Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Variants and Fan Cards => Topic started by: Minotaur on November 01, 2013, 06:31:19 pm
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EDIT: (7/30/2014) I updated some cards, made text versions of everything, and made a post about some of my favorite cards from Modern Times. The second link has all of the content now. I deleted the outdated content of this post so I won't have to update multiple posts at length:
http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=11366.0
http://mtaur.blogspot.com/2014/06/dimonion-modern-times-highlights.html
Updated card list:
http://mtaur.blogspot.com/2015/04/dimonion-modern-times-text-update.html
Flavor text:
You have to spend money to make money, they say. Preferably, someone else's money, or money that you don't have yet. Or maybe the only way to pay off a debt is to go into debt. Or was it the only way to make money is to go into debt so you can spend money to make money for collateral to go into debt to make money?
The quaint aphorisms of ages past just can't keep up with the complexities of modern times, it seems. To get ahead, you will need to leverage every asset, win every sporting event, ride every wave, and escape on a golden parachute on an inside tip. You might even gerrymander your apartment if it'll put you one step ahead of the next guy.
You come from a very long line of shrewd rulers, after all. And just like in ages past, ingrates flood the streets, only this time, instead of pitchforks they wield cardboard signs and iPhones, which they use to Tweet and Facebook their petty grievances.They have iPhones and they're complaining! Those ingrates! You're sure they would make a U.N. resolution against job creators if they could, but luckily, your man's on the inside and not theirs. To hell with them. If they won't work for minimum wage, someone in another hemisphere will for half that, hopefully less. Health Insurance? Over... someone's dead body, preferably theirs.
You could buy up every foreclosed house in town, and that may make you content for a while, but there are bigger fish to fry. And to fry fish, you need oil. Not vegetable oil - no, what you need is sweet, succulent petroleum, mother's milk, honey of the gods, ambrosia, aqua vitae, dino juice, Arabian gold, Tehran Tea... it has many names, but with any luck, it will serve only one master: you.
Those oil fields might only last another 10-20 years, but that's half a lifetime from now and you're pushing 50. They say the meek will inherit the Earth (or what's left of it), but that's not your problem. Live it up while the living's good, chief executive. These modern times move fast.
EDIT: Card text cut from here, see links at top of this post for cards and card text.
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(I bumped the cost of Football up from 3 to 6 when I thought about what a Laboratory and three Football would be able to do in one turn... I'm not feeling too good about this one at the moment. I could do another rebalance based on removing +1 action from it, but it seems like a weird card altogether.)
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Oh good, two cards with "you cannot gain an X" on them. Because what we really need is rules conflicts with Swindler.
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Wow! Lots of interesting ideas, initially just a few cards that stuck out to me as cool:
Amazon - cool cool, A cheaper workers village with an interesting drawback (wondering if too much of a drawback? I don't really know) It probably needs some end game cause on it too. What happens if the game ends and the cards are still on the mat?
Outsource - sounds interesting, allows for a mega turn at the end where you completely cannibalise your deck and then buy bucket loads of provinces. Also it is similar to my favourite card, procession, but would play quite differently I think. Possibly too expensive.
Gerrymander - sounds pretty fun, however may be too similar to monument (just realised).
Power Outage - looks pretty crazy, it is a one shot, so it may be fine. I like crazy ideas.
With a lot of these cards I go: 'man I just have no idea how that would play out". I guess a lot of the ideas are pretty different from cards we know and love, which is not a and thing at all. It would be interesting to see how they all play out. Also the wording length is borderline long on some of the cards I would guess, but yeah. Still sounds like a good project.
Oh good, two cards with "you cannot gain an X" on them. Because what we really need is rules conflicts with Swindler.
You have a point, but man, that is just about the last thing you want to read for the first reply after posting a thread like this. It takes a lot of effort to write things like this, and even if you don't like it sarcastic jabs that single out little flaws are just not nice. Sure suggesting what you did is fine, even helpful, but it could have been said much nicer.
But then again I don't know your tone, could be light. Peace.
EDIT: tone
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Wow! Lots of interesting ideas, initially just a few cards that stuck out to me as cool:
Amazon - cool cool, A cheaper workers village with an interesting drawback (wondering if too much of a drawback? I don't really know) It probably needs some end game cause on it too. What happens if the game ends and the cards are still on the mat?
Outsource - sounds interesting, allows for a mega turn at the end where you completely cannibalise your deck and then buy bucket loads of provinces. Also it is similar to my favourite card, procession, but would play quite differently I think. Possibly too expensive.
Gerrymander - sounds pretty fun, however may be too similar to monument (just realised).
Power Outage - looks pretty crazy, it is a one shot, so it may be fine. I like crazy ideas.
With a lot of these cards I go: 'man I just have no idea how that would play out". I guess a lot of the ideas are pretty different from cards we know and love, which is not a and thing at all. It would be interesting to see how they all play out. Also the wording length is borderline long on some of the cards I would guess, but yeah. Still sounds like a good project.
Oh good, two cards with "you cannot gain an X" on them. Because what we really need is rules conflicts with Swindler.
You have a point, but man, that is just about the last thing you want to read for the first reply after posting a thread like this. It takes a lot of effort to write things like this, and even if you don't like it sarcastic jabs that single out little flaws are just not nice. Sure suggesting what you did is fine, even helpful, but it could have been said much nicer.
But then again I don't know your tone, could be light. Peace.
