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26

Dominion General Discussion / Re: * Plunder Previews #1: Treasures & Events *

« on: December 12, 2022, 02:38:11 pm »

Maestrom enables a semi-pin in which you can limit your opponent to owning just 4 cards.  Have them draw up their deck using Council Room and then buy Maestrom a bunch of times.

In principle this could work, but even with 10 CRs played they usually won't have drawn their entire deck. Also, with $40 and 10 buys to spare, you can usually just win the game instead of pinning your opponent.

27

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #171: Gains Upon Gains

« on: December 11, 2022, 07:05:26 pm »

Extra gaining as penalty as opposed to reward.

Another possible way to neatly balance what you can gain with this would be "costing up to $7" (or up to $6). You notably miss out on cards like Platinum and Prince (and King's Court if you go for up to $6). I think that is an acceptable compromise.

Nah, that is broken with cost reduction.

I don't think so. If Province's cost is reduced to $4 or less with stacked cost reduction, Summoner is no better than Workshop in gaining Provinces. If Province's cost is reduced to exactly $5, Summoner is still clearly worse than a $5 gainer like Altar. And a cost reduction to $6 or $7 would make gaining a Duchy preferable to gaining a Province plus two or three curses in most cases.

28

Dominion General Discussion / Re: REQ: Largest Kingdom board setup combination (Max:61 Different Named cards?)

« on: November 29, 2022, 04:43:33 pm »

Nah, make the mouse card Fool. That adds an heirloom to your hand and Will-o-Wisp to the non-supply piles.

Even better, use Page for Mouse and add another split kingdom pile instead of the Page pile, increasing the number of cards you can have in your deck from 69 to 72 (not counting the ungainable Mouse card Page itself).

You can't get anything else from the Page line with Mouse Page.

Oh right, exchanging doesn't work when there's no Page pile.

So if the goal is to get the highest number of different cards into your deck, Jack Rudd's suggestion of using Fool would be the best, getting you to 71 cards.

(Trade Route as Mouse doesn't help to give you extra cards because by the usual rules, Colony/Platinum can only be included if one of the 10 kingdom card piles is from Prosperity.)

29

Dominion General Discussion / Re: REQ: Largest Kingdom board setup combination (Max:61 Different Named cards?)

« on: November 29, 2022, 11:51:29 am »

Nah, make the mouse card Fool. That adds an heirloom to your hand and Will-o-Wisp to the non-supply piles.

Even better, use Page for Mouse and add another split kingdom pile instead of the Page pile, increasing the number of cards you can have in your deck from 69 to 72 (not counting the ungainable Mouse card Page itself).

30

Dominion General Discussion / Re: REQ: Largest Kingdom board setup combination (Max:61 Different Named cards?)

« on: November 28, 2022, 05:32:59 am »

Amazing so many new sets since I posted this
Has anyone tried to determine the 'largest' number of cards that are allowed without playing a variant, and have
Black Market have the recommended minimum (or all in the setup?)

Without Black Market, you can now improve GendoIkari's 2017 list by replacing Urchin and #8-10 from his list by four Allies split piles, for 7 more cards, and add Horse through an Event like Ride. So we go from 61 to 69 cards (plus two Landscapes).

31

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #169: I Am Not Throwing Away My [One-]Shot

« on: November 21, 2022, 12:59:04 pm »

Hero's Demise 4$
+2 cards
+2 actions
If you have 3 or more unused Actions (Actions, not Action cards), set this aside and trash it at the start of clean-up.

Its a Lost City that punishes you for being the village idiot. The additional draw compared to village helps you finding your terminal. It sets itself aside to prevent the mining village problem of forgetting the additional actions. The name is of course a play on tragic hero, who mirrors this to a degree. Feedback would be highly appreciated!

It's a great idea, but I wonder if it may be too strong - the first copy played each turn has no trashing risk at all^* and is therefore a must-buy at $4, as good as Lab and Vanillage combined. And usually you'll be happy to buy enough terminals so that you can play all of your HD's without trashing them (barring bad shuffle luck).

