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51

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: How many niches for village-types are left? Can you think of any new ones?

« on: October 27, 2011, 12:34:33 am »

One suggestion:  I'd change "reveal" to "discard," to prevent any confusion over whether a player may reveal it any arbitrary number of times (the usual rule for reaction cards) and get the Woodcutter bonus each time.  This is particularly an issue if someone is holding multiple copies of the card in his hand at the time -- is he revealing multiples, or the same one multiple times?  With a discard instead of a reveal, the confusion goes away.

I had meant to write "reveal and discard". That it was otherwise is just a gross oversight on my part.

Lastly, although it's a good observation that it isn't great with Minion and the other cards you mention, I guess it's not really any different than Minion skipping by your Treasure cards.   Since this is basically a Treasure card if you don't use its Village powers, that seems apt.  But I greatly prefer the way you've constructed this card to the Action-Treasure hybrid of many fan cards.  (Your card is roughly equivalent to an Action-Treasure card reading: "If you play this as an Action, +1 Card, +2 Actions.  If you play this as a Treasure, +1 Buy, +$2.")  I'm not completely sure why Action-Treasure feels wrong to me, but it does.

I hadn't realized that the reaction was essentially a treasure. I was only thinking of it as a non-terminal. But I agree with you that Action-Treasure cards just seems like a line not to ever cross. It's a bit aesthetically displeasing to have the two main resources of the game be stuck onto one card.

A bit too complicated for my taste, but I can't think of any reason it wouldn't work.  My fear is that it's undercosted.  With a choice of 4 cards, you'll probably guess one right, and there will also almost always be one you want to discard.  So you get some cycling, some top-deck-ordering, usually replace the card in your hand, AND the option to dispense with all that and curse instead?  Maybe $5 is still fine, but there's enough going on here that I can't really anticipate it.

My reasoning was this: the guess-one-of-four could be difficult to use with black market or the variety-dependent cornucopia cards, and in effect discourage all but spammers to use it. It could also encourage counting (which not all people can do quickly enough), or freezing up when trying to even guesstimate how much of what is left in the deck. Therefore the discard-one and deck-ordering portions were to give an aspect of the card where it's much easier to make the optimal decision and not slow down the game.

If this were my card, though, I'd want to simplify it a bit and boil the card down to its basic essence.  (Unless there's some synergy between the different components I'm not seeing.)  Maybe make it a $4 Village, get rid of the cursing, and pick either cycling or top-decking but not both.  That seems like a decent Wishing Well/Village cross.  Alternately, if you wanted to keep both the cycling and top-decking, do it in a more structured way, like mandatorily discarding one card and top-decking the rest.  I realize it's not usually a great game design idea to remove choices from the player, but this card is so flexible already that imposing some constraints might improve the card.

Since I'm getting into a lot of unexplored territory with these three cards, perhaps I crammed too many ideas into too few cards... I wonder if these reactions could be better attached to some different actions... As for Gypsie Camp being all over the place and giving too much control, perhaps I can make it this:

Gypsie Camp $5
(Action-Reaction)
+2 Actions
Name 1 card before revealing the top 4 cards of your deck. You may put one revealed copy of the named card into your hand, if you find any. Either shuffle the remaining cards into your deck or discard them.
If you start your Buy Phase with this card in your hand, you may reveal it. If you do, each other player gains a Curse card.

52

Dominion General Discussion / Re: How do You Play Golem?

« on: October 24, 2011, 12:12:11 am »

Counting House? That was the first thing to come to your mind for a combo? I mean, I guess as Golem looks for actions, it will knock a few coppers into your discard, but that's hardly a thing to rely on, especially since Counting House doesn't stack with itself, so that having any more than one in your deck would be a liability (think Golem-> CH, CH). Golem is for playing powerful actions consistently. The only scenario in which I could see Counting House being paired well with Golem is if you had Goons and/or Worker's Village, plus Gardens, and maybe Chancellor as well.

53

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: How many niches for village-types are left? Can you think of any new ones?

« on: October 23, 2011, 10:52:54 pm »

Planner's shack
$3
+1 card
+1 action
You may set aside an action card. Play it automatically at the start of your next turn. This does not consume an action.