EDIT: tone
Amazon - Like with Native Village, it goes into your deck (I should have it say this, yes). Amazon may or may not be OP. Its drawback might screw up your tempo if you have just one of them at the wrong time, but if you play one almost every turn, it shouldn't matter too often. Sometimes you'll miss the reshuffle. I don't know how it would play out, either!
Gerrymander - Yep, it's essentially a late-game Monument. I don't really know how often you would buy regular Monument over this. If the answer is "almost never", then I don't know if it warrants a cost of 5 without anything extra, either. I really like the simplicity, but it's probably way too strong in an alt VP game, so maybe 5 is the way to go. As a 6, it would definitely be an alt VP niche card, possibly expensive to the point of self-defeating. Another option could be keeping the cost at 4, but putting the cap at +2 VP.
Power Outage - Yeah, I have no idea. It could help or hurt anyone at the table, but the optional cycling and one-shot nature of it allows for potential tactical bombshells. Or you can just drop it whenever you draw half of a combo and the rest of it lies in a thin deck. I made this one for theme reasons, and it took me a while to figure out how to make it even close to balanced. Not sure if it's close to balanced after all, really.
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Debt
Cost: 0
Action-Shelter
+1 card
+1 action
You may a Treasure.
I may what?
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He accidentallied a verb.
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Debt
Cost: 0
Action-Shelter
+1 card
+1 action
You may a Treasure.
I may what?
A Treasure.
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Debt
Cost: 0
Action-Shelter
+1 card
+1 action
You may a Treasure.
I may what?
A Treasure.
A whole Treasure?
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Added Facebook and Internet to the OP, kind of in the middle grouped with Amazon and Twitter.
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Master's Degree added to the end of the OP. Coin gain and Debt penalty might need tweaks.
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Debt doesn't quite work... You can't return it to the supply because there is no supply pile for shelters. That and it's just a lot if complex rules and text for a card that's just a cross between a dead card and an extra filter.
And iPhone.. The only way you will ever get 3 debts in play is if your opponents give you theirs with Masquerade.
*edit* Read more of the cards now, I see you have various cards telling you do gain debts. But that's confusing and doesn't work if debt is a shelter. You can't ever gain a shelter.
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Debt doesn't quite work... You can't return it to the supply because there is no supply pile for shelters. That and it's just a lot if complex rules and text for a card that's just a cross between a dead card and an extra filter.
And iPhone.. The only way you will ever get 3 debts in play is if your opponents give you theirs with Masquerade.
*edit* Read more of the cards now, I see you have various cards telling you do gain debts. But that's confusing and doesn't work if debt is a shelter. You can't ever gain a shelter.
I'll just change it to some other card type that replaces starting Estates.
And it's either a dead card, a Curse you have to trash twice, or a non-card that Cutpurses you three times. I don't know exactly how awful it is to have one, so I may have to rebalance them and every card that uses them.
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Alternate solution... I might like this better, but it's a little swingy: You'll want to play it on Turn 1, but it can make you miss a Turn 1 purchase on a shuffle if you play it on turn 2. If you can trash all your Copper, this card an be used as a free shuffle.
Anyway, Debt loses the Shelter type in this scenario.
Payday Loan
Cost: 1
Action-Shelter
Reveal cards from the top of your deck until you find a Copper. Put it in your hand and discard the other revealed cards. Trash this card and gain a Debt.
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I just realized -- Lavatory+Fortress is amazing.
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I just realized -- Lavatory+Fortress is amazing.
It sometimes gives you the option of playing Lavatory as a Laboratory. Not bad. You paid 6 for Lavatory, but sometimes you'll wish it were a Lab.
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Modified Debt to not be a Shelter, and added Payday Loan as a replacement Shelter.
Added Master's Degree, Bomb Shelter, and United Nations.
Rebalanced Gerrymander to need Villages in order to out-Monument Monument.
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Oh good, two cards with "you cannot gain an X" on them. Because what we really need is rules conflicts with Swindler.
Because Swindler can cause the person who played it to gain a card. Or it can cause the other player to have an Action card that's not a Duration to be in play during your turn. Or because it's impossible to add a disambiguation to the rules text like, "if an action or reaction could cause a player to gain this card, a different one must be chosen if possible. If that is not possible, return this card to the supply after gaining it".
Too bad you didn't pick out one typo out of several pages of text, or your comment would be at +12 by now.
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I just realized -- Lavatory+Fortress is amazing.
Much less amazing than Apprentice+Fortress, though.
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Because Swindler can cause the person who played it to gain a card.
I can think of at least two ways it can do so with official cards. (And the trigger on "Football" was "while this card is in play" - If I play a Football, then a Swindler, and hit your $5 card, we get the problem with Library.)
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Because Swindler can cause the person who played it to gain a card.
I can think of at least two ways it can do so with official cards. (And the trigger on "Football" was "while this card is in play" - If I play a Football, then a Swindler, and hit your $5 card, we get the problem with Library.)
While your Football is in play, you cannot gain a Library. So unless the default "you" describing what an action does is someone other than the person who played it, then there's no conflict.
If you play a Football and then a Swindler and hit a $5 card, the other player gains a Library as usual, unless they have some wacky non-official Reaction that redirects gained cards back to you, the player with a Football in play. In which case I would just redirect you back to the disambiguation clause anyway. (Football + Upgrade with all the Duchies gone is a much less exotic way to get to this point than Swindler + Card X Which Is Not Canon At The Moment)
EDIT: House and Insider cards added to the OP.
