adding a buy to Counting House just makes it boring
4) and I play the variant where we never use Rebuild or Saboteur
5) Perhaps next time you would inspire better discussion by saying "What would happen if Adventurer couldn't put Copper in your hand?" versus saying "This is the way to make Adventurer better."
1) Different. More fun because more often interesting for some / less often must-buys for others (hopefully! note the "here are a few tries"). Concerning Rebuild, definitely both more fun per se and different.
2) I don’t think Soothsayer is too weak, on the contrary. The stronger, simpler version I priced at $6.
3) I think a card you never buy is more boring than anything else. Players here and elsewhere found the +Buy addition interesting.
4) Do try my go-green Lab version of Rebuild. I never use Saboteur either.
5) I didn’t say the latter. Again, I said these were my attempts.
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Surprised nothing for Cultist here. I wonder what making it just +1 card would do. Or maybe something like, "Choose one: +3 cards or +1 card and you may play another Cultist from your hand"
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They concern only cards that are at the top or bottom of their price ranges in Qvist rankings, i.e. cards that are notoriously weaker/stronger than nearly all others.
I think this has been said before in a similar thread, but it is worth pointing out again: No matter how much you tweak the cards, there will always be some in the top and the bottom of the rankings.
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They concern only cards that are at the top or bottom of their price ranges in Qvist rankings, i.e. cards that are notoriously weaker/stronger than nearly all others.
I think this has been said before in a similar thread, but it is worth pointing out again: No matter how much you tweak the cards, there will always be some in the top and the bottom of the rankings.
And this:
I had four strips of bacon yesterday. Was one automatically undercooked, one automatically overcooked? No, let's put a stop to that right here, all four strips were excellent.
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I'm not sure Donald made Chapel as strong with a plan. A lot of cards in base are grossly mispriced (looking at you, Adventurer). But i guess he knew that, even if Chapel was extremely strong, it wouldn't ruin the game, as trashing on its own isn't a strategy. It's like Alms in that respect.
This started out "trash any number of cards" and went to the ever-so-slightly weaker "trash up to 4 cards." I tested a version with "trash up to 3 cards." It was horrible. Just, way slower than the current version, like you wouldn't believe.
This quote states that the card changed and that trashing 3 cards was bad, but i don't think it tells us he perceived Chapel to be absurdly good for $2. It actually sounds like he never thought about it.
http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=85.0
Donald explains here and in other places that chapel costing $2 has nothing to do with its power. It costs 2 so that all players can fairly open with it. There's more than power to consider with cost. Chapel can cost $2 because you don't want a bunch of copies of it. Chapel isn't really cheaper at $2 than it would be at $4; either way you can always open with it, and either way you can get as many copies as want (1) easily.
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I think this has been said before in a similar thread, but it is worth pointing out again: No matter how much you tweak the cards, there will always be some in the top and the bottom of the rankings.
I know that. Believe me, I do. Doesn’t mean everyone has to find all cards fun. And my experience shows some cards hardly ever take people to victory. So there are bottom and top cards for another reason than mathematical logic.
Surprised nothing for Cultist here. I wonder what making it just +1 card would do. Or maybe something like, "Choose one: +3 cards or +1 card and you may play another Cultist from your hand"
Not too bad. I did not tweak the Cultist because I find it a lot of fun.
But an idea off the top of my head would be to minimize its on-trash effect to +2 cards or +1 card.
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I think this has been said before in a similar thread, but it is worth pointing out again: No matter how much you tweak the cards, there will always be some in the top and the bottom of the rankings.
I know that. Believe me, I do. Doesn’t mean everyone has to find all cards fun. And my experience shows some cards hardly ever take people to victory. So there are bottom and top cards for another reason than mathematical logic.
Surprised nothing for Cultist here. I wonder what making it just +1 card would do. Or maybe something like, "Choose one: +3 cards or +1 card and you may play another Cultist from your hand"
Not too bad. I did not tweak the Cultist because I find it a lot of fun.
But an idea off the top of my head would be to minimize its on-trash effect to +2 cards or +1 card.
I think Cultist would be fine without any on-trash-effect. It's a Witch that can be "nonterminal" at the cost of dealing out less awful junk.
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Farmland has always been the second bottom card in its price category. I must admit I didn’t see how it comboes with itself, which seems to require some luck + 2 buys + $12 for 8 VP. Would it be terribly OP at $5 and an Expand ability (if not being worth 1 VP)?
You buy a Farmland and trash something cheap, probably something between 2 and 4. Then you later have a hand with 6 and Farmland and you only gotta spend 6 to get a Province (buy a Farmland for 6, trash a Farmland to get a Province). Perhaps you can even do it a second and a third time throughtout the game.
This is especially useful in Kingdoms in which it is harder to hit a lot of coins and I think that Farmland is fine as it is. It is certainly not a weak or weak-ish card.
Forge: whenever I went for it, I had poor ROI. That’s just my experience and I find Forge boringly unflexible.
You can do all kinds of fancy things with Forge. The main feature of the card is that you gotta hit the right price so you gotta think about the costs of the cards in your deck and what you can forge them into. The card would become pretty boring if it would just give you the maximum price of the card you gain.
Furthermore Forge can be a real powerhouse when you are already leading. Just trash a Province and end the game quicker. So there is no reason to buff it. It is perhaps not the most simple card but it is definitely not too weak.
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Furthermore Forge can be a real powerhouse when you are already leading. Just trash a Province and end the game quicker.
