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Variants and Fan Cards / Re: What do you think about this?
« on: May 02, 2013, 05:42:44 pm »
It would obviously depend on the kingdom.
Scout did some work here. http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110710-105632-b784a609.html.
Also, is it just me or are there two Casinos in the list? (I think the old version was left in after adding the fixed one?)
I started writing this up after my last post, so you might have already addressed some of these. Don't take this criticism the wrong way -- it is meant to be constructive. There are some neat ideas here!
There are also some completely broken ideas though.
Mortgage -- I imagine this is pretty strong. Often you should be easily able to afford a single discard in your next turn. Moreover, it wouldn't be too bad to just spam a bunch of Mortgages. After getting +$5 with Mortgage, you know your next hand is wiped out anyway so you might as well keep playing them. In weakening one hand to improve another, Mortgage is sort of like Tactician. But it is cheaper, gives a bit more control, and it gives you to the benefits now (which tends to be better than getting them later).
But overall, it is hard to evaluate. It might be OK. There is a tracking issue in that you have to remember how much money you gained with it so that you can discard the right number of cards. The major problem is that you have to remember it on your NEXT turn, which is longer than most cards require you to remember something.
Yeah, I should likely put a limit of $5 from what you can get from this card. I didn't think about completely nuking the next turn and keep spamming it for $3.
Accountant -- people have already mentioned that "value" is not always defined for treasure cards. Also, you have to be careful about order of cards revealed. You'll notice that there aren't any Dominion cards that do this. They either discard everything else (e.g. Golem, Sage) or they let you put cards back in whatever order you want (e.g. Oracle). It's pretty easy for a player to mess up the order by accident (or to mess with it on purpose, for that matter).
Another issue is, what happens when you don't reveal a treasure (maybe because you don't have one in hand)? From the current wording, it is undefined.
If I am understanding the card correctly, Accountant is pretty weak, which is appropriate for a $2 card. To fix the other problems, I would start it, "You may reveal a treasure from your hand. If you do... until you reveal a treasure with a different name... shuffle the other cards and put them back on your deck".
The last part of that is because, again, requiring the same order can have issues. But you also don't want to let the player put them back in any order, because then one of the best (and most annoying) use cases would be to reveal a set it up so that you reveal your entire deck, allowing you to re-order it as you please. It would be easy to do actually -- just don't buy any treasure, so your deck only has Copper.
I thought this card might be a bit too confusing. I wanted a card that would be able to switch places with cards in your deck. I'll I'll change it to reveal and discard and I'll give it a "You may reveal a treasure. If you do...
Casino -- no need to call out Curses specifically. Do you mean for the bonuses to stack? For example, if I reveal 3 Coppers, Casino will give me a total of +2 cards, +2 actions, +$5. If you don't mean for it to stack, it should be written:
"Reveal and discard the top 3 cards of your deck. If all 3 have the same name, +2 cards, +2 actions, +$2. Otherwise, for each action card..."
I like it, but I think it is undercosted. It should probably be $5, but $4 at least. It is very comparable with Harvest.
Yeah, I didn't want it stack. I don't think it's overpowered the other way, because it's unreliable like tribute and you might get just a worse fishing village or something. It would be fine at $4 though I think.
Convention -- the wording is off. For this kind of effect, it is "while this is in play", not "in games using this". So:
"While this is in play, you may gain a Convention when you gain an action card costing $5 or more."
Anyway, this is a cantrip that becomes a Peddler from the third play onwards. That feels weak to me. As a baseline, a regular Peddler is costed correctly at about $4. This is slightly cheaper but takes significantly more effort to activate. It does have a clause to let you gain more of them quickly, but that requires investing in a bonus-less cantrip in the first place.
This is probably an OK card, but definitely test it more. I wonder if it would be better at $2.
I wanted to make an opportunity cost card here. You're obviously not going to be buying them very much, but you have to make the initial investment. I'll change the wording to get rid of "in games using this."
Deflation -- some wording issues again, and there is the problem of treasure "value" once more. I don't think there is a way to fix it and retain the same concept (which, for the record, I think is extremely powerful and probably warrants a $6 or $7 card cost).
Got rid of the treasure value.
Investment -- big, big tracking issues. It's already difficult for some people to track regular Durations. One that lasts a second turn? super confusing!
I hadn't seen a 2-turn duration before and I thought it'd be a good idea. I can see what you're saying though about how it'd be confusing.
Secretary -- extremely powerful. Consider the two most common use cases, especially at the start of the game:
A) +2 cards, discard a copper, +$2.
