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501

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: New Weekly Contest: Fan Card Mechanics

« on: April 05, 2021, 02:14:49 am »

Actions are a resource in a Dominion that you can spend. It makes absolutely no sense to have negative Actions. You can only spend resources that you actually have.

And you're free to have your cards follow that rule if you wish. As of now, there is no ruling one way or another on whether Actions or Buys can go negative, so you can't really say whether it makes sense or not if there's no precedent. Actions are only a counter after all, and there's nothing inherent to them that demands non-negativity.

None of the 4 basic resources of the game can become negative. It is common-sensical, you can only spend stuff that you have.
Coins also cannot become negative, Debt is a totally different mechanism.

I'm not sure what your concern is, of course none of the 4 basic resources go negative in the base game, that's the entire point of fan mechanics. If it were already part of the game, then we wouldn't be discussing it here. Coins and the like cannot become negative because there are no cards with negative vanilla bonuses, that's the entire point of this contest. And regardless, the possibility of negative actions doesn't mean you can continue to use actions while negative to become even further negative. If you have 0 or less actions, you can't play any actions. Your statement "you can't spend what you don't have" isn't applicable here. None of these fan cards allow you to do that.

So your card implies that you can once go under zero with Actions but once you are in the negative realm you cannot play another card with -Actions.
Dude, that’s hyperunintuitive.

Spend X Actions is a fine mechanism. -X Actions with some weird „you can go once below zero but once you are you cannot play other -X Action cards“ rule is not.

Think about when you would go below zero. I never stated my card allows you to go below zero once. The rules around my card were "Do what the card says. If you do not have 1 or more actions afterwards, you cannot play another card", just like any other card. If you play a -1 Action card, that means you had 1 action, and were thus allowed to play a card, now having 0, do what the card says, and now have -1. You cannot play another action. It's exactly the same as playing any other terminal. You are not "allowed to go below once and then not again", you are simply allowed to play any action card if you have 1 action available, and if you are at 0 you can't play an action card period. It would be less intuitive if you couldn't play a -1 Action card while having 1 action. And anyway, the only time it matters whether or not you have 0 or -1 is when it comes to how many villagers you need to get back to 1 action. Once again, you are free to implement it however you wish.

Dude, you explicitly said that Steel Foundry means that you can end up with -1 Action and you just said it again. So according to you you can most definitely go below zero with the Action counter.
My point is that this is a total mess rule-wise (gee, the very fact that we have this discussion shows this). It makes far more sense to implement it Storyteller-style as „spend an Action“ which means that you need two Actions to play Steel Foundry.

Spending resources is cool, it is a basic mechanism familiar to anybody who plays Euros. But being able to spend stuff that you don’t have, man, just no. There is no precedent for this in Dominion, it will lead to quite some confusion and it also makes the card itself behave very weird (no idea about why you sting to it, all it achieves is make the card better suited for money).

Yes, Steel Foundry does make you end with -1 Action if its the only card you play. What I was countering is your supposition that it only allows you to go negative *once* as if that were a special rule, which you were implying. Why would it make more sense for some Actions to take 2 to play but most to take 1? There's no precedent for that either. And anyway, why are you using precedent to justify what does or doesn't make sense on a competition that's literally about fan mechanics. There's no precedent for anything we do here, by definition. Being able to go negative on a resource is not so outlandish a concept that it doesn't appear in other games. And once again, you aren't spending what you don't have, you are simply following the cards instructions. If you look at my original post, I also have Stock Exchange, which *does* ask you spend Actions, and for *that* card, you can only spend Actions that you have. I agree that for a story-teller type card, you shouldn't be able to spend more than you have. But -1 Action as a vanilla bonus isn't spending anything, it's updating a counter. That's why it doesn't say "Spend an action, you may go negative."

You keep interpreting it as something that it is not, and that's fine, you are free to make your own card that does work the way you want it to. That's the point of this contest, I never said you have to treat -1 Actions the way I did, nor that I was biased to my own implementation. If you submit your story-teller style smithy variant, I will gladly judge it on its merits and not consider the way you decided to implement -1 Actions as any way inferior to my own. At the end of the day, this is a fan card, and a fan card mechanic, and like the English language, their our know rules.

