Thanks for the feedback everyone!
Out of curiosity, why the lower bound on Sculptor? If I want to use it to gain a Hamlet or whatever, why shouldn't it let me? EDIT: In fact, given that it's already restricted to cards in play, why bother with the upper limit either? As is, the only cards it stops you on the vast majority of boards from gaining are Peddler, Forge, and Potion cards. None of which seem overly problematic here. Prince takes itself out of play before Sculptor can copy it, and the rest are Treasures (which, admittedly, can be in play with Storyteller, Black Market or a few of the other cards from here, but getting a free Bank or Platinum off of that interaction is a bit of a corner case?)
I think you guys are right that the lower bound doesn't make sense. The upper bound was in place for King's Court, since I'm pretty sure things could get out of hand if you KC a Sculptor.
Petitioner seems too strong in the boards where it is actually worth buying.
This is a point I was debating myself about this card. It seems like it would be very strong in a deck with very few treasures. But by that logic, Poor House should be a powerhouse, which it obviously isn't. Do you have any insight into why this seems like it would be so strong (and I agree with you that it does seem that way), but that Poor House isn't? Is it just "cards > coins"?
Not counting the combos for playing treasures in your action phase, Munitions is like a terminal Royal Seal. It could probably cost $2 or maybe $3. I guess it gives a pseudo-buy compared to Royal Seal, but at the cost of not being able to buy more expensive stuff, and not being able to top-deck other cards you buy during the turn. I think it would be fine at $2.
The idea behind this card was that it could be used in an engine to increase reliability. If you really need one specific card to keep things going, you can trade in some of your coins to get the piece you need and be able to use it yet this turn. Am I overvaluing how important that would be to an engine? Or how often you'd actually use it?
Vassal has a lot of problems. First, Donald X. has talked about Copper junking before. He tries to only do Copper junking on cards that have a way to prevent it (since the Copper pile is so big and scales weirdly with the number of players). Mountebank lets you block it by discarding a Curse, and Noble Brigand only does it when it doesn't hit a treasure. Then, reactions that hurt the attacker are usually considered bad design. But if you do decide to stick with that, you'll need to reword it, I think. As it is, you can do it as many times as you have cards in your hand. I'm not sure if that's intended. If it is, it seems political (actually it may be political even if you can do it only once). Do I want to hang onto this card for myself, or hurt that particular player?
Yeah, this card seems pretty broken. It may not be worth saving. It had a few different ideas in it that I wanted to try (but maybe I should just split them off into separate cards):
1) a card that reacts to attacks with a strong enough reaction that the attacking player would need to think about whether it's worth it to play the attack (in my experience, most of the time, there's no downside to playing attacks in Dominion)
2) a card that defends against itself
3) a reaction card that makes you sacrifice something if you want to block the attack
It's probably just better to scrap Vassal.
Iron Mask is interesting. You might want to change the vanilla bonus to make it more different from Masquerade (maybe make it draw 3 and cost $5?). But I have some concerns about it too. One is that it might be political. Do I pass him the card I want to get rid of, or the card that gives him the least useful bonus? It might be negligible in practice though. The other is that passing cards is not public, so you would have to somehow specify on Iron Mask when that card is revealed, and I'm not sure there's a clean way to do that.
Good points! Maybe it's just cause I mainly play 2-player Dominion or maybe I like politics, but I actually kind of like that choice -- like when someone plays Masquerade and you don't have any junk cards in your hand. But maybe that's just me.
Vizier is cool but it might compare too favorably to Haven.
I could definitely see this needing to be $3, especially since it could end up being the only village on a board with a buy.
Bookseller is way too cheap; compare it to Lab. Even assuming you have nothing but good cards in your hand, the first play is effectively +3 cards +1 action, and subsequent plays will look like +2 cards +1 action. On top of that, it combos with cards like Minion and Count. My gut feeling is that if you removed the clause about discarding cards, it would be good at $6.
Hmm. Good point. Maybe if it drew to 5 with discarding, that could also work at 6?
Gold Rush is a great idea but I think it should cost $6 or $7 if only because if one player opens with it while the others can't, he would be ahead so much it might break the game. Lastly, Iron Mask and Manor are bad design-wise
Now that you mention it, Gold Rush does seem like it would be better all around at $6. I understand now why Manor wouldn't work. What don't you like about Iron Mask? The same things as scott_pilgrim?
Thanks for the thoughts.
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Cards (Part 3/3)
in its cost.