I don't think 'real powerhouse' is really appropriate here. Remodel, a 4-cost card that was ranked in the bottom half of its appropriate price category in the card rankings, can also do this. And Forge is way more expensive.
Besides, much of the time where you do that, you could just have bought Province instead of Forge anyway.
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Furthermore Forge can be a real powerhouse when you are already leading. Just trash a Province and end the game quicker.
I don't think 'real powerhouse' is really appropriate here. Remodel, a 4-cost card that was ranked in the bottom half of its appropriate price category in the card rankings, can also do this. And Forge is way more expensive.
Besides, much of the time where you do that, you could just have bought Province instead of Forge anyway.
Huh? When you are leading you wanna end the game as quickly as possible. Being able to trash a Province to gain a Province does this.
About buying Province instead of Forge, first of all you hit 7$ often enough. Second of all, if you hit 8$ early in the game buying a Province instead of a 6+ card might be the wrong choice. There is of course no golden guideline to when you should start greening but to claim that you should always buy a Province instead of a Forge is obviously utter nonsense.
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[Changes to Witch and Mountebank]
So your fix is to make two cards such that one is strictly worse than the other?
Well spotted. I might try the discard clause of Mountebank on Witch.
New idea on Mountebank. OP edited.
Annoying Mountebank
Each other player may discard one Copper. Any player who does not gains two Coppers.
If it turns out to be too weak:
Each other player must either: discard two Coppers; or discard one Copper and gain one Copper; or gain two Coppers.
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A Copper junker for 5$? Definitely overpriced.
Now there is nothing wrong with a Copper junker per se, it is an empty niche and convolucid recently posted and interesting one (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=14660). But Copper is not a dead card so this is definitely too expensive.
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If I were to change Mountebank, I'd make it
Mountebank $5
+$2
Each other player may discard a Curse or a Copper. If he doesn’t, he gains a Curse and a Copper.
Mostly because I'm a sucker for symmetry than anything else.
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Donald X. recently posted his approval of the following for Cultist: Change to “you may play a Cultist. If you do not, each other player gains a Ruins.” With the change, a deck without + Actions can chain Cultists for draw, but can't cause an opponent to gain more than one ruin a turn.
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If I were to change Mountebank, I'd make it
Mountebank $5
+$2
Each other player may discard a Curse or a Copper. If he doesn’t, he gains a Curse and a Copper.
Mostly because I'm a sucker for symmetry than anything else.
This almost makes mountebank worse than curse.
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If I were to change Mountebank, I'd make it
Mountebank $5
+$2
Each other player may discard a Curse or a Copper. If he doesn’t, he gains a Curse and a Copper.
Mostly because I'm a sucker for symmetry than anything else.
This almost makes mountebank worse than curse.
huh? I'd say it makes it a (usually) slightly better Cutpurse.
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If I were to change Mountebank, I'd make it
Mountebank $5
+$2
Each other player may discard a Curse or a Copper. If he doesn’t, he gains a Curse and a Copper.
Mostly because I'm a sucker for symmetry than anything else.
This almost makes mountebank worse than curse.
huh? I'd say it makes it a (usually) slightly better Cutpurse.
I don't know if it's usually better. Cutpurse forces you to discard Copper. This card gives you the option, so you could keep the Copper if you think it will help you a lot. This card is only better than Cutpurse when the player has no Copper or Curse in hand. If there aren't any good Copper trashers then this is unlikely. This may stack better than Cutpurse though.
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If your opponent always has a Copper, then it is strictly worse, but Cutpurse usually whiffs once or twice in the late game even if there isn't any Copper trashing. My gut says this is more significant than the situations where I would voluntarily take a Curse and a Copper just to avoid losing $1 from the current hand, but it is hard to say. That is why I said it is usually slightly better (meaning that occasionally it would be slightly worse).
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If I were to change Mountebank, I'd make it
Mountebank $5
+$2
Each other player may discard a Curse or a Copper. If he doesn’t, he gains a Curse and a Copper.
Mostly because I'm a sucker for symmetry than anything else.
Pretty bad idea as Mountebank just becomes a Curpurse early in the game.
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Yeah, my love of symmetry has betrayed me.
A possibly better nerf would be
Mountebank $5
+2
Each other player may discard a Curse. If he doesn’t, he gains a Curse. If he gains a Curse, he gains a Copper.
Feels a little too wordy.
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A change that I'm considering making permanent to my Base Dominion is changing Mine from "up to 3 more" to "up to 5 more". It matters much less than it sounds, but it adds an interesting interaction with most alt-treasures, and to a lesser extent with cost reducers.
Getting to Platinum in two steps (with a 4-5 alt-treasure as stepping stone) is pretty awesome. :)
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Another try to make witch a bit less annoying:
Witch
+2 cards
Each other player chooses: they gain a Curse OR they trash a card from their hand costing $3 or more and may gain a card costing at most $2 less than the trashed card.
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Another try to make witch a bit less annoying:
Witch
+2 cards
Each other player chooses: they gain a Curse OR they trash a card from their hand costing $3 or more and may gain a card costing at most $2 less than the trashed card.
Witch is fine already. But if you really think it's too annoying, I'm not sure this change helps. Certainly it makes Witch weaker, but players may not perceive it as such. The big example here is Torturer. As an attack, it is weaker than Witch in the same way as your variant is weaker -- the player can opt for a different penalty instead of taking the Curse. But in practice, many players find Torturer far more torturous.