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151

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities

« on: July 19, 2018, 10:10:03 am »

More straightforward (but complex nonetheless) Stronghold:

Stronghold - $5 or $7 - Action
Put your deck into your discard pile. Look through your discard pile, trash a card from it, and put a card from it into your hand.
-
When you buy this for $7, play it as an Attack from the Supply. It's that card until it leaves play. You may choose to be unaffected by it.

Imagine that you have a moat that you used to react to yourself playing an attack. It would block the beneficial part of the attack while still hitting everyone else in the face.

The problem with playing an attack action in the buy phase is, you draw 3 cards. Great. What now. Giving you a Buy and pushing yourself back into the Action phase was a way of saying, you can use those cards so no big deal. But then it felt awkward; what if the attack I play gives me a Buy, then I have two. Maybe I draw a lot of actions, do I get +1 Action, too? Also, you're buying Stronghold late, when you have $7 and maybe are already buying provinces. You probably don't want to gain a Silver with Bureaucrat, either. But you still would love to wreck your opponent's plan by putting a Victory card into his next turn. So I was toying around with ways of making Stronghold's payoff ability do "just the attack part of an attack" but that gets messy, especially with conditional attacks like Replace.

So my solution is to put a big may() clause around the parts of the attack that you have to do. Don't want to draw the cards? you don't have to. Of course, if you want to, go for it.

152

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities

« on: July 19, 2018, 09:48:18 am »

Gamepiece update:

There's a reason I made you discard a card with Gamepiece, it's to keep the power level down vs. Venture's.

So a more accurate ruling would be:

Gamepiece Treasure - Reaction - $3
$1
Look at the top card of your deck. Put it into your hand, discard it, or put it back. If you put it in your hand, discard a card.
-
When you discard this on your turn other than during Clean-up, reveal it for + $1.

This can be shortened to:

Gamepiece Treasure - Reaction - $3
$1
Look at the top card of your deck. You may put it in your hand. If you do, discard a card.
-
When you discard this on your turn other than during Clean-up, reveal it for + $1.

Looked-at cards, like revealed cards, always go back to where they were (see Perl Diver). Putting it in your hand allows you both to keep it for another card or discard the looked-at card itself.

You might consider to just state "during your Action or Buy phase" instead of "your turn other than during cleanup". Technically, the +1$ only does things during your own turn, anyway, and you can't use it after the buy phase anyhow (given how no Night card cares about the coins you have left). But, eh, I guess that's preference.

The pre-shortened and shortened version don't do the same thing; also there's a long precedent of "Look at" rules explicitly stating that you can put the card back, Using "may" works as an equivalent, but printing it with a choice, people may get confused between whether they must choose clause B if they didn't choose clause A:

Look at the top card of your deck. You may put it into your hand or discard it. If you put it into your hand, discard a card.

Arguably I could shorten it by saying:

Look at the top card of your deck. Put it into your hand and discard a card, discard it, or put it back.

but that's also super confusing to read.

Look at the top card of your deck. Put it into your hand and discard a card, put it back, or discard it.

is an option but as far as I know, official cards always list the options in the "put into hand, discard, put back" order.
Edit: actually, there's a good argument that "put it ..." always comes last, so I could do something like:

Discard it, put it back, or put it into your hand and discard a card.

On the other hand, I totally agree with you about "Action and Buy phase". It looks better on the card, too, which is something I'm always going for.

153

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities

« on: July 18, 2018, 02:45:40 pm »

Gamepiece update:

There's a reason I made you discard a card with Gamepiece, it's to keep the power level down vs. Venture's.

So a more accurate ruling would be:

Gamepiece Treasure - Reaction - $3
$1
Look at the top card of your deck. Put it into your hand, discard it, or put it back. If you put it in your hand, discard a card.
-
When you discard this on your turn other than during Clean-up, reveal it for + $1.

154

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities

« on: July 17, 2018, 10:20:24 am »

Am I right to believe that after playing Profiteer, I can gain the entire Border Village pile at once?