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Football is now 30% more Footbally and probably not broken anymore. And as a bonus, it still doesn't conflict with Swindler.
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iPhone -- Isn't this card pretty much inconsequential? You play it as a cantrip, so it doesn't clog this hand up at all. You draw 1 fewer card in clean-up phase but then you get to add this back to your hand at the start or your next turn, so you are back at 5 cards. The main thing it does is prevent you from ever using reactions, which doesn't even matter on many boards. In fact, it even softens the blow of discard attacks by keeping your hand at 4 during others' turns.
Car Insurance -- Having trouble parsing this on the first read through. Hmm... The drawback seems to be that it makes you discard treasures. Alternatively, you can just trash it. So why wouldn't you do that? Maybe you want to keep it around for the reaction, which lets you recover cards that you trash, but that comes with a Debt card. I don't see that reaction being particularly useful even in ideal cases (read: TfB) because of that extra junk card. So... this is just a shelter that disappears immediately?
I suppose that these issues don't actually matter much because, being shelters, everybody should get the same benefit. Right? Do these still replace Estates like the DA Shelters? What happens if you are using both this set and DA?
OCD -- is its inclusion optional?
Oil Field -- Is the Setup rule supposed to mean that the game ends when the Oil Field pile is empty? Not sure if this card works at all... The first one costs $6 for what amounts to a half-Harem. The second one turns them into Harems for $8... and then they grow more. The problem is that the cost balloons quickly. The third copy is $10 and the fourth is $12. To empty the pile, it costs $20. That's ridiculously high. I don't know, maybe it works out. How do you think it would actually play?
Loan -- there is already an official card with that name. Other than that, I am not sure what to make of it. Death Cart can also be one-shot +$5, but it's a terminal action (negative) and it can be kept in your deck by trashing an action card (positive). Loan gives you 3 Debts whereas Death Cart gives you 2 Ruins (which you can trash anyway). I suppose DC has enough going on that it earns the $4 cost. Still, I expect Loan is too powerful for $0... note that the on-gain effect of topdecking a Silver or better is often a bonus, because you were using a buy on the $0 Loan anyway.
Outsource -- doesn't feel cohesive. Procession with cost reduction instead of a card gain?
Health Insurance -- useless with no curser on the board.
Job Creator -- So if I play this and my opponent reveals a hand of 5 Silver, they have to trash them? ALL of them?!
Facebook -- This has so many issues...
- slows the game down to a crawl (intentionally making fun of Facebook?)
- extremely political
- some difficulty in tracking votes (without pen and paper) with more than 2 players
- what happens if there is a tie (which is very likely with 2p, and even with more players since the "winner" gets +1VP)?
Twitter/Tweet -- Tweets are basically Confusion cards. Meh. It doesn't add enough to the game to warrant a stack of Tweets just to accommodate 5 cards.
Amazon -- cheaper Worker's Village, except you have to wait a bit for those cards to be "delivered". Very cute. :P
Internet -- Really weird. Super weak as well... and is there something I'm missing about this set? What if Amazon and Twitter/Facebook aren't in the supply? There seem to be several cards tied into other cards.
Power Outage -- Not sure if you realize it, but this is a next-turn village even if you discard it from play, and it avoids the self-trashing then because of lose-track. It just gets harder to track that way. Duration effects still kick in next turn whether the card is still in play or not. Interesting concept. Not sure how it would play in practice. Ignoring the village effect, this just delays others' engines for a turn, which could actually be a very useful effect.
Apartment -- So this is another $4 2VP card, where you can choose to play it as a cantrip at the cost of a Debt card. Probably fine? Not super exciting.
Football -- Seems quite swingy and exacerbates first player advantage. You would want it for the trashing. But the first player probably plays it first, and in that case it has a good chance of trashing others' Footballs. To add insult to injury, he gets VP for it! The Library clause doesn't make sense to me; I must be missing some sort of joke there.
On the conflict with rules -- I play Football, then Upgrade a Potion, Upgrade says I have to gain a $5 card. If Duchies and Upgrades are all gone, I have to gain a Library. Except I can't. So there's a conflict here that needs a ruling via FAQ. But again, I'm not seeing the connection between Football and Library. It seems completely random and not worth the card space.
Master's Degree -- comes with Debt, but otherwise is TR with a bonus. Not that interesting.
Bomb Shelter -- it's a Moat with 1VP instead of draw... I think I prefer the draw most of the time, if at all. I suppose you don't want to cost it at $2 because then it's strictly better than Estate, but Estate is a junk card anyway. Maybe make it $2 instead so that you have a real reason to want to buy this even on boards with no attacks.
United Nations -- kind of like Lighthouse, but a next-turn village instead of now-and-next Copper, and there's a way to break through the protection. Lighthouse is probably better a lot of the time, but next-turn village can make a big difference on some boards. Pretty interesting.
House -- it's a bit awkward to put a cap on how much you can overpay (and note that overpay cards have + in the cost, not *). I would suggest rewording it like this:
House
$2+ - Victory
2VP
When you buy this, you may overpay for it. Gain 2 Debt cards, putting them into your hand. For each $1 you overpaid, return a Debt card from your hand to the Supply.
This brings up an issue that also seems to be present in many other cards in the set -- which of these cards are in the supply, and which are not? I mean, in many places it seems that Debt is part of the Supply, but then what happens with House if Debt wasn't selected in a random game?