For comparison, Tragic Hero has a weaker penalty, but it wouldn't be overpowered even if it had no penalty at all (it would still be worse than Margrave).

*At least if you play it before any other village - but I'd usually not want any other villages anyway when this is available.

32

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Don't let your opponent do something.

« on: October 31, 2022, 05:22:00 pm »

(How) can I retrieve the game log given the game number?

Checking now, this game won't actually reload, there's an "internal error" bug when I try to do it, but in other cases:

You can't get a text log really, but if you have a subscription you can create a table, load old game, put in the game number and use Load from End.

I see, thanks for the info. I was wondering how you got started with Cavalry instead of Port, but I've now figured it out myself (buy Caravan, Butterfly into Guildmaster twice, assuming you have at least 5 Coppers among your first 7 cards).

If I've calculated correctly, buying all Estates, Provinces, Silvers and Importers and playing all basic Treasures leaves you with only $278-$230=$48, so there's many cases where you can't empty the supply without further support:
 - at least one 8 debt card or Possession is in the supply
 - a $7+ Action card is in the supply, but no $6 Action
 - Platinum/Colony
 - at least two $3 kingdom card other than Importer are in the supply (and no $2 Actions)
 - four or more $2-$3 kingdom cards other than Importer are in the supply
 - 2 or more Potion cost cards are in the supply

and a few other combinations.

But either of Bridge, another stackable cost reducer, Nomads or Training would take care of all cases except the last one. (With Bridge, you can use the whole $278 to buy the debt cards, except in the extremely unlikely case of all 4 pure debt cards being present.)

Overlord is fine actually since you only have to pay for 9 of them and they can give you $3 back, and the Potion part isn't correct (you could even have 3 and be fine if it's Vineyard / SP / Apo, it all just depends on the costs in coins). I didn't try to list it all because it's not clean.

How do you buy out 2 or more potion-cost piles (at least 18 cards, even if one of them is Vineyard) with only 16 Potions? There's no way to replay treasures in this kingdom AFAICS. Even if the potion-cost cards have consecutive $ costs, using Butterfly doesn't save you any potion - e.g. with SP and Apo., you need to buy SP 20 times to empty both piles (butterflying it 10 times), so you'd have to pay 20 P (and $40) total.

You're right about Overlord; playing each of them as a terminal gold gives you back $30, so they only cost you a net $72-$30=$42 (plus 8 debt that you never repay). It's fine as long as you don't have to pay extra for any other kingdom card.

33

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Don't let your opponent do something.

« on: October 30, 2022, 04:57:54 pm »

(How) can I retrieve the game log given the game number?

Checking now, this game won't actually reload, there's an "internal error" bug when I try to do it, but in other cases:

You can't get a text log really, but if you have a subscription you can create a table, load old game, put in the game number and use Load from End.

I see, thanks for the info. I was wondering how you got started with Cavalry instead of Port, but I've now figured it out myself (buy Caravan, Butterfly into Guildmaster twice, assuming you have at least 5 Coppers among your first 7 cards).

If I've calculated correctly, buying all Estates, Provinces, Silvers and Importers and playing all basic Treasures leaves you with only $278-$230=$48, so there's many cases where you can't empty the supply without further support:
 - at least one 8 debt card or Possession is in the supply
 - a $7+ Action card is in the supply, but no $6 Action
 - Platinum/Colony
 - at least two $3 kingdom card other than Importer are in the supply (and no $2 Actions)
 - four or more $2-$3 kingdom cards other than Importer are in the supply
 - 2 or more Potion cost cards are in the supply

and a few other combinations.

But either of Bridge, another stackable cost reducer, Nomads or Training would take care of all cases except the last one. (With Bridge, you can use the whole $278 to buy the debt cards, except in the extremely unlikely case of all 4 pure debt cards being present.)

34

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Don't let your opponent do something.

« on: October 30, 2022, 01:36:32 pm »

The Province pileout with any $5 gainer + $6 action + $7 action instead of Livery is sort of cute too.