I *knew* there was a reason I originally restricted it to cards in your hand and deck. Back it goes!

155

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities

« on: July 17, 2018, 10:00:08 am »

Perfect, thank you!

Also I'd love to know how all this time I've had Gamepiece's rules text above its value and not noticed

156

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities

« on: July 16, 2018, 12:57:06 pm »

You are free to not change them anymore, but that doesn't mean they are finished 😛

Gamepiece for instance is really weird and I have a hard time imagining a deck you want it in. For Artifact, what's the difference between paying and not paying 0? Graveyard still leads to infinite points with Watchtower, Tomb and Inheritance (suggestion: "a card costing more than it" - anyhow, this is the most nit-picky one). If the number of Curses is too low, Pharaoh will give the second-to-last player two Curses, and none to the last. Prospector and Profiteer are very similar in both art and name. If I play several Profiteers, how do they stack? And so on...

The main question however is: How thoroughly did you test these?

Gamepiece, I've played with and have had some success with it, but then again I'm at my (relatively low) play level.
Paying zero with Artifact nets you a Copper, which you can put into play. Not paying doesn't.
Graveyard can no longer gain Graveyards.
You're right about Pharaoh. I'm okay with that.
I'm not too worried about the art and name similarity.
The way that Profiteers stack is detailed in the rulebook. It's why I detailed that the cards cost both $0 more and $1 more; two profiteers cause the cards to cost $0 more and $1 more and $2 more, etc.

I'm aware that I could spend the rest of my life refining the cards, trust me! But at some point I need to commit to the project being finished. This was supposed to be a 1-year project. It's already in the third quarter of its second year!

One might argue that there is no difference between paying and not paying 0$, given that you can't overpay 0$ for Ruins, either. I already gave my suggestion of "pay any amount of $. You may gain..." to fix this.
Graveyard can gain Estates and Estates can gain Graveyards. With Tomb, Watchtower and Inheritance, you can trash one, then trash the other to get infinite points.

Anyhow, I wasn't aware of how long you have been working on this. That said, I definitely see that these are not just some throw-away ideas, but that you put quite a bit of thought into it. I guess it's mostly the way you present this, with your official unofficial twitter and all, that makes it seem like you were a tiny bit too optimistic about the state of your cards.

Your Gamepiece change for example is a huge improvement in my book, although I'd probably make it peek at the card and then just giving you the choice to put it in your hand (not draw it) at the cost of discarding a card, regardless of type. But that's really minimal (except the "put in hand" thing, that's standard rules).

You're right about Graveyard, I will change it to prevent shenanigans.
You're likely also right about Gamepiece, look at is mostly worthwhile for the simplicity, and people can self-regulate. If they want to discard coppers, then they only get $1 from Gamepiece. That's likely okay.

I left the (including $0) on Artifact because my playtesters kept not understanding that they could gain Coppers with it without paying money, or that they could *not* gain Coppers with it. I'd rather it not say that, since it's more awkward than just "any amount of..."

157

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities

« on: July 16, 2018, 12:31:28 pm »

Is it too late for suggestions?

No, it's not too late for suggestions. I will take them all into consideration for sure, since I haven't ordered the physical copies yet.

158

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities

« on: July 16, 2018, 11:46:34 am »

Gamepiece for instance is really weird and I have a hard time imagining a deck you want it in.

Of course, no sooner do I say that I'm not going to change it, then I find myself toying with this improvement:

Gamepiece - Treasure Reaction - $3
Reveal the top card of your deck. If it's a Treasure, draw it and discard a card.
Otherwise, discard it or put it back.
$1
-
When you discard this on your turn other than during Clean-up, reveal it for $1.

I think this lives up to the goal "A lesser version of Venture that goes will with Tactician and works as a sifter in the Buy phase" a bit better.