Insider -- looks relatively weak. Trash to junk others -- that's mostly worse than Ambassador. You may gain a Victory card... but you don't really want Duchies until late game, and you probably don't want to lose a $4 card for it. You can't even gain a Province without trashing a $7 card, which is big cost to pay.
Gas Station -- You can simplify it by saying, "Do this twice: ". Extremely powerful, but it can run out of fodder pretty quickly. Not sure how it would play, but it's fairly interesting.
Val-U Sav Card -- How is this related to Tweets at all? This is a cost increaser, which is a problematic concept. With a few of these in play, it can completely pin other players from buying anything ever again.
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Wow, thanks for a lot of feedback. I'll see what I can do for clarity here.
iPhone -- Isn't this card pretty much inconsequential? You play it as a cantrip, so it doesn't clog this hand up at all. You draw 1 fewer card in clean-up phase but then you get to add this back to your hand at the start or your next turn, so you are back at 5 cards. The main thing it does is prevent you from ever using reactions, which doesn't even matter on many boards. In fact, it even softens the blow of discard attacks by keeping your hand at 4 during others' turns.
It's *supposed* to do nothing, except if you use it, you're "distracted" for a while. It's a bit of a joke. It's a Shelter card because "everyone has one" these days.
Car Insurance -- Having trouble parsing this on the first read through. Hmm... The drawback seems to be that it makes you discard treasures. Alternatively, you can just trash it. So why wouldn't you do that? Maybe you want to keep it around for the reaction, which lets you recover cards that you trash, but that comes with a Debt card. I don't see that reaction being particularly useful even in ideal cases (read: TfB) because of that extra junk card. So... this is just a shelter that disappears immediately?
Upgrade a Province for a Province while keeping the Province that you trashed and gaining a Debt... That's probably stronger than holding onto an Estate by a lot. I could make trashing this card non-optional, I suppose, but in real life, you can discontinue car insurance at will.
I suppose that these issues don't actually matter much because, being shelters, everybody should get the same benefit. Right? Do these still replace Estates like the DA Shelters? What happens if you are using both this set and DA?
I suppose I intend Modern Times to override the DA shelters altogether, though being a fan set, it's somewhat moot and house rules will be what they will be. Modern Times and Dark Ages should have somewhat minimal thematic overlap anyway.
OCD -- is its inclusion optional?
Yeah, idk. It's kind of a silly card. I might scrap it altogether. For now, I'm just saying that it's an optional Lavatory add-on.
Oil Field -- Is the Setup rule supposed to mean that the game ends when the Oil Field pile is empty? Not sure if this card works at all... The first one costs $6 for what amounts to a half-Harem. The second one turns them into Harems for $8... and then they grow more. The problem is that the cost balloons quickly. The third copy is $10 and the fourth is $12. To empty the pile, it costs $20. That's ridiculously high. I don't know, maybe it works out. How do you think it would actually play?
I have no idea how it would actually play. The cost and benefit snowball in tandem, and it could lead to very swingy games in the presence of Platinums. It may be horrendously swingy, and this is a card I'm likely to cut from the set. But not before I play test it a bit first. I did try to pick a simple rule for how it scales that is somewhat fair-ish, but it may be hopeless and I'm ok with that.
Loan -- there is already an official card with that name. Other than that, I am not sure what to make of it. Death Cart can also be one-shot +$5, but it's a terminal action (negative) and it can be kept in your deck by trashing an action card (positive). Loan gives you 3 Debts whereas Death Cart gives you 2 Ruins (which you can trash anyway). I suppose DC has enough going on that it earns the $4 cost. Still, I expect Loan is too powerful for $0... note that the on-gain effect of topdecking a Silver or better is often a bonus, because you were using a buy on the $0 Loan anyway.
oops, forgot about the sort-and-trash thingy. Maybe I'll rename it.
And it does kind of remind me of Death Cart. I could change the top-decking to a discard maybe. It depends on how much the three Debts seem to hurt in practice. If they hurt a lot, then maybe top-decking is fine.
Outsource -- doesn't feel cohesive. Procession with cost reduction instead of a card gain?
Thematic card. Buy everything on the cheap and work your labor to death and then kick it to the curbside.
Health Insurance -- useless with no curser on the board.
It's possible to trash Debt for Curses if there's at least one trasher out, and Debt is supposed to be the strongest theme of the set. I guess there would have to be a house rule not to play Health Insurance without a trasher and/or curser on the board. (Or I could make it trash 0-cost cards instead, I guess) How often does anyone buy Moat without Attack cards on the board?
Job Creator -- So if I play this and my opponent reveals a hand of 5 Silver, they have to trash them? ALL of them?!
No, each player reveals *a* treasure from their hand.
Facebook -- This has so many issues...
- slows the game down to a crawl (intentionally making fun of Facebook?)
- extremely political
- some difficulty in tracking votes (without pen and paper) with more than 2 players
- what happens if there is a tie (which is very likely with 2p, and even with more players since the "winner" gets +1VP)?
Yeah, it's sort of a joke as well. Whoever doesn't get enough "likes" quickly draws a new hand out of sheer embarrassment. I supposed everyone who ties for the win gets the VP and everyone else does the redeal.
Twitter/Tweet -- Tweets are basically Confusion cards. Meh. It doesn't add enough to the game to warrant a stack of Tweets just to accommodate 5 cards.
That's how much I hate Twitter. YMMV.