Indeed. I think you might be able to empty the whole supply if you also add Seaway (putting the +Buy token on Port) and a kingdom card costing $4+ that gives you the buy for it.

Actually, just adding Forum and a cost reducer like Bridge to the OP's kingdom suffices to empty the supply, as you can gain Forum and return it to the supply infinitely often for unlimited +Buys. So that's an 8-card combo to empty the supply on turn 1 (with probability 50%, as you need to draw at least 4 Coppers).

No. 6-card combo to empty the Supply on turn 1 (with probability 11/24). Use Cavalry instead of Port.

This one also doesn't require a correct implementation of Livery/City-state, so it can be done on dominion.games (#110411165), don't ask me why I clicked through all that.

(How) can I retrieve the game log given the game number?

35

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Don't let your opponent do something.

« on: October 28, 2022, 07:34:41 am »

The Province pileout with any $5 gainer + $6 action + $7 action instead of Livery is sort of cute too.

Indeed. I think you might be able to empty the whole supply if you also add Seaway (putting the +Buy token on Port) and a kingdom card costing $4+ that gives you the buy for it.

Actually, just adding Forum and a cost reducer like Bridge to the OP's kingdom suffices to empty the supply, as you can gain Forum and return it to the supply infinitely often for unlimited +Buys. So that's an 8-card combo to empty the supply on turn 1 (with probability 50%, as you need to draw at least 4 Coppers).

36

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #166: Who still cares about buying?

« on: October 28, 2022, 07:07:06 am »

I don't think that's inevitable. Collection/Stampede could easily have been avoided. And there is nothing in the game the is quite so bad.

The only way Collection+Stampede could have been avoided is if Collection was given a different ability, such as "when you gain an Action card from the supply" or "the first time you gain an Action card this turn".  What I said still holds true: if Collection should have been changed to avoid the interaction with Stampede, then we've effectively blacklisted abilities that trigger "whenever you gain a [Action] card" because it interacts poorly with one card printed years before.  I think it's inevitable that these situations will pop up more and more because cards with never-before-seen abilities keep getting printed.

I ultimately feel like the Collection+Stampede issue is one that largely solves itself.  Players curate the kingdoms they play with; if they decide it's overpowered, they can simply not put Collection and Stampede in the same kingdom.  Even if they opt for zero curation and go completely random every single time, that's only a tiny fraction of games that result in broken outcomes.  By my calculations, even if a kingdom is made exclusively of random cards from Prosperity and Menagerie (and follows the recommended layout of ten supply piles and two landscape cards), Collection and Stampede will both be in the kingdom only once every 110 games on average.  I think that's an acceptable rate of non-games.  Add any other sets and the odds get even lower.

I would actually agree with you if this was just a single bad interaction with Stampede, but it's not. It interacts badly with multiple Horse gainers (at least those that gain Horses during the buy phase: Livery, Supplies in particular, Ride to a lesser extent, honorary mention for Cavalry). If there are 3 cards with bad interactions, that is sufficient grounds for me to modify a card.

Agreed. Also, while "when you gain an Action card from the supply" is technically a different ability, it doesn't make a difference in 90% of kingdoms. There are only two kingdom cards (Devil's Workshop, Exorcist), one heirloom (Magic Lamp) and no events that regularly gain a non-supply pile other than Horse in the buy phase or later (Night phase/clean-up). Combinations of Collection with both phase shenanigans like Villa and non-supply gainers are an order of magnitude rarer still in random kingdoms.

So the main effect of restricting Collection to supply cards would be to remove the risk of stalemates with Horse gainers.

I don't really understand why Collection was allowed to work with Horses, while on the other hand  Hoard has the much more restrictive (and IMO confusing) "when you gain, if you bought it", and Bonfire was significantly nerfed just to prevent a hypothetical infinite loop that practically never comes up in randomized kingdoms.

37

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #166: Who still cares about buying?

« on: October 25, 2022, 10:24:13 am »

I think the below-the-line effect is rather neat, an interesting way to deal with the prompt.
But the top is a problem. You just need 4 of those and then you probably have enough sifting to ensure that you can play all of them each turn and buy a Province. This is too powerful I think.