159

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities

« on: July 16, 2018, 10:11:52 am »

Sorry, to respond to the actual question:

I've played probably a thousand games with my testgroup over the last 19 months. I'd like more testing on Profiteer, since the idea works in my head but it's a fairly recent idea, and I've only had a half-dozen games with it since adding the passive clause. It seems good, but I'm not in the loop with extremely high-calibre players.

BTW, when I said I was probably not changing the cards anymore, I meant "before printing them" and not as a response to your earlier statement, Asper It totally looks like it, though.

160

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities

« on: July 16, 2018, 10:08:36 am »

You are free to not change them anymore, but that doesn't mean they are finished 😛

Gamepiece for instance is really weird and I have a hard time imagining a deck you want it in. For Artifact, what's the difference between paying and not paying 0? Graveyard still leads to infinite points with Watchtower, Tomb and Inheritance (suggestion: "a card costing more than it" - anyhow, this is the most nit-picky one). If the number of Curses is too low, Pharaoh will give the second-to-last player two Curses, and none to the last. Prospector and Profiteer are very similar in both art and name. If I play several Profiteers, how do they stack? And so on...

The main question however is: How thoroughly did you test these?

Gamepiece, I've played with and have had some success with it, but then again I'm at my (relatively low) play level.
Paying zero with Artifact nets you a Copper, which you can put into play. Not paying doesn't.
Graveyard can no longer gain Graveyards.
You're right about Pharaoh. I'm okay with that.
I'm not too worried about the art and name similarity.
The way that Profiteers stack is detailed in the rulebook. It's why I detailed that the cards cost both $0 more and $1 more; two profiteers cause the cards to cost $0 more and $1 more and $2 more, etc.

I'm aware that I could spend the rest of my life refining the cards, trust me! But at some point I need to commit to the project being finished. This was supposed to be a 1-year project. It's already in the third quarter of its second year!

161

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities

« on: July 16, 2018, 12:02:19 am »

It is my (likely naive) belief that I will no longer be changing these cards.

162

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities

« on: July 13, 2018, 10:07:00 am »

Riches and Tomb Raider -- NO! I'm an MLA snob! Okay, I'll sleep on it.

To be consistent with existing cards the period should be outside, see Bureaucrat or Gardens for reference. Inspector, Moundbuilder Village, Profiteer and maybe more I missed should be changed too.

Fun fact, to be consistent with official cards, the period should be outside if the sentence is not the last sentence on the card, but inside if it is -- see Events cards, or Not In Supply cards.

I thought this was something that changed over time (older cards, outside; new ones, inside) but sets like Dark Ages have both insides and outsides.

In that case, Moundbuilder Village and Tomb Raider changes but the other cards stay the same.

163

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities

« on: July 12, 2018, 05:34:44 pm »

Wow, Thanar, good eye. I must have been panicking or something when I did that last render of Shipwreck and Stronghold.

Discovery's additional rules are part of the "Shuffle Into" rules.

Gamepiece I'll take into consideration. It's true that Clean-up isn't a single instant in time.

Inspector - good eye. I missed this when I converted it from discard to put on top.

Moundbuilder - I just double-checked, it's there.

Profiteer - possibly, I'll think about it, look at it, see what feels best.

Riches and Tomb Raider -- NO! I'm an MLA snob! Okay, I'll sleep on it.

164

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities

« on: July 12, 2018, 02:42:03 pm »

So, basically cards are finished now, since I'm in talks with a printer to create a few physicals. What's done is done!

You can see the current versions on the gallery now.
Speak up in the next 24 hours or so if you spot any game-breaking bugs! The most recent changes are Stronghold and Profiteer.

165

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities

« on: July 10, 2018, 04:08:38 pm »

I've tested this, the +2 Cards if you discard a Silver. It seems decent but because you don't normally get cards from Agora it's hard to pull off without a lot of Silver.

Overall I like it.

166

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities

« on: July 09, 2018, 01:46:59 pm »

I'm actually toying with making the Silver rule "Discard a Silver from your hand for +2 Cards." It makes it like a Lost City, which I don't want too many of, but the net power level is less. It makes you have to gamble, do you want a silver bird in the hand, or two in the bush?

