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1

Variants and Fan Cards / Fan Card Mechanics Week 88: Remodel This

« on: April 17, 2024, 05:17:34 pm »

This week's challenge is to Create an improved fan mechanic. And a card or two to show it in action, of course.

If you're going to use someone else's idea as a starting point, feel free to look at my mechanics, "really bad card ideas", or other sources that won't be offended by you saying their mechanic is bad, and then link/quote the original so we know what we're comparing to.
You could also tell us about your own mechanic and how you're reworking it.

But the idea is taking something that has problems, and making it usable and awesome!

Submission Guidelines
Valid submissions contain three parts:

• Old Mechanic

Explain what it is, and what's wrong with it

• New Mechanic

Explain what it is now, and how it's better

• Card(s) Using Mechanic

Show off how cool it is. Max two cards/card-shaped things.

Remember, this is week is more about the new mechanic than the card itself.
I'm judging based on how big of an improvement it is on the old version, how unique and creative it is, and how fun I think the mechanic is. Fun mechanics usually aren't overcomplicated or unbalanced.

Have fun!

2

Weekly Design Contest / Weekly Design Contest #215: Getting Engaged

« on: April 03, 2024, 12:26:35 am »

Weekly Design Contest #215: Getting Engaged
I've always been impressed with cards like Council Room -- the way it balances a powerful effect, the way you can strategize around its effect (e.g. Council Room - Militia)... so I'd love to see you all create your own non-Attack card that interacts with other players. The more it engages a player when it's not their turn, the better!

Guidelines:

• Must not Attack, this is the only major rule
• Make the best card you can -- I'd love to see new ways (BONUS POINTS) of interacting or new spins on existing ways, but feel free to reuse an existing interaction effect if that's what your card needs
• Aiming for engaging you when it's not your turn. How can you make it feel less like watching someone playing solitaire, when they're playing a huge string of engine pieces?
• Horizontals are accepted, but Kingdom cards are preferred... I'm biased towards them, sorry
• Please don't include more than two cards in your submission (e.g. a two-card split pile, or a card that gains from a non-Supply pile; but not a Traveler line). Feel free to revise your submission up until the contest closes, though; I'll use the latest version

Examples
Valid:

• Masquerade - Passing around cards is quite interactive when it's not your turn. Even though it's almost always passing junk and getting junk, it feels novel and keeps you interested
• Bishop - Getting to clean up your deck for free is fun
• Advisor - Unfortunately only engages the player to the left (slightly less points for this contest, even though I basically only play 2-player). And you're essentially just acting as a mediator so that they draw the "worst" two cards. But it makes up for it all with the fun of watching them react to what you make them discard

Invalid:

• Falconer - Only engages the person holding the card. I do love these kinds of cards but for this contest I want cards that affect others
• Witch - Um, it's an Attack. To be clear, something like Raid or Circle of Witches isn't in the spirit of the contest either, even if it's technically not an Attack

I'll close the contest in about a week (I'll give 24 or 48 hour notice), and release my judgment a day or two after it ends.
I tend to gravitate to cards that are creative, balanced, and fun. Cards that are needlessly complex are rarely fun, but no need to shy away from complexity if that's where your card wants to go.

3

Variants and Fan Cards / Fan Card Mechanics Week 85: March Matness

« on: March 21, 2024, 01:49:20 am »

The contest this week is:
 Design a card that uses the Shadow mat

When you play a card, you can return copies of that card from your Shadow mat to the Supply in order to replay the card.
It's, uh, kind of a mat of one-shot Royal Carriages that only work for their specific card.

Cards on your Shadow mat are NOT part of your deck, an important distinction from Exile -- Shadowing a card from your hand makes it leave your deck, effectively trashing it (but getting an extra play out of the next copy of it you play).

Here's a few example cards to show some basic ways you could use the mechanic:

Scribe - Shadowing playable cards from the Supply means storing up an opportunity to throne a copy of the Shadowed card.
Illusion - Shadowing from your hand means removing it from your deck but/and storing a throne.
Bid - Shadowing a Victory card doesn't put it into your deck, but if you make a card that discards from the Shadow mat, then it would let you "reserve" the Victory card and get it later through discarding.

