[Wording issue: "when you buy this, you may return it to the supply" is technically impossible. When you buy it, you have not actually gained it and it is still in the supply. A fix would be, "When you buy this, you may choose not to gain it. If you do gain it, take a coin token..." Still a bit awkward, but it works as you intended.
oh yea, that's true.
Is this card worth buying? That will depend on how badly it hurts opponents. So let's say that another player buys a Confusion. Now I have to put one in my hand. On my turn, I can play it (and since it's non-terminal that's no big deal) but then I have to put a card on top of my deck. Note that multiple Confusions go away in one fell swoop, as well they should -- stacking would be really annoying.
So in most cases, this is just a mini-Ghost Ship. That is actually an extremely mild attack. Extremely weak, certainly not worth a $3 buy.
yea, if you do it to hurt your opponent, it's an "effective" card reducing of one, so it does exactly half as much as a ghost ship. but: it can't be countered and it returns to the supply after your opponent got rid of it, so you can do it over and over again. it'll shine if your opponent tries to end the game early, and you're going for a slower deck with a high payoff. Just buy one of those every turn, and you'll buy yourself some extra time.
Players also have an option to not play it. The penalty is that it will cause you to gain Ruins when you reshuffle, if it is in your discard. Practically speaking, this is not so good either. It means that every time I shuffle, I have to reveal my entire discard to other players and find every copy of it there. I can't just look through it myself either; I have to reveal my discard for accountability. That slows the game down a lot. I can't think of a good way to fix this.
i thought that's completely fine. Online it'll do it itself and offline you just have to remember how many of those you have in your deck. In most cases, it wont be more than one, so it wont take much time. It certainly isn't worse than stash
If you ever try to trash the card, you have to discard a card. This seems unnecessary. I'm already using an action to trash this Confusion, when I could have been trashing something else. In some cases, maybe it doesn't matter much or maybe it's even a bonus (e.g. Remodel into a $5), but that's fine. You could probably leave out the entire on-trash effect, saving space and design complexity.
I don't want this card to be trashed. It's supposed to be an everlasting option throughout the game.
Going back to the choice of keeping the card... you get a Coin token and you may put it on your deck. Is the coin token worth junking your own deck? Note that the Confusion you would gain yourself does not go into your hand. That actually makes it more damaging to you than anyone else. If you put it on top of your deck, then your next hand is automatically cut to 4 cards (not counting Confusion) and possibly down to 3 cards (if you choose to play Confusion and have to discard something). That's a bigger hit than the others face, since they would only be dropped down to 4 cards. And if you choose not to top-deck it, then you've effectively given yourself a Confusion and a Ruins. Not good. That's probably never worth the coin token. You could streamline the card even more by omitting the option and simply having the buyer leave it in the supply every time.
I thought it was useful in a lot of cases. The first one is if you need the sheme-effect for next turn, either because there's a potion without enough support, a KC without any action cards or a single treasure map. In all of those cases, you'll be more than happy to spend $3 if it a) let's you sheme your key card, b) slows down your opponent and c) gives you a coin token.
Another case is: you're playing a junked BM deck and struggle to get to 8. Simply buy a Confusion twice in a row, slow down your opponents, make it even less likeley that they ever reach 8, and get 2 coin tokens. Then buy the province with 6+2.
Then there are the games where the first one to get to $7 and buys a KC wins. If you know how the remainder of your drawing pile looks like, you can buy a Confusion, put it on top of your deck; next turn use it to top deck your biggest money card; then in the following turn get the KC.
Or imagine if you want to boost vineyards/gardens/fairgrounds. With the reshuffle thing my primary goal was to delay the disadvantage that you get if you leave it in your deck as long as possible. You buy it, then you use your remaining drawing pile, then you reshuffle, and only once you reshuffle again the ruins is in your drawing pile. So you can buy some Confusions, have the coin token and attack benefit, and let them generate nice ruins in your kingdom that make your vineyards all the more attractive. It's +2 action cards if triggered once, and +2 differently named cards for fairgrounds.
One final issue is how this pile scales with number of players. It is a junk card, but it is not like other junk cards. If you look at Curses and Ruins, these piles will scale. In a 2p game, there are 10. In a 4p game, there are 30. So does the Confusion pile scale as well? Is it still a kingdom card? If it doesn't scale then the pile runs out far more quickly than other such junk cards. Granted, the scaling might matter less since these cards will (usually) keep returning to the supply instead of staying in decks or getting trashed. So there's that.
yea, you gave the answer yourself, it's supposed to never run out, because it always returns to the supply.
Hmm... this card concept could probably be written in a much simpler manner and achieve nearly the same effect. The effect of gaining a Confusion into your hand is basically a choice between a discard attack or gaining a Ruins. A difference is that the Confusion would be a persistent threat of gaining Ruins until you accept the discard attack. But even so, there is something to be said for removing excess complexity. So you could rephrase a lot of it as:
When you gain this, return it to the Supply. Each other player chooses one: he discards down to 4 cards in hand; or he gains a Ruins.
Again, it's not exactly the same, but it's close and it's much simpler and more concise. It could be reworded slightly different to have the player put cards on top of his deck instead of discarding, but that's a small change.
I wouldn't like the card at all if it worked that way, because the goal of this card was to have something that's skill dependent, situational yet useful in a lot of different cases, and never runs out. If you do it like that, neither of those goals is achieved. It's just a junker, neither something new nor something very exciting or complex. And it most certainly doesn't want to be a discard, because on-deck is something very different to discarding, it's what I call the difference between "effective" and "uneffective" hand size reducing.
Phrased this way, I recognize another potential issue -- this is an on-buy discard attack that is always on the board. I recall that Donald X. mentioned in a Secret History (one of the last ones, for all the outtakes, I think) that he tried a Militia variant that attacked when you bought it, like Noble Brigands. Apparently it didn't pan out because the ever-present threat was just too oppressive. That doesn't mean that a concept like this wouldn't work, but it's something to keep in mind. If you want to refine this concept, it would be worth finding that particular discussion from Donald X. to mull over.
Maybe... never heard about that.