This is so enticing, and it seems fair when compared with Fishing Village, but it would make a Tactician deck unstoppable.

54

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: How many niches for village-types are left? Can you think of any new ones?

« on: October 23, 2011, 10:33:08 pm »

Since Hinterlands has shown us just how unexplored the Reaction mechanic was (and probably still is), these next three villages explore the potential of reactions that aren't focused upon attacks.

Ghost Village $4
(Action-Reaction)
+1 Card
+2 Actions
When you discard this other than during a Clean-up phase, you may reveal it. If you do, each other player gains a Curse card.

A Cursing Reaction Village!? Before Hinterlands I could never have conceived of such a wild thing but here it is... As for the price, I am surer than sure that $4 is perfect. Mining Village, Worker's Village, and Walled Village are all marginally better than the vanilla Village, and have the same price. Young Witch and Sea Hag are both $4 cursers with severe drawbacks too. I wonder, though, if the discarding mechanic is too situational to be the this-is-why-this-village-costs-4 gimmick. As for Ghost Village's interaction with Militia and Torturer, I hope that this card's opportunistic cursing doesn't scare players off too badly from using those attacks, because those attacks remain strong and detrimental to the Ghost Village user. Plus, the player cursing with Ghost Village has to lose an entire village in the process!
***


High Street or Market Street $4
(Action-Reaction)
+1 card
+2 Actions
If you start your Buy Phase with this card in your hand, you may reveal and discard it. If you do, +1 Buy, +$2

So, this village can turn into a non-terminal Woodcutter that you don't have to worry about drawing dead. Is that too powerful for $4? The fact that this is a village means that you'd probably have actions to spare anyways. It works well with most draw cards (and Walled Village, OMG), but clashes with Minion, Watchtower, and cards that need you to discard. It stays a regular village when you try using it with KC, TR, and Golem, as well. Anyways, at first I actually wanted to name this Cathedral, because I had in mind the ancient Roman ruins and aqueducts that Medieval folk would often cannibalize for stones to build their own structures... So.. if you don't use the Cathedral, you can recycle the stone masonry for something else... Okay, now, it doesn't sound as fitting anymore... O.o
***


Gypsie Camp $5
(Action-Reaction)
+2 Actions
Name 1 card before revealing the top 4 cards of your deck. You may put one revealed copy of the named card into your hand, if you find any. You may discard one revealed card as well. Put the remaining cards on top of your deck in any order. Either shuffle the remaining cards into your deck, or discard them.
If you start your Buy Phase with this card in your hand, you may reveal it. If you do, each other player gains a Curse card.

So, this card's reaction is kinda a bit like both of the previous ones'. It curses, but only when you keep it until the Buy Phase. It's much more reliable of a curser than Ghost Village, which demands a higher price. So to make it a $5 village, I have it draw its one card with sort of a Navigating Wishing Well effect. Is it too hard to use? Should more cards be revealed? Should it always give you at least one card, even if you guess wrong? I dunno, really.
***

55

Dominion Articles / Re: Request: Diadem

« on: October 23, 2011, 06:42:16 pm »

And because there's only one, it doesn't seem possible to build a viable strategy around it.

That's the point. Donald found Diadem's power to have way too much variance to make it a normal kingdom card, so he made it a prize. You're not supposed to build a strategy around obtaining any prize, because there's always the chance someone else will get it before you do. Anyways, here's what Theory had to write about Diadem when Cornucopia was first leaked:

I think this card is underrated.  It’s generally worth at least a Gold, and definitely at least a Silver.  Of course, the one situation Diadem is best in (when you have a huge surplus of +Action) is really not a situation you want to be in, ideally, but sometimes you do end up with a surplus of +Action through no real fault of your own.  Fully upgraded Cities are the obvious choice, but those are only really viable if you’re going for Colony, and detouring for Provinces might be a bit too slow.  Worker’s Village/Hamlet into Peddler is a more likely scenario: there, you have both a ton of +Action as well as sufficient +Buy to take advantage of an obscene Diadem.  Fishing Village / Wharf strategies also tend to run into a surplus of +Action sometimes, since the Fishing Villages get distributed a little unevenly and you often overinvest in them to block your opponent.  And King’s Court and non-terminals often leads to some ridiculous +Actions shenanigans.  But you generally shouldn’t be building a deck with massive surplus of +Action specifically hoping to take advantage of Diadem; after all, might as well load it up with Monument or even Saboteur if you have that many Actions to spare.