Contest rules:

• Please make a card or cards, not card-shaped thing
• 2 cards max in your submission, not a 4-part pile or Traveller line
• Including other fan mechanics is welcome
• Contest ends around a week from tomorrow. I'll give a 48 or 24 hour notice and present my judgment shortly after it ends

I like cards that are fun, creative, clever, and balanced. Simple but thought-out cards are often more enjoyable than a wall of text.
If you have any questions, I'll update the FAQ with answers. Have fun!

FAQ/Notes

• It returns "to its pile" rather than "to the Supply", so it doesn't have an arbitrary distinction of not working on non-Supply cards. Shadow your Wishes all you like
• 4/21 - Why no horizontals? Eh, personal preference. Makes it easier to compare cards, and the contest involves a mat that doesn't have cards around it yet.

4

Variants and Fan Cards / Fan Card Mechanics Week 66: Berserker's Fury

« on: June 01, 2023, 01:57:06 pm »

This week we'll try out the Fury type.

Fury cards may be played in your Action, Buy, or Night phase. If played in the Action phase they do not cost an Action to play unless the card specifically states to. Instead, Fury cards have their own cost to play them, stated at the beginning of the card ("To play, ...").

Your to-play cost can be whatever you like, these are just to give you some examples.

As Fury cards aren't attached to a particular phase, you won't want to do multi-typing involving a phase (Action, Treasure, or Night type), but feel free to use other types with it (Victory, Duration, Reaction...).


So yeah, your task is to
Design a Fury card
Here's a template for ya.
And you are welcome to include another fan mechanic as well!

Judging criteria:

• How well does it use the flexibility offered? Is there ever a reason to play it at a different time or in a different phase?
• How fun? Do I want to play with this card? (Also relatively simple cards are sometimes the most fun, you know?)
• How cool, creative, unique?
• How balanced? Could it fit in the average kingdom? (But don't sweat it too much -- just because I feel like it's off by $1 wouldn't change how I feel about the card)

FAQ/Stuff I missed
How do I play a Fury card?
Move it into play from your hand, then perform its to-play cost. You can't play it if you can't do its cost.
ex: If I have a Fury card with the to-play cost of discarding my hand, it shouldn't discard itself. It exits your hand, does the cost, then the rest of its effects.

5

Variants and Fan Cards / Some Fan Mechanic Ideas

« on: May 06, 2023, 10:33:52 pm »

So normally I just come up with cards (using existing mechanics) rather than my own new mechanics. But today I finally had some ideas, lol.
I don't think these are great or anything. But maybe I can get some feedback, and hopefully it can inspire other people's ideas if nothing else. I get inspired by all of your great ideas, hehe 

Disclaimer: the cards are silly; and in addition, none of these mechanics are tested at all. The hope is to get an idea of what's worth testing, if that makes sense. But feel free to borrow any ideas and change whatever, I don't mind.

I'll start with what I think are the "safer", smaller mechanics.

Free type - Actions with this type ("Action - Free") simply do not cost an Action to play. Everything else about them is the same as other Action cards. It's a narrow design space. You can draw it terminally and still play it in the Action phase, that's its niche.
So Campfire is just Village, but you can play it even if you're out of Actions. I think Free Actions can just be a slightly darker gray than regular Actions.


Spell tokens - You can spend a Spell token at any time to gain a Coffers, Villager, or Favor. Or one of another major token (e.g. NOT on a card-specific mat like Sinister Plot), if they add Trade tokens or whatever else in the future. I think not VP tokens though, so Spells feel kind of "active". Pretty boring idea though, it's just a do-anything token.
On another note, most goals with tokens can be accomplished by making a new Ally, rather than a new token. Like Spell tokens could just be an Ally that says "Spend a Favor to gain a Coffers or Villager". So I think we need lots more Liaisons and Allies.