B) +2 cards, discard an Estate, +1 card.
Case A is net equivalent to +2 cards, +$1. Early game, +$1 is worth about the same as +1 card, so this is very close to case B...
Case B is basically +3 cards because that Estate probably wasn't doing anything for you anyway. So it is a Smithy! And Smithy is a $4 card.
I would try testing Secretary at $4 to start, potentially increasing it. It really looks too good for $3.
Yeah, I realized afterwards how overpowered BM-Secretary is. I'll price it at $4.
Teller -- "same order" has issues, as noted above. I'm not sure if this is OK at $3 or if it should be $4.
It's usually going to be a worse Fishing Village so I don't think it should be $4. It's obviously good if you can trash your coppers and use it to snag your golds. I'll change it to "reveal and discard."
Charity -- Your opponent would never reveal a hand with no treasure because there is no place for them to do so. You tell them to discard treasure or gain copper, never to reveal their hand. But a bigger problem is that this is a powerful cantrip attack. There are very, very few attacks that are non-terminal. Off the top of my head, the only ones are Spy, Scrying Pool, and Urchin. The first two are simple deck inspection and don't stack well (once you leave a bad card on their deck, additional attacks don't do anything) and Urchin only drops you down to a 4 card hand -- not scary at all. But this one is Cutpurse or Copper-junking, both very painful.
Not really sure what to do with this one. It seems too weak at $5 with the ranks of Mountebank and Witch but too strong as an opener. I'll give it an on-buy gain a copper penalty.
Insiders -- Very interesting concept. The main issue is, again, tracking. I would rephrase it like this:
"At the start of each other player's next turn, he gets +$2 and +1 Buy. While this is in play, when another player gains a card, you may gain a card costing up to $2 more. At the start of your next turn, trash this."
That way, the card remains in play for tracking purposes until your next turn. Also, you don't have to say "buy or gain" because when someone buys a card, they will gain it. If you say both, you would be able to gain two cards for their one buy.
There is one other big issue with this card -- infinite loops.
Amy and Bill have both played Insiders. It is Carol's turn. Let's say Carol buys a Copper. Now Amy and Bill can both gain a card costing up to $2. Let's say Amy gains an Estate. OH HO, now Bill can ALSO gain a card costing up to $4 due to what Amy just gained! But when Bill gains something from his Insiders, Amy's Insiders will trigger again... and then Bill's... and then Amy's... so by buying a measley Copper, both Amy and Bill drain all the Provinces, not to mention the rest of the supply. And of course there are some issues in figuring out what order they do all those gains in as they bounce off of each other...
So I would do this:
"While this is in play, when another player gains a card, you may trash this to gain a card costing up to $2 more. At the start of your next turn, discard this."
The core concept is still intact. Infinite loops are gone. It is trackable. Opponents no longer gain a bonus because that could become pretty confusing -- do they still get a bonus if you have already trashed it away to another player's gain? So just cut that away entirely. And if you haven't used it by the time your turn rolls around again, you get to keep it.
This new version of the card isn't very powerful. Your opponent can easily play around it. But it would add some interesting interaction. You have Insiders in play... now I have to weigh whether it is worth it to buy that card if it means giving you an even better one.
I'm not sure how you can set an infinite loop up. It -might- be possible with Possession. But, since it's resolved on your opponent's turn, I don't really know how both you and your opponent can have it in play. I'll change it to just gain also.
Landlord -- cantrip attacks again, noooo. Like I said above, Peddler is already a $4 card. Now you've added an attack on top of it, and a decent one at that. Even with hurting yourself via Estate gains, this is too powerful.
Again, like I did with Charity, I'll give it an on-buy penalty of an estate.
Speculator -- Too powerful. Far too powerful. This is Highway with +Buy, which is just brokenly powerful. The next turn penalty does not matter at all if you end the game this turn.
There is a bit of a tracking problem in remembering whether that Speculator was played this turn or last turn, though that's not really worse than any other Duration.
But yeah... too powerful.
Huh. I thought it was pretty balanced. This card has several problems:
1. It's a duration so it'll miss the reshuffle a lot.
2. If you can't play more than 3 a turn, it's not going to help you much. So you have to line them all up kind of like Treasure Map. Also, because it's a duration, just play 2 Speculators one turn and then play 4 of them on the next, you can't line them up because of the durations and the benefits are non-existant.