56

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Soldiers Card: Take Victory Cards

« on: August 02, 2011, 02:31:39 am »

It's just not feasible to have a card solely dependent on whether your opponents have victory cards in their decks. Fortune Teller gives you $ and also targets curses. Bureaucrat gives you a silver. Jester lets you gain other cards if it's not a victory card you turn over. Thief is a terrible card to model something after; I've never even considered touching it unless Platinums or Harems were involved, and it was a 4-player game (which I only play at IRL gatherings). But even Thief has the remote possibility of aiding you and hurting others early in the game by trashing a silver. And if people do start buying this in the endgame, it could be responsible for incredibly large swings purely by chance, which is not in the spirit of Dominion. Being possessed with a Masquerade or Ambassador in your hand, plus a Province or Colony should be the worst-case scenario for this kind of thing, but if you're smart enough you can avoid such a trap. And even if a Saboteur hits a Province, it's only a 3-point swing. But what you propose is a potential 12- or 20-point swing by a $4 attack in 2-player. Couple that with a King's Court and you could make it a 24- or 40-point swing easily (with the believable scenario of hitting, missing, and hitting again). I know you try to mitigate this with the targets themselves choosing the victory card to trash, but it's not enough. In a 4-player game, this would be obscene, with a potential 24-point swing if you hit 3 provinces, or a 40-point swing if you hit 3 colonies. Even the most powerful $6 and $7 cards like Goons, Grand Market, Bank, and King's Court need the right circumstances to help you, and even then, they don't directly affect your score as much as this card would.

57

Game Reports / Didn't know folks could get this upset over a game...

« on: July 25, 2011, 09:16:38 pm »

So, I just played a game where I started 5/2 and the other played didn't... I got a market and then we faced off with familiars and lighthouses... My lighthouses were more fortunately timed than his so the gap quickly widened with a king's court and throne rooms... And then my oponent started IMing...

19:47 Him: god youre so fuckin lucky
19:47 Him: fuckin bullshit
19:50 Me: today me tomorrow you
19:51 Him: you get familiar when i dont have lighthouse, I get familiar when you have lighthouse
19:51 Him: you nail the early market
19:51 Him: i mean this is just fucking stupid
19:52 Him: i hope your entire family dies in a fire
19:52 He has returned to the lobby.

I myself am guilty of quitting immediately after someone gets 5/2 Mountebank, or when it gets to a tedious or clearly unwinnable slog (often without even typing out "sorry, G2G"), but... really? Do people really get that worked up over a game? I honestly wonder if he genuinely felt contempt for me for getting so lucky, or some people just spew shit like this all the time when they're anonymous. (I don't play any online games other than Dominion.)

58

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Fan expansion: Infamy

« on: July 20, 2011, 12:51:21 am »

Thanks for the feedback, minced. I really appreciate it. Here's Cultist 3.5, which borrows from--of all things--Possession and Smugglers:

Cultist $3, 1 Taboo
(Action [Attack])
+$2
At the end of this turn, the player to your left sets aside one treasure card of his choosing for every Cultist or Taboo in play, or reveals a hand with no treasure cards left. He immediately takes one extra turn with these cards as his hand. Gain a copy of all cards the player gained on that turn. Cultist cannot cause him to take more than one extra turn.