While I mostly agree with you, I would like to point out that Poor House gives - and cannot go negative, which makes it somewhat unclear just by looking at the card whether you can go negative on Actions or not (which usually doesn't matter; I believe Villagers and CotR are the only cases where -1 vs 0 Actions makes a difference). I would therefore recommend specifying on the card itself: "-1 Action (you can go below 0)."

Also, one rules question I just thought of: What happens if you have negative Actions and Diadem? Does Diadem's extra effect give -? Or does Diadem still give total? And if it loses because of KC/TRing Steel Foundries, can you go negative simply because neither specifies that you can't go below ? And if so, what happens with Poor House? If you play Poor House when you're at - and Poor House wouldn't give net +, would it still raise you to because it does specify that you can't go below ? And does it make it so that you can't go below for the rest of your turn, or just for its own effect?

502

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Contest #6: Spend, spend, spend!

« on: April 01, 2021, 07:52:56 pm »

Fan Card Mechanic Contest #6: Spend, spend, spend!

Alright, you've heard of -1 card tokens, you've heard of spending coin for cards, now get ready for spending Actions and Buys!
The theme for this week will be -1 Action and -1 Buy, up to you how you would like to implement it. Straight vanilla bonus or -1 token, you set the rules. You can even include spend for benefit. Be explicit about details. If vanilla, do you go negative at 0, interaction with villagers, etc. If tokens, do they work like the -1 card and coin token, when are they returned, etc.

Here are some implementations of the concept as examples by myself and others:

   

In my implementation in Steel Foundry for example, your Action count can go negative, and thus you'd need to spend 2 villagers to play another action card, but you are free to implement a "not-less-than-zero" approach. Stock exchange is another from my Industrialization fan expansion. Savings is an implementation by X-Tra. You can read the secret history for Workshop here to see an implementation of -1 Buy that Don X. considered. An example of a token version of the concept can be seen with Aquila's exhausted token here, which removes one Action from your pool immediately once you have a non-zero number available. You could alternatively have it instead ignore your next +Action, ala Snowy Village, your choice. 

I personally take a liking to well-chosen theme and card art, so card images would be greatly preferred, though of course not required. Feel free to include multiple cards to illustrate your concept further. The contest window will be closed April 8th at 8:00 AM PST, and I will attempt to have the judgement out by that day's end. Good luck and happy fan carding!

Question: Has there ever been a ruling on exactly when your Action count resets, whether it's at the end of Clean-up or at the start of your next turn?  There's a card with -1 Action that I'm considering that could be played as a reaction on another person's turn, so the count of Actions on other players' turns becomes very relevant here

Caravan Guard shows that +1 Action has no effect outside of your turn, so I'd assume the same would be true of -1 Action.

503

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion Card Image Generator

« on: March 31, 2021, 12:59:52 pm »

Hi Folks, sorry for the issues.
The reason was indeed because of the cors-anywhere server I've used, which allows the generator to load and embed arbitrary resources from external websites, like the images and the fonts.
I have now set up my own server for this and it should run more reliably now.

Thanks to DunnoItAll for the temporary solution in the meantime!

Font issues are back again, and since the cors-anywhere server is no longer being used, DunnoItAll's temporary solution no longer fixes it.

504

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Money Bags

« on: March 18, 2021, 01:08:59 pm »

Pilgrim's Route is weaker than TR yet costs more.

I disagree. First, there's the MB option to trade a coin for a Action, which you get to decide on after the effect has resolved for a second time (allowing you, for example, to replay a Smithy instead of a Village, knowing you won't draw Actions dead). More importantly, Pilgrim's Route can replay the card that drew it. I certainly have had the frustrating experience of playing a cantrip as the last Action card in my hand and drawing a TR or KC. The fact that this avoids that is non-nominal improvement.

(Whether it justifies going $4 to $5 is a different question, but I don't think you could price this the same as TR).

The more important comparison is Royal Carriage. Pilgrim's Route is almost strictly worse than Royal Carriage.