Amazon -- cheaper Worker's Village, except you have to wait a bit for those cards to be "delivered". Very cute. :P
Internet -- Really weird. Super weak as well... and is there something I'm missing about this set? What if Amazon and Twitter/Facebook aren't in the supply? There seem to be several cards tied into other cards.
Yeah, I suppose Internet shouldn't be allowed without the Amazon *and* Twitter/Facebook piles. The Internet is supposed to be lackluster to the max, mostly just netting you a discounted Amazon.
Power Outage -- Not sure if you realize it, but this is a next-turn village even if you discard it from play, and it avoids the self-trashing then because of lose-track. It just gets harder to track that way. Duration effects still kick in next turn whether the card is still in play or not. Interesting concept. Not sure how it would play in practice. Ignoring the village effect, this just delays others' engines for a turn, which could actually be a very useful effect.
I'll consider rewording if it turns out that it's better for it to not work that way. Thanks for the concern. I think it may be a super-strong card, but it definitely needs the right support.
Apartment -- So this is another $4 2VP card, where you can choose to play it as a cantrip at the cost of a Debt card. Probably fine? Not super exciting.
Yeah, not everything can be super-exciting, I agree.
Football -- Seems quite swingy and exacerbates first player advantage. You would want it for the trashing. But the first player probably plays it first, and in that case it has a good chance of trashing others' Footballs. To add insult to injury, he gets VP for it! The Library clause doesn't make sense to me; I must be missing some sort of joke there.
Yeah, it's just nerd/jock animosity. Every school spends all their money on sports.
On the conflict with rules -- I play Football, then Upgrade a Potion, Upgrade says I have to gain a $5 card. If Duchies and Upgrades are all gone, I have to gain a Library. Except I can't. So there's a conflict here that needs a ruling via FAQ. But again, I'm not seeing the connection between Football and Library. It seems completely random and not worth the card space.
If you play a Witch, and there aren't any Curses in the supply, then you have to gain a Curse, but you can't.
Master's Degree -- comes with Debt, but otherwise is TR with a bonus. Not that interesting.
Mostly for theme reasons. That's about what I figured a Master's Degree would do in Dominion.
Bomb Shelter -- it's a Moat with 1VP instead of draw... I think I prefer the draw most of the time, if at all. I suppose you don't want to cost it at $2 because then it's strictly better than Estate, but Estate is a junk card anyway. Maybe make it $2 instead so that you have a real reason to want to buy this even on boards with no attacks.
I don't think I can make it strictly better than estates. Attack prevention can be a big deal on some boards, and with strong terminals on the board, I might draw dead Moats anyway. Then there are alt VP boards... this card might not always be a winner, but I figured a Victory-Reaction card might be satisfying to have in the game, since a Reaction is half a card better than just being a dead card altogether.
United Nations -- kind of like Lighthouse, but a next-turn village instead of now-and-next Copper, and there's a way to break through the protection. Lighthouse is probably better a lot of the time, but next-turn village can make a big difference on some boards. Pretty interesting.
House -- it's a bit awkward to put a cap on how much you can overpay (and note that overpay cards have + in the cost, not *). I would suggest rewording it like this:
House
$2+ - Victory
2VP
When you buy this, you may overpay for it. Gain 2 Debt cards, putting them into your hand. For each $1 you overpaid, return a Debt card from your hand to the Supply.
This brings up an issue that also seems to be present in many other cards in the set -- which of these cards are in the supply, and which are not? I mean, in many places it seems that Debt is part of the Supply, but then what happens with House if Debt wasn't selected in a random game?
Ah, my mistake. Debt is supposed to be a mandatory Curse-like pile in every Modern Times game, sort of like a Ruins. Note that the Payday Loan shelter generates a Debt, for one. I suppose the real solution may be to create a Looter-type analog for Debts.
Insider -- looks relatively weak. Trash to junk others -- that's mostly worse than Ambassador. You may gain a Victory card... but you don't really want Duchies until late game, and you probably don't want to lose a $4 card for it. You can't even gain a Province without trashing a $7 card, which is big cost to pay.
Hmmm, you're probably right. I was thinking about it as a curser like Witch, which is $5. But maybe it should be $2 instead of $1. The Silver --> Duchy and Gold --> Province trades will be the most common by far.
Gas Station -- You can simplify it by saying, "Do this twice: ". Extremely powerful, but it can run out of fodder pretty quickly. Not sure how it would play, but it's fairly interesting.
(It's a play on Stables. Explosive, but hugely wasteful.) I suspect that it's OP if you have +Buy on the board to pick up spare Coppers, or if you get the tempo just right an play a couple of these in a megaturn.
Val-U Sav Card -- How is this related to Tweets at all? This is a cost increaser, which is a problematic concept. With a few of these in play, it can completely pin other players from buying anything ever again.
You sign up for a Val-U-Sav card, they get your email address, you never stop getting spam. Maybe I could call them Spam instead of Tweets for the sake of generality.
About not being able to buy anything, I suppose you're right. I think I should cap the number of such effects at 1, and make it not apply to Treasures, or maybe make it only apply to Action cards. Thanks.
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I suppose Power Outage should say something along the lines of "Actions do nothing when played" instead of "players cannot play actions", to disambiguate what happens when Power Outage is part of a Throne Room chain.
To clarify, I mean that any action played during a Power Outage is played as if it were a copy of this card, and it remains this card until it leaves play:
Derp
Action
Cost: X
You may choose to say the word "derp" aloud as many times as you like.