This version forces the victim to choose between hurting himself and helping you, more or less. Sometimes it's a Cutpurse. Other times, if the victim has stronger trashing than you or is pursuing a different strategy, it's a chance for him to actually sabotage your deck. If it diminishes his hand by anymore than a militia would, then he can still probably make a decent buy with the diverted treasure hand. If it splits his treasure 2/3, or 3/3 it might actually help him pick up an important card he neglected but can't pick up now due to lack of buys. I know this can get pretty weird with duration cards, especially if it gives him a minion, but the way it affects you in the end (gain a copy of every card he gains) remains the same. The only problem I see here is that this creates a very intimate interaction between two adjacent players, which diverges from the "affect everyone equally" formula. And also, Possession gets balanced out by the fact that the player still gets a fresh hand to play from, however subtly you might have sabotaged it with Alchemist, Treasury, or dead draws/unwanted reshuffles.

59

Variants and Fan Cards / How many niches for village-types are left? Can you think of any new ones?

« on: July 17, 2011, 03:31:08 am »

Since at least one village-type card has been included in each released expansion--even the small ones--I'm curious as to what the last few expansions have left to add. I'm also curious if anyone feels like they can make up a village that rivals the official ones! I'll start with mine:

Villas/Manor ($4)

+2 Actions
Reveal cards from the top of your deck until you reveal a Victory Card. Put that card into your hand and discard the other cards. If there are no Victory Cards in your deck, you may put this on top of your deck.


At the beginning, this integrates gained cards faster and makes your next draw a bit better. In a board with dual-typed Victory Cards, it pairs awesomely with any of them. In a board with heavy trashing, it becomes a pseudo-Walled Village+chancellor until the endgame, which hopefully isn't too powerful because you still need a source of draws. In the endgame, it consistently makes subsequent draws much better. Flavor-wise, I guess noblemen's villas are placed away from cities so they don't deal with many exciting things, but the larger the land (Victory Card), the nicer it can be built. A manor is a self-sustaining economy which depends upon whatever yield the serfs manage to coax from the ground.
---

Here's another.

Monastery ($4)

+2 Actions
Reveal the top card of your deck. You may discard it, trash it, or place it back on top.


I think we've yet to see a non-terminal trasher that costs $4 (there's Lookout and Upgrade, but they're $3 and $5). You get no draws with this one for obvious power issues, even if it's a $4. I think it also plays nicely into the flavor of a Monastery, as monks busy themselves with spiritual things and preserving ancient knowledge, but they don't have any influence outside their own walls.

60

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Fan expansion: Infamy

« on: July 16, 2011, 09:16:22 pm »

I see your point about Cultist 2.0. Cultist 1.0 had problems too... How about instead of potentially crippling other people's engines, every cultist you've played forces other players to discard 1 treasure from their hands, or reveal their hands if they have no treasures left? That way, most action chains are immune, and it punishes Big Money. And Cultist provides money so it's a good counter to itself.

As for Port Tax, how about I remove the VP penalty, and boost it to a +$5? And everyone gains "a curse or copper, your choice" when they make any buys beyond their first?

For Census I actually thought of the flavor to fit the function. I had cards like Transmute in mind when I decided to make this one "all over the place". Revealing an action gives you an estate, which initially bloats your deck by a little, but if the Census reveals the estate you gained, it's a free, action-less VP token (plus, in the endgame, who can argue with a free victory card?). Revealing a treasure gives you a gold, which is worth more than the ~$5 this would have cost. All the while it helps you cycle through the deck a little. In the end game, it gets risky with Provinces, but can help you grab a win-defining Duchy if you keep a Curse or Taboo. In the earlier game, the self-trashing function is more like a $5 feast to grab $6's.

61

Game Reports / Re: Sabotuer is a terrible card

« on: July 16, 2011, 12:42:02 am »

If someone gets an edge with Black Market, Saboteur can really cut them down. Especially if it's their only village-type, or if they have the only Witch, Mountebank, or King's Court. Posession in a board without a $3◉ or $4◉ replacement is also a pretty target, since they lost out on the chance to buy a Province to get it, and you bump it down to a ~$4 card (or nothing, if it's one of those annoying 1-Alchemy boards that have been happening a lot since Cornucopia was implemented on Isotropic). And there is, of course, the fact that Sabotuers in a Possessed hand are dead weight to the Possessor.