167

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities

« on: July 07, 2018, 11:08:17 pm »

Okay, now Agora's probably OP, but I'm going to try:

Agora - Action $5
+2 Actions
+$2
The first time you play a Silver this turn, +1 Card
-
When you discard this other than during Clean-up, you may reveal it to gain a Silver into your hand.

So now it's Grand Market strong, but only if you play a Silver. If you don't, it's probably somewhere around $3.5. If you discard it, it's still the bad option, but maybe you'll be excited about it a little.

This is still pending tests.

Edit: Wow I must have been tired when I said that... nobody wants cards in their buy phase, Token (now Gamepiece) not withstanding.

168

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities

« on: July 07, 2018, 10:41:03 pm »

Yeah, Asper, I agree that it's probably weaker than Festival. The $5 cost might be a mistake vs. $4. It's a throwback to the silver being a "good idea" and existing as a defense vs attacks.

I *could* try throw in a bonus for silvers, like if it gave you +$2, and +$1 to the first Silver you play, like Merchant.

Also, I decided to rework Profiteer, since I found the Reaction part clunky. I tried Choose One, and that was even worse. So right now I'm trying this out:

Profiteer - Action $4
+1 Action
+1 Buy
Trash a non-Victory card from the Supply. Cards with the same name as that one cost $1 less this turn (but not less than $0.)
-
When this is in play, cards in your hand and deck cost $0 or $1 more.

Two things to point out: one, "Cards in your hand and deck" means specifically if you play a trash-for-benefit card, or say a Patrician, the cards in your deck count as more expensive. Screws up Sages, though.

However, this also makes use of my variable cost mechanic to make the cards in your deck and hand have multiple costs, so you can break the game with upgrades.

Time's running short for testing, though, so please give me feedback, especially feedback of the "this will break the game because _____" kind.

169

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities

« on: July 05, 2018, 03:34:24 pm »

So Nerai's Pyramid leads to the game ending condition, yours leads away from it. That's not to say the original concept doesn't have issues, like wording and the question of whether you need new types (personally I prefer negative VP being just "When you gain this, each other player gets +X VP", like on my card Minister).

You know, Asper, my name has the letter i twice, NeIraI.

Oopsy... Sorry about that.

Lol no worries. This happens allll the time. Or people call me Neira.

I am happy to hear of the possibly +VP solution for Pyramids, will see if I can land the current idea, though.
Edit: the good news is I can test both versions at the same time, by having users get the +2VP and set them aside in a special place, then at the end of the game evaluate the overall effect on score of the VPs vs the -VP penalty. For sake of completeness I can also try +1VP and "at the end of the game, VP cards are worth -1VP but not less than 1VP" which may be a direction I go even though it actually then rewards buying VP cards that are otherwise useless. But not much.

170

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities

« on: July 05, 2018, 11:47:04 am »

So Nerai's Pyramid leads to the game ending condition, yours leads away from it. That's not to say the original concept doesn't have issues, like wording and the question of whether you need new types (personally I prefer negative VP being just "When you gain this, each other player gets +X VP", like on my card Minister).

You know, Asper, my name has the letter i twice, NeIraI.

Jokes aside, this would have actually fixed the original Pyramid design, if it gave everyone else +2VP whenever you used it instead of gaining you two Curse cards. If I can't land this version I may go back to that. Balance would be different because it wouldn't junk you anymore but it also wouldn't have an upper cap on how bad things can get.
The same could be true of the other Curse gainer in the set, Grave Watcher, but that one I think is okay.

171

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities

« on: July 04, 2018, 01:12:16 pm »

Update on Stronghold:

After thinking around "how do I make this card seem war-like enough to justify the art" I have hit on this disgusting essence of pure cancer:

Stronghold - Action - $5 or $7
Put your deck into your discard pile. Look through your discard pile, trash a card from it, and put a card from it into your hand.
-
When you buy this for $7, +1 Buy, return to your Action phase, and replay each Attack card you have in play.