(Ex: Throne Room A plays Throne Room B, and Throne Room B1 is used to play Power Outage twice. The first time, you choose to keep it in play. Then Throne Room B1 plays Power Outage a second time, but this time Power Outage does nothing. Throne Room A isn't affected by Power Outage, so it goes on to play Throne Room B2, which does nothing because it IS affected by Power Outage. Your Throne Room B1ed Power Outage grants you +1 action at the start of your next turn, and then you trash it.)
Ok, that's actually complicated, and I didn't get it right the first time. And I'm not totally confident that I'm doing it right still. When it's played a second time, is it still "in play" from the first time it was played, or does it evade itself?
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Power Outage is giving me a headache. The easiest thing is to not allow players to use actions in the sense of using an action to play an Action card. Meaning KC chains with a Power Outage continue on without a hiccup. That would make Power Outage perhaps unreasonably strong on that kind of board... But it would also have the easiest rules to understand.
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On the conflict with rules -- I play Football, then Upgrade a Potion, Upgrade says I have to gain a $5 card. If Duchies and Upgrades are all gone, I have to gain a Library. Except I can't. So there's a conflict here that needs a ruling via FAQ. But again, I'm not seeing the connection between Football and Library. It seems completely random and not worth the card space.
If you play a Witch, and there aren't any Curses in the supply, then you have to gain a Curse, but you can't.
That is covered by the rules. There is no conflict between cards there. In the other case, there ARE two cards (Upgrade and Football) telling you conflicting things. You need an FAQ ruling to clarify how that interaction is supposed to proceed.
Bomb Shelter -- it's a Moat with 1VP instead of draw... I think I prefer the draw most of the time, if at all. I suppose you don't want to cost it at $2 because then it's strictly better than Estate, but Estate is a junk card anyway. Maybe make it $2 instead so that you have a real reason to want to buy this even on boards with no attacks.
I don't think I can make it strictly better than estates. Attack prevention can be a big deal on some boards, and with strong terminals on the board, I might draw dead Moats anyway. Then there are alt VP boards... this card might not always be a winner, but I figured a Victory-Reaction card might be satisfying to have in the game, since a Reaction is half a card better than just being a dead card altogether.
Oops! I meant to say, "make it 2VP instead."
Ah, my mistake. Debt is supposed to be a mandatory Curse-like pile in every Modern Times game, sort of like a Ruins. Note that the Payday Loan shelter generates a Debt, for one. I suppose the real solution may be to create a Looter-type analog for Debts.
OK, that's fine. You should clarify which cards are Kingdom cards, which are new basic Supply cards, and which are cards tied to other cards like Madman, Mercenary and Spoils. :)
I suppose Power Outage should say something along the lines of "Actions do nothing when played" instead of "players cannot play actions", to disambiguate what happens when Power Outage is part of a Throne Room chain.
To clarify, I mean that any action played during a Power Outage is played as if it were a copy of this card, and it remains this card until it leaves play:
Derp
Action
Cost: X
You may choose to say the word "derp" aloud as many times as you like.
(Ex: Throne Room A plays Throne Room B, and Throne Room B1 is used to play Power Outage twice. The first time, you choose to keep it in play. Then Throne Room B1 plays Power Outage a second time, but this time Power Outage does nothing. Throne Room A isn't affected by Power Outage, so it goes on to play Throne Room B2, which does nothing because it IS affected by Power Outage. Your Throne Room B1ed Power Outage grants you +1 action at the start of your next turn, and then you trash it.)
Ok, that's actually complicated, and I didn't get it right the first time. And I'm not totally confident that I'm doing it right still. When it's played a second time, is it still "in play" from the first time it was played, or does it evade itself?
Ahh, slipped my mind that it affects you on your own turn. A simpler example of card conflict is with Golem.
Power Outage is giving me a headache. The easiest thing is to not allow players to use actions in the sense of using an action to play an Action card. Meaning KC chains with a Power Outage continue on without a hiccup. That would make Power Outage perhaps unreasonably strong on that kind of board... But it would also have the easiest rules to understand.
How would you word that?
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How would you word that?
Hmmmmm. Players are not allowed to spend actions while this card is in play?
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Oops! I meant to say, "make it 2VP instead."
Oh! That sounds right. I just remembered that there is a Victory-Reaction in Dominion, and it's called Tunnel, and it costs $3, and it gives 2 VP. Comparing the two reactions, I think it's fair to price them the same.
My gut says that 2 VP is too much, and that Tunnel is also an OP card, but it's in the game and I may as well use it as my reference point here.
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Car Insurance -- Having trouble parsing this on the first read through. Hmm... The drawback seems to be that it makes you discard treasures. Alternatively, you can just trash it. So why wouldn't you do that? Maybe you want to keep it around for the reaction, which lets you recover cards that you trash, but that comes with a Debt card. I don't see that reaction being particularly useful even in ideal cases (read: TfB) because of that extra junk card. So... this is just a shelter that disappears immediately?
Ok, how about this one?
Car Insurance
+1 card
+1 action
You may discard a treasure. If you do not, trash this card and place two cards from your hand on top of your deck.
When one of your cards is trashed, you may reveal this card from your hand. If you did so, or if this card is in play, you may discard this card. If you do, gain the trashed card and a Debt.
(Theme remark: It "costs money" to make Car Insurance "payments", but the opportunity cost of "canceling" your policy is two cards.)