That's a fair critique.  Do you think I should have gone with my second instinct and made it an Oasis effect?  Or maybe even gone with my first instinct and made it a Peddler?

One thing is that I'm not super convinced this need the "if you bought it" restriction, it would be fine as an on-gain effect. Well maybe it would be a bit too good with stuff like Experiment. Oh and Horses. Ok never mind, I convinced myself that you actually need a restriction. Then this is just good.

I mean, Collection gets you the same effect when you gain any Action that turn.  I don't see how a significantly more narrow version of the same effect would be too broken.

Collection can also lead to stalemates with Stampede for that exact reason though.

The wiki has a quote from Donald X. saying that they printed Collection fully aware that it interacted well with Stampede, having decided that it wasn't a deal-breaker.  If that's the official ruling on the Collection effect, I don't see how a significantly more narrow version of the effect wouldn't get a pass.

If Symposium didn't have the "if you bought it" restriction, it wouldn't be "strictly more narrow" than Collection:
Collection being a Treasure means it can only give you VPs for Actions gained in your buy phase - not for Actions gained in your Action phase with Workshops, Remodels etc. (in the absence of Villa or other "return to Action phase" cards).

Symposium might still be fine without the restriction, though - I don't think it would be worse than Collection+Stampede, though that does not say much...

FWIW, "unrestricted Symposium"+Stampede would "only" give 15 VP per turn if you play 3 Symposia, a Horse and 2 Gold each turn, while Collection-Stampede gives 50 VP.

38

Solo Challenges / Re: Empty the Supply on turn 1 without spending an Action

« on: October 23, 2022, 05:57:26 pm »

Empty the Supply on turn 1.  My solution does not spend any Actions.

Supply: Stonemason, Importer, Cavalry, Guildmaster, Livery, Pooka
Landscapes: Way of the Butterfly, City-state
Starting Hand: 4 Coppers, 1 Cursed Gold

play 4 Coppers
play a Cursed Gold
gain a Curse
buy a Stonemason, overpaying $5
- gain a Stonemason
--- gain a Livery
----- spend 2 Favors to play it
--- gain a Guildmaster
----- spend 2 Favors to play it
----- gain a Horseä
------- +1 Favor
------- spend 2 Favors to play it(as Butterfly)
--------- return it to gain a Cavalry
----------- +1 Favor
buy a Guildmaster
- gain a Guildmaster
--- +1 Favor
--- spend 2 Favors to play it

Now we can gain any Action cards to play them immediately.
And we have a Horse to gain.
Butterfly it to pile out cards!

How do you get all the supply cards costing at most $3, and all Provinces?

Gaining and Butterflying Cavalry repeatedly should give you unlimited +Buys, but you only have $60 from 10 Guildmasters and Livery played as themselves. That's not enough to buy 8 Provinces, 8 Estates and 60 Stonemasons (Butterflying 10 of them into Importers and 40 into Silvers), and Butterfly'ing Horses only gets you cards in the price range $4 to $6 with the given kingdom.

I think you need to also require a Looter, Poor House, a $6 Action and a $7 Action in the kingdom, so that Butterfly's "Upgrading" can reach all price points for free. Then you only have to buy all the $0 cards and can Butterfly the Ruins to get all $3- cards in the supply. Fortunately there's exactly four free kingdom card spaces still available. :-)

39

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: The Ultimate Legal Fairground

« on: October 19, 2022, 07:50:59 am »

Now with Allies, Fairgrounds can be worth 26VP.

Basic Supply (with Platinum and Colony) - 9
Shelters - 3
Young Witch - 1  (it's a free 11th pile)

We have 10 kingdom cards to fill.  One must be Fairgrounds.  That leaves 9.

Fairgrounds - 1
Knights - 10
Castles - 8
Marauder/Ruins/Spoils - 7
Tournament/Prizes - 6
Page/Travelers - 5
Peasant/Travelers - 5
Exorcist/Spirits - 4
Town Crier/Blacksmith/Miller/Elder - 4
Student/Conjurer/Sorcerer/Lich - 4

Total: 67 unique cards.  Is it possible to add 70th card without Landscapes?