It's evil.

On that note, I've been adding the Variable Cost rule to a few cards; I will have to explain it in the rules.

The short version is something like this:
1) a card with multiple costs costs all of those costs for the purposes of targeting by other cards. i.e., a card costing $2 and $4 costs less than $3 and also costs more than $3. So Dame Natalie could gain a Shipwreck and also can trash Shipwreck.
2) If a card allows you to gain a card based on the cost of the variable cost card, you pick one card that satisfies the rule. So using Upgrade on Shipwreck allows you to gain either a card costing exactly $3 or one costing exactly $5. The player who makes the choice gets to decide what you're getting, so another player with Swindler can swindle Shipwreck into either a $2 or $4 cost card.
3) When you buy a card with variable costs, you get to choose which cost you're paying. Both cards with printed variable costs will have a "if you buy for $(more expensive cost)" rule.

172

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities

« on: July 04, 2018, 10:42:16 am »

The Pyramid right now is being difficult to balance, lol.

It's

Pyramid - Action - $5
+$5
+1 Buy
You may trash 2 cards from your hand.
-
At the end of the game, Victory cards are worth -1VP, but not less than 0VP.

Seems like a lot of power all in a $5 card. But in practice, it seems to not be powerful enough, although the test cases I've tried haven't all been good test cases.
I tried buffing it up to give $6 instead of $5. At that point it became hugely OP, I got 7 of the 8 provinces in a 2-player game where the other player was not allowed to buy Pyramids. Even with the drawback (I bought 4 Pyramids over the course of the game, but managed to trash down to 1 remaining, which is sort of the point) I had so many more points that I won. Even if I failed to trash any of the Pyramids I would have 14 VP vs 11VP (they still had Estates) so it was OP OP.

Back down to +$5 I am struggling to edge the VP pile. More tests are needed but I may need to price it at $4. Trying to keep it out of Death Cart's design space. Ofc it started out as a clone of Death Cart that gave you Curses instead of Ruins, so there's that problem.

173

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities

« on: July 03, 2018, 03:02:33 pm »

So the other thing I'm working on now is a version of Pyramids that no longer curses you but instead makes Victory cards worth -1 VP to a min of 0VP. I'm having challenges testing this for balance, though. It should be very powerful but not enough to take over the game completely, and it should make you lose if you can't trash it and invest into it too heavily.

174

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities

« on: June 29, 2018, 04:54:31 pm »

That settles it, Agora and Token can stay how they are.

Stronghold bottom..... ergh. I'm very tempted to make it play itself as a reaction to attacks, probably *after* the attack is resolved.

Edit: can scam the language off of Royal Carriage/Coin of the Realm like: "Directly after another player finishes playing an Attack card, you may play this from your hand."

175

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities

« on: June 27, 2018, 02:55:00 pm »

To answer my own question (yeah, I shouldn't soliloquize in the thread, sorry)

I believe based on the language of the Secret History of Diplomat, the following rules are in play:

1) Multiple Reactions can react to a single valid trigger;
2) Reaction cards that enter the hand (either by drawing or by "unrevealing" a card revealed from your hand) during or as a result of Reaction effects to a trigger can also React to that same trigger.

So in the case of Diplomat with 10 cards:
1) Diplomat reveals in response to Attack trigger.
2) Diplomat is resolved, you draw up to 12 cards and then discard down to 9.
3) Diplomat enters your hand.
4) Now you can react with Diplomat or any other copies of Diplomat or any other react-to-attack Reactions you drew as part of step 2.
LOOP)

Eventually you get out of the loop because you have only 4 cards in hand.

However, if this is the case, and my logic is good, Agora is fine and Token is fine.


Unfortunately while doing this research I found DXV saying that Stronghold's reaction is too weak to live on a $3 card and Stronghold is a $5. ARRGH.