If, as before, I let the player draw a replacement card and just trash this right away, then the early-game pacing could be unusually fast compared to regular Dominion, and that's not necessarily what I want with this fan set; in particular, iPhone is already a minimally harmful cantrip. That's why the change, gameplay-wise. The new card is dead early, and has the potential to either "wake up" mid-to-late-game or trash itself when your hand works out in favor of it.
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Car Insurance -- Having trouble parsing this on the first read through. Hmm... The drawback seems to be that it makes you discard treasures. Alternatively, you can just trash it. So why wouldn't you do that? Maybe you want to keep it around for the reaction, which lets you recover cards that you trash, but that comes with a Debt card. I don't see that reaction being particularly useful even in ideal cases (read: TfB) because of that extra junk card. So... this is just a shelter that disappears immediately?
Ok, how about this one?
Car Insurance
+1 card
+1 action
You may discard a treasure. If you do not, trash this card and place two cards from your hand on top of your deck.
When one of your cards is trashed, you may reveal this card from your hand. If you did so, or if this card is in play, you may discard this card. If you do, gain the trashed card and a Debt.
(Theme remark: It "costs money" to make Car Insurance "payments", but the opportunity cost of "canceling" your policy is two cards.)
If, as before, I let the player draw a replacement card and just trash this right away, then the early-game pacing could be unusually fast compared to regular Dominion, and that's not necessarily what I want with this fan set; in particular, iPhone is already a minimally harmful cantrip. That's why the change, gameplay-wise. The new card is dead early, and has the potential to either "wake up" mid-to-late-game or trash itself when your hand works out in favor of it.
Still not really seeing this as an interesting decision. Consider this tidbit from the Secret Histories of Dark Ages:
Hovel is the only one that changed. Originally it was an action you could trash by discarding your hand. It turned out that trashing it turn 1-2 usually seemed like the correct play, even if you drew it with four Coppers. So that was no good. Hovel as printed has nice flavor going for it; you move out of your old Hovel and into a nice Duchy.
Car Insurance seems like that to me. You may have to lose the hand, but it's probably worth it to get the junk card out of your deck. Slowing the cycling down might make a difference, but probably not much.
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Car Insurance -- Having trouble parsing this on the first read through. Hmm... The drawback seems to be that it makes you discard treasures. Alternatively, you can just trash it. So why wouldn't you do that? Maybe you want to keep it around for the reaction, which lets you recover cards that you trash, but that comes with a Debt card. I don't see that reaction being particularly useful even in ideal cases (read: TfB) because of that extra junk card. So... this is just a shelter that disappears immediately?
Ok, how about this one?
Car Insurance
+1 card
+1 action
You may discard a treasure. If you do not, trash this card and place two cards from your hand on top of your deck.
When one of your cards is trashed, you may reveal this card from your hand. If you did so, or if this card is in play, you may discard this card. If you do, gain the trashed card and a Debt.
(Theme remark: It "costs money" to make Car Insurance "payments", but the opportunity cost of "canceling" your policy is two cards.)
If, as before, I let the player draw a replacement card and just trash this right away, then the early-game pacing could be unusually fast compared to regular Dominion, and that's not necessarily what I want with this fan set; in particular, iPhone is already a minimally harmful cantrip. That's why the change, gameplay-wise. The new card is dead early, and has the potential to either "wake up" mid-to-late-game or trash itself when your hand works out in favor of it.
Still not really seeing this as an interesting decision. Consider this tidbit from the Secret Histories of Dark Ages:
Hovel is the only one that changed. Originally it was an action you could trash by discarding your hand. It turned out that trashing it turn 1-2 usually seemed like the correct play, even if you drew it with four Coppers. So that was no good. Hovel as printed has nice flavor going for it; you move out of your old Hovel and into a nice Duchy.
Car Insurance seems like that to me. You may have to lose the hand, but it's probably worth it to get the junk card out of your deck. Slowing the cycling down might make a difference, but probably not much.
The alternative to trashing Car Insurance ASAP is to hold onto a dead card and use the reaction to get a Province.
Another alternative is that you start buying better treasures, and play the card on turns where you think you'll draw something better than the Copper you'll have to discard. If you cantrip to Cutpurse yourself but you drew a Silver, the card is acting like a Copper that turn (but it took the Silver out of your deck for that shuffle in the process)
The penalty for trashing it has to be* at least bad enough that you don't expect to get free 4/4 or 4/5 opening hands and an early reshuffle totally for free (when you take iPhone into account).
(*- Well, ok, doesn't have to be, but I respect the sort of tempo that vanilla Dominion games have, and I'm not looking to rock the boat just because)
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(Also, I'm actually kind of ok with trashing Car Insurance just being the obvious right thing to do when there's no trashing on the board. Fairly often, your Estates only function as dead cards you likewise want to trash ASAP, or you just can't, and again - it's just a dead card, only you don't even get a choice in that case, and the VP difference doesn't change anything for anyone.)
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Added Kids These Days to the end of the OP.
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I felt like I had way more than enough, so I started churning out images for it. Updated with a link at the top of the OP. Some fixes and additions as well, but I can't promise I'll fix this page to be up-to-date with the image file, because there's always one more thing...
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Added Dominion-style flavor text to the OP. Updated a lot of cards on the DeviantArt page (linked in OP).
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In case anyone was following this thread, I updated it with links. The links include card text this time, as has been requested. Feedback would be appreciated.
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http://mtaur.blogspot.com/2015/04/dimonion-modern-times-text-update.html
Update. Still looking for feedback.