I don't see how. But e.g. the event Stampede can add the card Horse.
However, Platinum/Colony can't be in a kingdom without Prosperity cards by the usual rules for their inclusion, so it's only 66 unique cards.

40

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: The highest Plateau

« on: October 11, 2022, 05:37:32 pm »

Dominion strategy lists 53 2 cost cards and card shaped things I may have missed a few events, but I tried to subtract the events and heirlooms. I forgot about estates, but still only count 7 2 costs not directly available through the BM or the Supply. Do note that at least 2 of these are in split piles, but that doesn’t matter for BM

Exchanging doesn’t work with cards in the BM, so vampire must be in the supply. Also, imp gainers in the BM can get more than 1, despite only counting 1 in my math.

There are 7 $2 Events, 3 $2 Heirlooms, Bat, Estate - subtracting those from 53 gives 41.

You're right about Vampire not exchanging from the BM. Fortunately, swapping Vampire with a $2 kingdom card doesn't change the total number of $2 cards, which remains at 202 by my count.

41

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: The highest Plateau

« on: October 04, 2022, 02:13:57 pm »

Additionally, black market can add some. There are 53 2-cost cards, but 6 are events or heirlooms, so 47. With the 1 imp gainer, you have 39 2-cost cards eligible for BM, making black market an increase of 29 cards or 58vp.

BTW, are there really 47 2-cost kingdom cards? http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Dominion_Card_Glicko only mentions 41 as of 2020 (42 "0-2 cost cards" minus Poor House). Since then, Allies has added 3 new $2 cards, but the 2E's of seaside and Hinterlands have removed another 3 $2 cards (replacing them with more expensive cards), so the total number should remain 41, not 47.

Edit:
There's also the non-kingdom card Bat at $2, which you could get from a Black Market Vampire.

So if you allow Black Market as Way of the Mouse and put Masquerade, Shepherd (for the 3rd $2 Heirloom Pasture), Young Witch, the Imp gainer, Vampire and all other $2 kingdom cards into the BM deck, you could get

Card                   Number of $2 cards (including starting cards)
Bauble                    10 (+any number of Favors)
10 other $2 cards: 100 (including Pixie, Tracker)
Estates                   30 (12+6*3)
Imp                        13
Heirlooms               18 (6*3)
BM deck                 31 (41 - 11 $2 kingdom cards +Bat)
                         -------------
                           202  $2 cards, for 404 VP

42

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: The highest Plateau

« on: October 02, 2022, 08:33:28 am »

lurker can get you another 15 in 6 player games, rather than just 9 from 4 player games.

Additionally, black market can add some. There are 53 2-cost cards, but 6 are events or heirlooms, so 47. With the 1 imp gainer, you have 39 2-cost cards eligible for BM, making black market an increase of 29 cards or 58vp.

Masquerade is another way to get the estates from another player, and get the 3 heirlooms. loosing the 9 from lurker (one into the BM deck), that gives an additional 6 cards or 12 vp. Of course, linked cards in the BM deck.

Why are pixie and tracker 11 in the math? Assuming that’s right, 164 cards and 328vp.

Black Market is not allowed according to the OP. ;-)

Both Pixie and Tracker are a pile of 10 $2 kingdom cards plus a $2 heirloom, so 11 $2 cards each.

Masquerade could indeed give you another 5 Pouches and Goats each in 6p-games, but without BM you lose a 10-card $2 pile, so it doesn't change the total VP you can get.

43

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Fan errata on pre-existing cards

« on: October 02, 2022, 08:08:45 am »

Possession still has problems with exile, villagers/coffers, self debt, and VP tokens.

At the end of your turn, the player to your left takes an extra turn, during which you see what they see and make their choices for them, and any tokens they have are replaced by your token pools. Any cards that would be trashed, exiled, or returned to the supply are set aside and discarded at the end of turn. Cards exiled from the supply are instead returned at the end of turn. Any cards discarded from exile are exiled at the end of turn.