62

Rules Questions / Re: Potion costs

« on: July 15, 2011, 10:39:30 pm »

I for one wish Salvagers could handle potion costs. "Trash a card from your hand. +$ and ◉ equal to its cost." You could use it or lose it in your buy, and it won't fundamentally change the card. I think if Alchemy were released before Seaside, we would've seen this happen.

63

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: New Types of Cards

« on: July 15, 2011, 03:43:27 pm »

The Bad Cards would be far too situational, and won't be bought very often because they gum up people's engines and just aren't very fun to play. A player buying Bad Cards would be far-outpaced by other players with strategies unimpeded by Bad Cards, and their worth would be different in Bishop or Goons games.

The "all players draw an extra card" card is useless to the player. And the other rule change cards are pretty weak too, making zero-sum changes that aren't very sexy. And you can't even use multiples of them either. Maybe if you gave them a prize-like scenario instead of making them take up an entire pile, they might be interesting. Like, if there was a "Judge" card that could give players rule change cards.

64

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Make up your own card?

« on: July 15, 2011, 03:30:12 pm »

Here's an idea of mine. If you're wondering about the name, this idea comes from a Train-themed fan expansion I've been working on.

CONDUCTOR
Action/Attack - (5)
-
+(2)
Each other player reveals and discards a Victory card from his hand. If he doesn't, he reveals his hand, then discards the Treasure card with the highest cost of his choice from his hand.


While I'm at it, here's another from the same fan-expansion.

SNACK CART
Action - (3)
-
Trash a Treasure card from your hand. If you do, choose an Action card in the supply other than Snack Cart costing up to (3) more than the trashed card. Play that card's effect.

Flavor-wise you got some problems, as Dominion cards range from Medieval to Renaissance-era themes. But other than that, Snack Cart's copper-trashing would definitely be useful, though you might be in trouble if this is the only $2 or $3. Trashing a silver for the benefit of a $5 or $6 could cause some issues, however. In the third turn, if you opened with this and silver, you could Mountebank everyone else and buy another silver or a $4 card. If this was in Multiplayer, everyone could play a Mountebank on the third or fourth turn, leaving everyone's decks riddled with curses and not much-improved. It could really slow things down. Conductor is useless against dual-typed Victory cards.

65

Dominion Articles / Re: Combo: University/City

« on: July 15, 2011, 03:13:10 pm »

The city pile is definitely something to watch whenever there's any gaining cards like University, Talisman, Horn of Plenty, or Smugglers. Or a good $2 and a source of buys. Or any highly contested pile like Minion.

66

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Fan expansion: Infamy

« on: July 15, 2011, 03:04:18 pm »

If you read again, the cultist's bonus is for every Taboo-costing card in play or in your hand, including the cultist itself. That means just by itself it's +$3, +1 buy, and with another played, it's +8, +2 buy. I'm actually worried that it's overpowered, since this is about equal to a $5 card, even if it's got the VP penalty. I must admit, I still do have reservations about this whole "gain an advantage now, pay only later" mechanic which can be far too easily exploited. I see two options here: Actually change the VP penalty into a negative VP token you gain upon being it (which prevents too clean a getaway with trashing), or change the cumulative effects to something in another direction. I'm starting to like the idea of Cultist as an attack card:

Alternate Cultist $3, 1 Taboo
(Action [Attack])
+$2
+1 buy
At the end of your turn, all other players with more than 4 cards in their hands discards 1 card for every Cultist or Taboo you played this turn. This cannot happen more than once per turn.
-1VP

With no + Actions and one Taboo, this is a Militia. With more Taboos and multiple played Cultists, you could potentially get everyone to discard down to 5 cards. But in Multiplayer, any previous hand-reducing attack, including this one, would immunize you from a Cultist attack. And anyways, the dependence on other Cultists and Taboos ensures you keep them as long as possible.

As for the Privateer, I guess that curse mechanic definitely works, and slows down multiple buys while leaving it within the other players' choice. Ooh, I know a way to make it even better! Until your next turn, everyone, including yourself, gets +1 buy. But for every buy used past the first, they gain a curse. This would shift the flavor definitely more to Port Tax. This slows down buys but is still interesting in a game with no other source of buys.