Curse type - OK so here's my take on Curse vs. Curse type: "Curse" always refers to the card name. Curse type and color is to help with counting VP at the end, so it goes on any cards that have negative VP on it. "Curse card" refers to all cards with the Curse type. With that out of the way, now we can make Curse type cards that would go in the kingdom. Here's some silly Night - Curse cards


Myths - This is the one I think has the most potential. So this is like a cross between a Way and a Project: you buy it once and put your cube on it, benefitting the rest of the game. Once per turn, when you play a card, you can trigger it. It's supposed to enhance or interact with the played card in some way. It shouldn't enhance in a totally flat way, like just "+2 Cards", it should have a different effect depending on what card you played. Myths work on any playable card, including Treasures and Night cards.


Barter type - Alright so I like Catan, sue me. The core idea is willing players can take Barter type cards they have in play, and trade them with each other.
Beyond that, I'm not so fixed on the mechanics of it. Originally I wanted them to never go in your hand; they're just always out there in front of you, and usually give some small turn start bonus. It's kinda weird to have a pile of cards that you buy but never gain, though.
So now when you trade them, the traded cards go to the new players' discard piles.
Bartering benefits from having a variety of bonuses, so people will want to trade more and get what they're looking for at the moment. So I think it should just be a pile of different Barter cards, maybe even totally random and shuffled. "Rotate" means move cards from the top to the bottom of the pile, until a differently named card is revealed -- that way it fits the Allies' "rotate", but could fit another pile setup as well.

6

Variants and Fan Cards / Fan Card Mechanics Week 63: Sweet Dreams

« on: April 13, 2023, 04:25:00 am »

I would like to use Rush_Clasic's Dream mechanic for this week.

The idea is they trigger at the end of each player's Night phase, before Clean-Up, rewarding players for meeting some kind of requirement during their turn. Although if you have an idea for a Dream that's more of a nightmare and punishes players for doing things, you can do that too.

I think it's a great concept, here's a few mock-ups borrowing ideas from the original post:


Since they can be pretty simple, I thought it might be fun to attach them to a card, Heirloom style, for our contest. When a card with a Dream banner is included in the Kingdom, its Dream is included and affects each player's turns.


So your task this week is to design a Dream and a card that is attached to it.

I tend to judge based on uniqueness, ingenuity, clarity, balance...and if I think it's fun. In this case I'm hoping you can make a Dream and a card that are cool individually, but also maybe have some kind of interesting interaction.
I'm expecting to close the contest in about 6 days and then take a day to judge, but I'll give a 24 hour notice. Have fun!

7

Variants and Fan Cards / Card Fusions

« on: February 03, 2023, 06:43:43 pm »

Since I can only make one submission to the weekly contests, I made a little challenge for myself to keep myself busy: pick two random cards (I made a program to do it for me) and then try to combine them.
There's a lot of people that like making cards so I figured I'd open it up to you guys too! There's no judge or winner, it's just for people wanting practice and getting feedback and stuff. If people are putting in submissions I can keep putting up new cards to fuse -- since it's not really a contest I can update it more frequently, like every 3 days or something.
Let's see how it goes.
Card Fusions #1
The picker chose Militia and Temple:

8

Variants and Fan Cards / Fan Card Mechanics Week 53: Climb Every Mount

« on: January 03, 2023, 04:28:09 pm »

I'm interested in Gazbag's Mount mechanic and would like to see what you all come up with! (If this has already been done recently, let me know and I'll pick something else.)
From their post:

When you gain a Mount card, you can choose to either gain it as normal or mount it. Mounted cards are put into play instead of your discard pile and stay out in front of you, they give you some kind of effect. You can only have 1 mount at a time (that's one mount, not one of each different mount). When certain things happen you are forced to dismount your mount, when this happens it is discarded from play and becomes a regular card in your deck. You can only mount cards when you gain them, so once you've dismounted you'll have to gain a new one if you want to mount again.

When you choose to mount a card rather than gain it normally, it does not count as gaining -- think Exile.

In the thread it was brought up that a different color would be good for it, so here is a template. Follow Duration color rules if your card is multi-typed.
Here's one based on the original examples, and then a more silly example.


As long as there's enough submissions I will be closing the contest in about 6 days, and take a day to review/test each card so I can leave the best feedback I can.