505

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #108: How Deep is your Pile?

« on: March 17, 2021, 08:18:42 pm »

I have modified my submitted card (updated in my original post):

Revenant $2 - Action +2 Actions +1 Buy   You may set this aside. If you     do, +1 Card per empty Supply    pile and return it to the Supply  at the start of Clean-up. -------------------------- Setup: 3 copies per player.

Minor functions: A cheap card that can provide Actions and an extra Buy, features important in many Kingdoms and player’s decks that should not be undervalued.
Revenant can be activated for additional card drawing when Supply piles are empty.

Main function: The ability to manipulate how many Supply piles are empty and thus, having some control over ending the game via 3 empty piles. This can be achieved by gaining Revenants, and by playing and returning them or not.

A note to the tactical use:
A player, who wants to force ending the game by 3 empty piles, or who just wants to have an empty pile for activating other cards (e.g. City, Paddock) tries to empty the Revenant pile or, if already empty, wants to keep it empty by not returning their Revenants to it. On the contrary, a player, who does not want to end the game via 3 empty piles or who does not want to activate other cards, tries to avoid an empty Revenant pile.
Additional options to manipulate the Revenant pile are trashing, remodeling, Exiling (particularly interesting), and (in a few cases) gaining Revenants back from the trash as well as cost reduction of cards.

Too easy to forget to return. Encampment wording, or immediate returning is better, I suppose.

It does use Encampment wording, though...

506

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #108: How Deep is your Pile?

« on: March 17, 2021, 01:20:55 pm »

I think you have some of the greater than/less than symbols backwards. Fishing Village w/o Duration effect is worse than Fishing Village, not better (in fact, it's < because it's strictly worse than Squire as well). Likewise Upgrade without the gain is worse than Upgrade, Highway without +1 Card is worse than Highway (although Aquarius isn't strictly worse than Highway due to being Thronable), and pure Peddler is strictly worse than several s (Market, Artificer, Treasury, etc.).

507

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #108: How Deep is your Pile?

« on: March 16, 2021, 06:14:54 pm »

There are 20 Developing Cities in its pile.

whats an expanding city

Realized that mistake right after posting. I've fixed the misnaming and nerfed it by making it unable to trash DCs.

508

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #108: How Deep is your Pile?

« on: March 16, 2021, 06:08:15 pm »

Someone on Discord suggested making it so you can trash a DC for nothing in return without needing to be unable to trash something else, so I've made that change.



There are 20 Developing Cities in its pile.

509

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Money Bags

« on: March 16, 2021, 03:17:54 pm »

Atoll
This seems to be strictly better than Island. It has the same cost with the same abilities, plus something.

see my remark at the top.

Plus versus minus, Atoll is still strictly better. You have all the functions of Island for the same cost plus an additional option. The player doesn't have to go for it, but they can! It is their decision whether giving 2 [MB] is an advantage or not. You can't do that with Island.

Yep, same reason Mining Village is strictly better than Village. You could literally just always play Atoll identically to Island. And you have another option that you'd only take if it was worth the price anyway, which makes Atoll strictly better than Island.

510

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #108: How Deep is your Pile?

« on: March 15, 2021, 08:59:33 pm »

Having the same card available in different supply piles might complicate things. The situations I can think of are:

• When more than one Dolmen is visible it sometimes matters which one you buy/gain/trash/exile etc. I think it is always clear who gets to make the choice though (viz, the person doing the thing, except in the case of Swindler!).
• Ferry. Is this Dolmen in my hand the one which came from the pile I have my -2 cost token on?

1. Yeah, seems clear to me

2. I think the cleanest, most obvious answer is to say Dolmen disconnects from its original pile when it leaves. So you can't Ambassador it (pretty obvious). Ferry reduces the cost on buy, but not after that (Technically you bought a $4 Dolmen, but gained a $6 one). I'll update the card to make this clearer.

Another way to solve the Ferry problem without needing an FAQ would be to make it a debt cost so that Ferry doesn't work on any Dolmen anyway.

511

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #108: How Deep is your Pile?