EDIT: Added the new versions of Port Tax and Cultist. I also added Charter, a treasure card! Yay! That makes 6 kingdom cards plus taboo! Maybe I should aim for an Alchemy-sized expansion?

67

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Make up your own card?

« on: July 15, 2011, 03:14:17 am »

Unnamed $5 action (Attack)
+$1
Look at the top two cards of your deck and reveal as many of them as you like.
If you reveal one, everyone else gains a copy of that card.
If you reveal two, trash both. You may gain any card worth their costs combined.
If you reveal no cards, all other players gain a curse.
=========

This is basically a monied Witch that sacrifices 1 card  (I'm figuring the one coin used up the other card) for some flexibility. You can curse until the curses run out, and then continue with coppers. Or you can trash the cards that show up, and maybe even get something useful.

68

Dominion Isotropic / No one here's mentioned Walled Village!

« on: July 15, 2011, 01:41:23 am »

I was surprised to see it integrated into several games I played on Isotropic today. Is it a promo, or a part of an unreleased expansion?

69

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Make up your own card?

« on: July 15, 2011, 01:26:06 am »

Here's a few ideas that come to mind:

Faustian Contract $3
Action
Gain up to 3 curses from the curse pile.
For every curse you gain, +$1 and +1 card

Junkyard $6
Action/Reaction
+1 Action
Action: Trash a card from your hand. Gain a different card of equal cost from the Trash Pile
Reaction: If another player trashes a card, you may show and discard this card to gain that card.

Exorcist $6
Action
+1 Action
Reveal the top 5 cards on your deck. If any of them are curses, draw those curses into your hand.
Then return any curses from your hand to the curse pile.

Typhoid Mary $3
(Curse?)/Action/Attack
Worth -1/-2 VP in your deck
+1 Card
All other players gain a curse

Commune $5
Action
+2 Cards +2 Actions -1 Buy
When this card is removed from play, either place it on the top of your deck or trash it.

In a set that lacks attacks, +buys, or gaining effects, Commune would be a dead card.  Especially if there's no +buy, it would make your turns very boring, and force you to spam Ambassadors or something. Typhoid Mary allows you to open with doublefisting a cursing attack, which would slow the game down very quickly and not be fun for anybody. The +1 card would help you wade through the curses a little, but not enough. In most cases, Junkyard is useless, because your deck is full of low-cost cards and you're striving for higher-cost actions/treasures, most of the time. And no one trashes good cards either.

70

Variants and Fan Cards / Fan expansion: Infamy

« on: July 15, 2011, 12:34:43 am »

This winter I had the idea for a fan expansion which incorporated alternative curses as a potion-like treasure:

Taboo $3
(Treasure)
-1VP
***

I know "taboo" might be a bit too abstract to visualize as a treasure, but it could be a ruler's willingness to accumulate a bad reputation in order to advance his kingdom. The theme of this whole expansion plays along those lines as well: these are all "tricky" cards whose advantages must be carefully weighed with their disadvantages. Anyways, without further ado, here's the rest of the cards I made when I had the momentum going:


Blackmail $2, 1 Taboo
(Action)
Trash this and another blackmail. If you do, gain 2 gold and a blackmail on top of your deck, in any order, and +5 VP.
-1VP

I meant this as a sort of modified Treasure Map, with more dire consequences if you fail to trash it with another. But even if you manage to get rid of the two in your deck, you get stuck with one more. It's a vicious circle unless you have a Watchtower or Chapel. Yet the Taboo cost gums up Forge and Upgrade, and makes it tepid fodder for Savager. There is, however, the rare chance that someone might buy four, gain two, and use all three sets of two. But that's at the lost opportunity to buy 4 $5 cards. The 5 victory tokens seems like a fair reward for such a risky endeavor, but what do you guys think?
***


Cultist $3, 1 Taboo (New version)
(Action [Attack])
+$2
+1 buy
At the end of your turn, all other players with more than 4 cards in their hands discard 1 card for every Cultist or Taboo you played this turn. This cannot happen more than once per turn.
-1VP