For online Dominion, the most elegant fix imo would be just to return the possessed player's deck, discard pile, hand, play area, tokens etc. to the exact state at which they were before the extra turn (except that the deck is re-randomized). So Possession stops being hurtful to the possessed player in any way, while keeping its "intended" functionality.

But for real-life play it would often be very tedious to reset the deck to its previous state.

This is actually something that Possession aims to do already, but it is just very hard to formulate this in a future proof way. I mean, Masquerade is also a thing. And I think returning to the pile is the thing that needs to be fixed most urgently, to make Way of the Horse not completely degenerate. (it is also a universal mechanic).

They could also end with "any cards of theirs that moves anywhere aside from their hand, deck, discard or play area are set aside and put in their discard pile at the end of turn", although that interacts weirdly with Masquerade and Reserves, and could open another can of worms.

Possession aims to do that, but it still falls short of that aim despite many errara, mainly w.r.t. deck ordering and removing cards from the deck other than by trashing (including "return to supply" and passing with Masquerade). My suggested fix could literally be worded as "At the end of that turn, the possessed player's deck, discard pile, hand and everything else belonging to them are returned to the exact state at which they were before the extra turn, with the deck reshuffled."
So the "formerly possessed" player gets to play with the same hand they drew before the Possession turn, and any cards or tokens they lost during that turn are returned to them.

I don't see an obvious "future-proofing" problem with that; and anyway you could always make new errata should future mechanics make it necessary. It would also work with Masquerade; the passed card remains in the other player's deck despite also returning to the possessed player's deck - if there's no copy of that card left in the supply, the online server can just create a virtual extra copy of that card.
(For IRL play, I would just not allow Possession and Masquerade to be in the same kingdom, or forbid Masquerade from being played on Possession turns.)

44

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #164: Read the Fine Print

« on: September 29, 2022, 03:25:21 am »

Mad Alchemist - $4
Action
If you have Toxic Vapors, you may put a card from your hand onto your Tavern mat, for +4 Cards and +1 Action.
----
When you gain this, take Toxic Vapors.

Toxic Vapors
State
When scoring, -1% per 2 cards you have on your Tavern mat (round up).

A draw 2 that can put a card from hand onto your Tavern mat to be non-terminal and draw 2 more cards. The catch is that everyone starts with the Toxic Vapors state, which makes players lose VP based on how many cards are on their Tavern mat. Toxic Vapors being a State made the most sense. I had a design without the State, but it was a lot of reading and it multiplied the VP lost by how many Mad Alchemists you had, which was not what I wanted. Feedback is appreciated.

Edit: Changed Toxic Vapors to penalize more aggressively.  Mad Alchemist now plays more like Stables and requires you to have Toxic Vapors to function. Players now only take Toxic Vapors when they gain a Mad Alchemist. These changes should nerf Mad Alchemist and prevent hosing other cards that use the Tavern mat. The draw 4 cards may still be too good, but I want the card to be tempting. Should this be changed to just daw 3 cards? Feedback is appreciates.
Thanks to scott_pilgrim, 4est, and LibraryAdventurer

Old Version(s)

My feedback: I would certainly reduce the draw to +3 cards, and probably even to +2 cards - a lab that pseudo-trashes is still very good at $4 (compare e.g. with Junk Dealer at $5, or Spice Merchant which is limited to trashing Coppers), and the penalty of -0.5 VP per exiled card is still mild enough to be worth it. E.g. you only get a net -2VP from exiling all starting cards, and you can green much earlier with the ability to get "5.5 VP" Provinces out of your deck.

45

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #164: Read the Fine Print

« on: September 26, 2022, 11:43:27 am »

Virus Lab - $3 - Action

+2 Cards
+1 Action
Reveal your hand. If you revealed any Curses, gain a Curse.
-
When you gain this, gain a Curse to the top of your deck.

In games without a possibility to get rid of the Curses, this is worse than a do-nothing cantrip. (The lab's card draw and the when-gain curse cancel each other out over each shuffle, except for the -1VP, and you will likely not be able to play Virus Lab or get further curses several times).