It's obviously good with draw your deck cards, but those decks will always play your cantrips, which is one thing you might refrain from if you don't know you can line them all up. Tactician, Native Village, Alchemist come to mind as synergies, but Tactician makes a lot of cards good. Native Village isn't the same as NV-Bridge though, because you'll play your bridges every time you draw them. You might not want to play Speculator every time. Getting an Alchemist stack and a Speculator stack might be too slow.
Embezzlement -- there is an accountability problem in that you need to have "or reveal a hand with no treasure". There is also the issue of treasure "value" again. And there is an issue in that this is basically a super-Cutpurse. Cutpurse can be really bad but at least it only kills Coppers. Embezzlement makes pinning players much easier. And that's before considering that this is a TREASURE attack, which means it is trivial to play multiples in the same turn.
And I'm not sure what you mean by "$1 Buy, $0".
I really wanted a treasure attack. The first few are weak but it's obviously stackable. The $1 buy thing was a typo on my part.
Deposit -- how are you going to track how often it is played? Tokens, probably, but we already do have Victory tokens for Bishop, Goons and Monument. So this card is kind of like:
+1 Card, +1 Action, +0.20VP.
So this is a cantrip VP gainer... that can be bad because it leads to games that never end. Say both players just play chains of KC-Deposit to rack up VP... how will the game ever end? Note that this issue can come up with existing cards (KC-Monument, or Bishop spam on Fortress) but those are less likely because they are terminal and they provide money which encourages you to buy something, moving the game state closer to an end. But with Deposit, all you get is VP.
Granted, it is much slower.
Oh, unless each Deposit is worth that much VP. If so, then having 5 Deposits makes each play +1 Card, +1 Action, +1VP. So the problem is bigger!
Yeah, Deposit was intended to self-synergize. I can see your concern though. Stuff like Ghost Ship-Deposit would make the game last forever.
Presentation -- not sure how it compares to Tribute.
Stock Exchange -- I think it is OK.
Shipment -- Tracking issue. With this card, you pretty much have to keep a running tally of how many treasures are in your deck, because it is not feasible to count them all every time you play Shipment (it would be more annoying than Philo Stone, but it would also require you to look at cards which you shouldn't otherwise be able to look at!). But keeping a running tally isn't always possible -- consider Masquerade. If I play Masq and pass an Estate in a 4p game, I will have to reveal to everyone that I passed an Estate or else the tallies for me and the player to my left will be incorrect. I don't think there is a way to fix this card without heavily altering the concept.
I thought it'd be easy to keep track of victory cards. I didn't think about Masq. Not really sure how to change this card.
Con-artist -- If you want to use Ruins, you have to give it the Looter type. The Con-artist restriction is not necessary because you have it costing $6 but only gaining up to $5. OK, it could matter in conjunction with price reduction... but then, the better wording is "gain an action card costing less than this".
I think this looks OK.
I used the restriction because I didn't want someone to be able empty piles immediately after playing a Highway. I changed it to your way.
Liquidator -- super confusing, and yeah -- very political.
I like the idea but not really sure how to make it work
Still, Rabble probably wouldn't be much of a problem anyway. It'll likely not hit 3 estates, because once you hit 2 estates with Rabble, you can only cycle one card from the opponent at a time. I mean, it seems like the only time you could depend on that would be in games with KC, Casino, and Rabble and at that point, I'd say it's negligible.Removed Deflation and changed Embezzlement. In regards to Casino, it reveals from your deck, not your opponent's deck. Also (I should've worded this better), when you do get the bonus, you ignore the other effects and just get the +2 cards, +2 actions, and +$2.
Edit: My other version of Embezzlement is way too unbalanced for multiplayer games. Will have to change it again.
My response was to Casino wasn't clear. I meant after your opponent hands you a big Rabble attack.
"Value of treasure" is a bad idea... what about Fool's Gold, Philosopher's Stone, etc? Treasure has no value... "Value" is not a term defined in Dominion, and it can be quite tricky to try to define new terms like that. When you play treasure cards, they add $, just like playing a Woodcutter does... But they have no "Value."Ahh, I didn't consider those special treasures. Thanks for that suggestion. I'll revise/delete those later.
Innovation:I like this idea, but I'm worried it'll be too dead in games without non-terminals. Maybe flip it to a treasure (so in BM games you can gain a Silver, sometimes Gold with it) and price it at $5, similar to HoP?
Action - $1
Gain a card equal in cost to a card you have in play, putting it on top of your deck.
It's supposed to be like the "draw" mechanic; you get a card which you can play next turn.
Easy puzzle:
What one other card belongs with these three, and why?
Rebuild, Mystic, Contraband
Wishing Well. Only cards that have you name a card.
FTFY