« on: March 14, 2021, 06:16:26 pm »

I'm going to attempt something really silly, probably broken (and untested on top of that)! I might withdraw it in the situation where the good people of this forum makes it really obvious to me that it's broken/not working as intended . Anyway, here goes nothing:

     

Institute can be a non-terminal Smithy if it draws you 3 Treasures/Victory cards. Big Money dudes are happy. You start with a deck of 15 cards. 3 turns until the first shuffle instead of 2. Your opening split could be //; or //; or //. Or it could be none of that should you want to trash the junk-y Grants instead of taking their money. If you do, well, your deck is leaner, yay! But adieu, cool opening splits (and adieu 1 too, I guess).

Since Mahowrath updvoted this post, implying that it qualifies, I take it that making your starting deck not 10-cards qualifies?

512

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #108: How Deep is your Pile?

« on: March 14, 2021, 03:37:11 pm »

My Submission:

Revenant $2 - Action +2 Actions +1 Buy   +1 Card per empty Supply pile.  Return this to the Supply at the start of Clean-up. --------------------------- Setup: 2 copies per player.

I think this would compare terribly to Encampment even if it always gave +2 Cards. +1 Buy doesn't really make up for the fact that there's no way to avoid it being a one-shot.

513

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #107: Coppers and Estates

« on: March 08, 2021, 01:54:13 am »

Codger
$4 - Action
Exile a Copper from your hand and if you did, gain a card costing up to $1 per Copper on your Exile mat.  Otherwise, reveal a hand with no Coppers and Exile a Copper from the Supply.
-
Setup: Each player Exiles 2 Coppers from the Supply.

I think you can tighten up this language a bit:

"Exile a Copper from your hand and if you did, to gain a card costing up to $1 per Copper on your Exile mat."

See Beggar, Duplicate, Enhance, Fool's Gold, Haunted Mirror, Hostelry, Improve, Market Square, The Earth's Gift, The Sky's Gift, Tunnel, Urchin, Way of the Butterfly, and Way of the Rat.

Thanks - I've updated the OP with the wording you suggested.

That wording is only used for optional effects. It isn't used for mandatory effects like Codger; see Pillage, Madman, and Wish.

514

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: New Weekly Contest: Fan Card Mechanics

« on: March 07, 2021, 11:47:20 pm »

Ok, now we're looking for Nobody to run the next contest!

Without context, this looks hilarious.

515

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #106: Business In The Front, Party In The Back

« on: March 04, 2021, 03:54:16 pm »

It's been 8 days, so the judging's a bit late.

516

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: New Weekly Contest: Fan Card Mechanics

« on: March 01, 2021, 12:03:22 am »

Meditation
Dawn - $5
You may an Action from your hand three times

(Once per turn)

This is missing the word "play."

517

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Wilderness

« on: February 28, 2021, 12:52:10 pm »

The last part of Street Market should be worded like Scheme: "This turn, you may put one of your cards at the bottom of your deck when you discard it from play."

I'm surprised Provisioner needs the Reserve drawback. It looks like it should be enough weaker than Artisan to cost without being a Reserve, especially since you don't necessarily want a Resource. I can certainly believe it being too strong, though.

I think Offer should give either +1 Action or some sort of consolation prize if it whiffs.

I agree that Despoiled Village could probably gain s and still be balanced. You have to hold back from playing that in order to gain one with Despoiled Village, after all.

518

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #106: Business In The Front, Party In The Back

« on: February 27, 2021, 03:18:00 am »

You have to react with "Did somebody say..."

I don't get it.

519

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: New Weekly Contest: Fan Card Mechanics

« on: February 26, 2021, 12:19:33 am »

Using the one Dawn per turn:

520

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #106: Business In The Front, Party In The Back

« on: February 25, 2021, 05:45:15 pm »

(I'm going on the assumption that giving negative feedback is more okay for cards that everyone else likes.) This seems quite similar to Cavalry since both cards are Moat effect on-play and on-gain. The difference is that this card delays the on-gain effect whereas Cavalry has that instantly but delays the on-play effect -- which seems to me like the more interesting way to do it.