In the more common case where you can trash curses, Virus Lab may be worth buying, but you still risk a Rats-like cascade of Curses if you're unlucky to draw a Curse from playing Virus Lab itself.

46

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Fan errata on pre-existing cards

« on: September 24, 2022, 09:38:55 am »

Possession still has problems with exile, villagers/coffers, self debt, and VP tokens.

At the end of your turn, the player to your left takes an extra turn, during which you see what they see and make their choices for them, and any tokens they have are replaced by your token pools. Any cards that would be trashed, exiled, or returned to the supply are set aside and discarded at the end of turn. Cards exiled from the supply are instead returned at the end of turn. Any cards discarded from exile are exiled at the end of turn.

For online Dominion, the most elegant fix imo would be just to return the possessed player's deck, discard pile, hand, play area, tokens etc. to the exact state at which they were before the extra turn (except that the deck is re-randomized). So Possession stops being hurtful to the possessed player in any way, while keeping its "intended" functionality.

But for real-life play it would often be very tedious to reset the deck to its previous state.

47

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Fan errata on pre-existing cards

« on: September 21, 2022, 11:14:35 am »

Sadly, other cursers are still very much relevant when Charlatan is on the board. At the very least, Sea Witch is still stronger than Charlatan even when it gives out Treasure Curses.

Why "sadly"? I haven't played with Charlatan yet, but in principle it sounds like good design to me if one curser doesn't automatically dominate all others.
Do you think that Sea Witch is too strong, or that Charlatan is too weak, if Charlatan's nerfing of other cursers still doesn't make it superior to them in games with several cursers?

48

Rules Questions / Re: Donating your Entire Hand

« on: September 07, 2022, 09:55:53 am »

Actually, it can potentially be a good move to softlock yourself by trashing your deck, in rare situations:

Assume there's only one Province left, you can't buy it on your turn, and your opponent has trashed down their deck down to only a few Possessions and Villages with Donate, remaining in debt. If they will certainly be able to use your deck to gain the last province for a win before your next "own" turn, then donating your entire deck guarantees you a stalemate instead of a certain loss.

It might also be possible for this to be a good move in order to get an insurmountable lead due to Tomb (and thus a stalemate), if you would certainly lose without the Tomb VPs.

49

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #160: Two Base Cards

« on: August 17, 2022, 08:46:50 am »

Moray


Worth 1 VP per 2 coppers
Heirloom: Silver
$7 Victory

Like Feodum and Counting house, this card will alternate between a powerhouse, and useless. But unlike those cards this Moray will always had a large impact on the start of each game by replacing one of the starting coppers with a silver.

I fear this will only be a powerhouse with Beggar (and possibly Banquet), and be useless at least 95% of the time.
In the absence of Beggar, I'd try this at $4, so it would at least be a cheaper Duchy (with the potential to get extra VPs from late-game copper buys) in games where you can't trash coppers. You already need to buy three Morays to get the same 15 VP with 10 coppers that Fountain gives you for free.

Replacing a starting Copper by Silver is problematic because a 5/3 opening is usually much stronger than a 4/4 opening. And Moray would be stronger without an Heirloom attached...

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Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #160: Two Base Cards

« on: August 14, 2022, 04:54:00 pm »

Here's my submission:

Crone
Action-Attack-Reaction
$3
+2 Cards
Each other player with 5 or more cards in hand gains a Curse.
-
When another player plays an attack, you may first reveal this to discard a Copper or a Curse.

Never ever a $3, otherwise you will double open without even thinking.
Looks even too strong at $4. Sure, Young Witch is weakish but it makes the attacker discards two whereas here the defender needs to discard one.

With it reacting to itself, I thought if both players open with it then you're not as likely to receive a curse at the beginning of the game and you'll draw into probably money at first too. I was on the fence on it being 3 or 4 cost though,

For finding a fair price, I would mainly look at the non-mirror. (A curser that can only be countered by mirroring it is rather uninteresting.) And in the non-mirror, this is usually a vanilla Witch, which costs $5.