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In my opinion, it's is not worth mentioning specifically that cards on your Amazon mat are part of your deck at the end of the game. Native Village and Island are the only 2 cards that have this mentioned, out of the huge number of cards that can cause things to be set aside when the game ends. The Dominion rulebook makes it clear that ALL set aside cards are part of your deck at the end of the game. I personally wish Native Village and Island didn't have that text, because then people would be forced to learn the correct rule in the first place, instead of assuming that it works that way because Island and Native Village say so.
The list of cards that don't have that text, but can still cause a set aside card at end of game:
Haven
Gear
Inheritance
All cards on your Tavern mat
Horse Traders
Prince
I'm sure there's more, but you get the point. I guess my point is that even though without the text, people will ask "do cards on the Amazon mat count as being in your deck at end of game?" that that's ok... if they need to ask that, then they SHOULD have to ask it, because they need to learn the rule. Rather than ask it for each card that is missing the text.
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The text version of Google doesn't have +1 action. I'm guessing that this is a typo, and not that you've changed the card?
Gas Station sounds like it may be way too good, but I can't be sure. Compared to Stables... both leave you with a 1-size hand increase, like Lab. But Gas Station trashes Coppers instead of Discarding them, which is WAY better for the first several times you play it. On top of that, Gas Station gives you 1 of your card draws before you need the treasure, so you have 1 more card to find the treasure in. At the least, I would play a few games where both are available, where one person always buys Stables and the other always buys Gas Station, to see if Stables can ever win.
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What do you mean for iPhone to be a Shelter? Are you intending it to replace 1 of the 3 other Shelters in your starting deck? To be consistent with other Durations, I would recommend updating the wording:
+1 Card
+1 Action
At the end of your cleanup phase this turn, place one card from your hand on top of your deck.
At the start of your next turn, return this to your hand.
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While this is in play, you cannot use reaction abilities.
Do you mean for it to only restrict YOU from using reaction abilities? Or did you want it to prevent other players from using them? If the former (which is how it's worded now), it sounds like a very weak card. But if it's a Shelter that starts in your deck, that might make sense.
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Job creator looks very weak to me... it trashes your opponent's Coppers for them, and junks yourself with a Copper. Sure it's ok if it hits Silver, but even then it's basically Noble Brigand with some super-Cutpurse on the side. I would think this could cost $3, not $6. And even then it's situational... basically stops Big Money; it's terrible against engines.
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The text version of Google doesn't have +1 action. I'm guessing that this is a typo, and not that you've changed the card?
Gas Station sounds like it may be way too good, but I can't be sure. Compared to Stables... both leave you with a 1-size hand increase, like Lab. But Gas Station trashes Coppers instead of Discarding them, which is WAY better for the first several times you play it. On top of that, Gas Station gives you 1 of your card draws before you need the treasure, so you have 1 more card to find the treasure in. At the least, I would play a few games where both are available, where one person always buys Stables and the other always buys Gas Station, to see if Stables can ever win.
This is indeed a misprint in the text version. Google is a lot of fun, and the +1 action is essential. If it were too good, it would cost more instead.
Gas Station has a typo in the cost. I believe I bumped it up to $6. It trashes for theme reasons (non-renewable resource and all that).
I'm sure there are more if I missed those two. :(
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What do you mean for iPhone to be a Shelter? Are you intending it to replace 1 of the 3 other Shelters in your starting deck? To be consistent with other Durations, I would recommend updating the wording:
+1 Card
+1 Action
At the end of your cleanup phase this turn, place one card from your hand on top of your deck.
At the start of your next turn, return this to your hand.
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While this is in play, you cannot use reaction abilities.
Do you mean for it to only restrict YOU from using reaction abilities? Or did you want it to prevent other players from using them? If the former (which is how it's worded now), it sounds like a very weak card. But if it's a Shelter that starts in your deck, that might make sense.
iPhone is the "Shelter"-type card for Modern Times. There are three, replacing the starting Estates. It tends to stay in play for a long time. I don't like the idea of choosing which card you don't draw. I could say "put the -1 card token on your deck at the end of your Buy phase", but I was hoping that drawing less would make sense as is. For example, 2 instead of 3 before an Outpost turn, if that were Modern Times...
iPhone is supposed to be a perpetual distraction. You still get 5 cards, but you're constantly fiddling with iPhone in between and can't react to things.
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Job creator looks very weak to me... it trashes your opponent's Coppers for them, and junks yourself with a Copper. Sure it's ok if it hits Silver, but even then it's basically Noble Brigand with some super-Cutpurse on the side. I would think this could cost $3, not $6. And even then it's situational... basically stops Big Money; it's terrible against engines.
It's actually pretty good early, like a Cutpurse variant that occasionally steals a Silver if you're lucky. If it's too cheap, then it can be very hard to ever get enough Golds to buy Golds if you play wrong against it. There's also a lot of trashing in the set, so in practice, you can just get rid of it when it gets closer to the late game. It's also not that hard to get rid of the extra Copper.
Note that you're often getting $3 that turn, $4 if you're lucky, $2 for a whiff. Noble Brigand gets you $1 - this is a huge difference. And if you're playing against an engine, then they'd better not have 4 actions and a Silver in hand...
When Job Creator succeeds, it hurts the other player's momentum like Cutpurse would, and it gives you momentum in excess of the $2 of Cutpurse. It would be weak on a board without trashing, but unless I get more card ideas, it's hard to make a trashing-free board here anyway.
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Thanks for the feedback. Let me know if anything else stands out.