Thank you for the critique. I don't agree with you, though. I think this will play very differently from Cavalry, because setting up your next turn is very different from giving your current turn a boost. Also, Cavalry is a delayed Smithy on-play, not a delayed Moat.

Since they don't take a card slot from your hand, neither Moat nor Cavalry are Moats on-gain, they're Smithies. Cavalry gives +2 handsize on gain, same as a Smithy on-play. Likewise, Eager Hound gives a delayed +2 handsize on gain.

521

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #106: Business In The Front, Party In The Back

« on: February 25, 2021, 01:40:14 pm »

took Gubump's "this means no reserves, right?" as an additional design challenge and came up with:

Profits • $5 • Treasure - Reserve
+1 Buy
-
This is gained to your Tavern mat.

During your Buy phase, if you have 3 or fewer Treasures in play and you have not doubled your $ yet this turn, you may call this to double your $.

One shot miniature fortune that becomes a junk card in your deck after use. There is no way to return it to the tavern mat without first returning it to the supply (that I've thought of, anyhow).
Kind of a throwback to the first string of WDC contests, getting creative about how to get things to the tavern mat.

Has some synergies with peddlers/markets/etc; really likes Spoils. Antisynergies with a purely money strategy due to the 3 or fewer treasures rule, but still not terrible - can turn a copper and a gold into province-tier coin.

I believe you could trash this and then gain it from the trash with Lurker. (EDIT: Actually, no that only works with Actions.)

This junks your deck after you call it, but unlike other Reserve cards you get to put this directly on your Tavern mat so overall it’s quite strong I think.

yeah like graverobber and rogue could also gain it from the trash too, but there's no way to get this directly from hand or deck to the tavern mat.

How would this interact with Graverobber?  I still don’t fully understand the Stop Moving rule.

actually looks like Graverobber would put it on your deck, not on the tavern mat; so Graverobber wouldn't work. Tested with Sculptor (gain to hand) + Nomad Camp (gain to topdeck) on dominion dot games - it gained to hand.

Right. My understanding has always been that if Card A gains Card B, then Card A's gain instruction takes precedence over Card B's.

For example: from the wiki for Graverobber:

If the card would be gained into your hand, such as Guardian, Ghost Town, Night Watchman, or Den of Sin, it is gained onto your deck instead.

What about changing the wording to be "When you gain this, you may put it on your Tavern mat."

In this way, it would happen after the gain, wherever it went to. (similar to Watchtower)

Note, with this phasing, it can alos be made optional to give it another use - late in a game the +Buy may actually be more useful to you than the doubling. So you could gain this to your hand with Armory, for example, to buy the last two Provinces.

One thing I'd like to point out: All of those official cards, including Nomad Camp, say "this is gained to [location] (instead of your discard pile)." You can't do X instead of Y if Y never happens. Whereas Profits just says "this is gained to your Tavern mat," period. I could see the argument that it's because of the "instead of your discard pile" that Sculptor and Graverobber override gain locations.

522

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: New Weekly Contest: Fan Card Mechanics Week 2: Conditions

« on: February 25, 2021, 02:03:33 am »

... Side note - are we just running all Fan Mechanics contests in this single thread, or should we be making a new thread for each contest?

We're just doing a single thread, at least for now.

523

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion Card Image Generator

« on: February 24, 2021, 08:13:45 pm »

If you try to have a card with multiple costs, even just and a , the type gets over-indented, as shown above.

524

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #106: Business In The Front, Party In The Back

« on: February 24, 2021, 06:34:38 pm »

Even with LibraryAdventurer's suggestion of making this cost , I definitely don't think you should be able to get free King's Courts or Goonses (how would you pluralize Goons, since each copy is a Goons?) with this.

Also, nitpick: +Buys come before +.

525

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #106

« on: February 24, 2021, 05:36:50 pm »

My previous entry needed to avoid infinite loops but couldn't do so cleanly or clearly enough, so here's a much simpler entry.


Note that since it says "a Lair," if you draw another Lair with the Reaction, you can't React with the second Lair because you already revealed "a Lair."