Old Cultist $3, 1 Taboo
(Action)
+$2
+1 buy
When this is in play, reveal your hand on your buy phase. +1 coin for every card with Taboo in its cost, either in play or in your hand, including this one.
-1VP

I'll admit right here that this card is inspired by the Cultist class in Munchkin Cthulhu. But it fits thematically and mechanically. This card encourages you to keep Taboo-costing cards as far into the endgame as possible, which, of course, risks taking a big hit on your VP total. This card definitely needs a lot of playtesting, because I can't tell just how much money this card can yield in the wild. I stuck to the "while this is in play" wording a la Goons, because King's Courting this would be monstrously broken. I've thought about including Taboo cards themselves as $-boosters, but a Cultist (~$5 card) plus a Taboo in your hand would yield $4 and 1 buy, which is too powerful for something that can happen so early. I still want a card that encourages you to keep even your Taboos late without trashing them too fast, though. Alternatively, the Cultist could be an attack, and each cultist played, including the first one, forces everyone else to discard one card if they have 4 or more in their hands. A three-Cultist string could be pretty vicious, leaving everyone else with just 2 cards, but a single cultist play would immunize everyone else in 3+ from subsequent Cultists.
***


Port Tax $6, 1 Taboo (New Version)
(Action [Duration])
+$4
Until your next turn, +1 Buy for all players including yourself. All other players gain a curse for every buy made beyond their first one.

Privateer (Old Port Tax) $6, 1 Taboo
(Action [Duration])
+$4
Until your next turn, no one can use more than one buy per turn.

Privateer is essentially the cost of a Province, but it can give you a lot of control over the game, plus a practically guaranteed Province each turn you use it. It can help you maintain an early lead, and cockblocks Goons. Horn of Plenty and other gaining cards, of course, would get around this. Although this can't be blocked by any reaction, its usage by multiple players won't stack, just overlap.
***


Seigniorage/Fiat $3, 1 Taboo
(Action [Attack])
+$2
All other players with 4 or more cards in their hand discards down to 3 cards, and gains a copper in hand.
-1VP

Is "seigniorage" too obscure a term? Ha, I know this card's inclusion in a set named "Infamy" makes me seem like an anti-Fed Hayek-lover, but I'm Keynesian all the way. Normally this is a weak Militia + half a Mountebank, but with enough +actions and multiples of these, you can swell opponents' decks with coppers and leave them with horrible hands... But maybe it's too strong and everyone only discards down to 4 cards before gaining copper?
***


Burial Mound/Mausoleum $2, 1 Taboo
(Victory)
When you buy this card, trash all treasures in play, except for Taboos. Worth 2 VP for every 4 treasure cards in your Burial Mound Mat.

When this card is part of the kingdom set, everyone keeps their own trashed treasure cards in their Burial Mound Mat. I guess this is a tricky card to play with, since it helps early buyers by clearing away coppers, but will eat up your silvers and golds later on, if you don't use +$ cards. And even if you trash all your Coppers, you need to sacrifice one more treasure to push it over to the 4VP mark, which makes it a boosted Duchy. Buying this without crippling yourself would be tricky. Perhaps when decks become large and redundant towards the end, people won't care about losing their golds and silvers, and will happily feed into the value of the Burial Mound. This would definitely synergize with a Goons' extra coppers, and make a Counting House-focused deck monstrous. We might run into problems with cards like Mint and Salvager, however.
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Census/Charter $3, 1 Taboo
(Treasure)

Reveal the top card of your deck. If it is an action card, gain an estate. If it is any treasure card other than a Taboo, +$3. If it is a victory card, trash it, and gain V equal to half its cost in $, rounded down, but at a minimum of 1V. If it is a curse or Taboo, trash Census and gain any card worth up to $6. Discard the card if it hasn't been trashed. If there are no cards left to draw, gain an estate.
-1VP

For the flavor of Charter, I had in mind the the censuses kings would take in order to properly tax their citizens, like the incredibly detailed account of everyone's property in the Domesday Book. To the active vassals, kings would grant land. But if it pleased a ruler he could seize any property for himself, sometimes in spite and in detriment to the productivity of the land. And of course, if you had coin, the king would take it.