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276

Variants and Fan Cards / Mixed bag of cards

« on: May 15, 2018, 09:14:02 am »

Here's a small collection of random cards I felt like sharing.


A very old idea, I don't think it has aged very well, especially after Empires in particular. An Event like Annex but not terrible seems like a better way to modify the Duchy pile now, or why not just include an extra pile and keep Duchies around? The top is still cute, although maybe it looks a little sad next to Shepherd these days.


Has anyone tried anything like this before? It seems like a simple classic thing to me, a nice solution to pulling things from the discard being so shuffle dependent. I've never tested it so I wouldn't be surprised if it's just not that interesting to play with.


So this is a more recent idea, kind of inspired by the interaction between Cursed Gold and Monastery where you "downgrade" a Copper into a Curse in exchange for playing the Cursed Gold and buying a better card. So this card downgrades something in exchange for a cheap expand. Again never played with this so wouldn't be surprised if it isn't very fun/interesting.


A Potion card, I think it's quite charming but perhaps the random nature of the cursing just isn't fun. This does skip past Curses though so they aren't quite so bad in games with this.


Urchin and Develop had a baby and it looks a little like Catapult! I'm weary that this is potentially busted if you can set up the targeted discard consistently and it's also totally untested. I would like to try this one out though if I get the chance, I like the idea of it and it's even quite thematic I think.



Big scary spider! It wraps things in web but they can get out after a shuffle or so, unless the spider finds the web wrapped prey first and eats it! (Webbing costs $3 not $0 so the spider can eat it). I've had the idea of a Spider card that webbed things spinning around for ages but never really got it to work nicely, I tried setting cards aside with tokens then realised I'd basically just made Yeti from Ice Age, using a mat and silly things like that was never satisfying. Then I realised I could just use the trash and that seemed good enough. It does mean that people can "steal" their opponent's cards with Webbing if both are playing with Spiders but that seems okay to me. What do people think?

277

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Card idea: Errand Boy

« on: May 13, 2018, 12:59:48 pm »

I remember I posted this ages ago which is a similar idea. I like the secret choice, that's how I'd do it now. I do think there's a good card or two to be made with this kind of start of game choice...

There were a few problems that I came across when thinking about those cards and I do think this runs into a few. One was that if you have the modes have wildly different functions then the decision of which to choose becomes interesting less often, as it starts to become obvious what effect the kingdom is missing - I think this falls into that problem. There will certainly be games where the decision is non-trivial but I feel like at least half the time it'll be pretty obvious what the best token is.
Another problem with this is that once you've made the decision the card is very bland, either Village, Market Square with no reaction or Poacher with no downside. We've all played many games featuring these cards before so it just isn't very exciting.
It can also be hard to balance this kind of thing, you need the options to all be roughly the same power so they all work at the same cost. This kind of fails there, 2 of the options are "strictly worse" versions of existing cards and the other is "strictly better" than an existing card.

I think Asper's suggestion of changing it to +2 cards discard 2 cards is a good idea as it does fix a few of these problems, although that with the +$1 token seems like quite a formidable opening buy so maybe that's no good either? Honestly it seems clear that on a cantrip +$1 is just more valuable than the other 2 options, like Market vs Bazaar vs activated Conspirator. 

278

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Asper's Cards

« on: May 10, 2018, 02:55:28 pm »

Yes and you have absolutely no reason to buy Junk Dealer when you're done with it, so even though $5 for a Village is overpriced it's still better than nothing.

279

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Asper's Cards

« on: May 10, 2018, 01:43:43 pm »

I think Clifftop Village is in a position where it could be quite a bit weaker and it would still be strong. I do think it can stand to be this powerful though, as a trashing+Village card it'll never dominate in a scripted way like e.g. Rebuild can, it's just a very efficient card imo. But some kind of nerf should make the game play more diverse and fun I think.

I don't think there's much disagreement about it being a strong card, but maybe it's also worth mentioning that trashing and village are quite synergistic which I do think is quite significant here.

280

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

« on: May 10, 2018, 10:10:35 am »

Sweet art! Will the rulebook have boxart on the front too?

I don't like the "it" wording on Stronghold though, I think it should follow Hermit's wording rather than Harbinger's.

281

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Asper's Cards

« on: May 09, 2018, 02:03:04 pm »

Hey!
That sounds like a fair assessment, it's kind of hard to say which on-gain looks like the best fit without playing any games with them. I do usually prefer an on-gain drawback to an on-play one though. I'd be up for some testing games in about a month or so when I'm not quite so busy with things if you're interested.

282

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Holunder's cards

« on: May 08, 2018, 07:27:14 pm »

Although I really like the idea of Gate, I'm not sure how it will work given that it seems to be too literally dependent upon the Kingdom. As in; while all card's are better or worse in different Kingdoms, Gate has an easy-to-see hard cap which can vary wildly from game to game.

The max could be as little as 4 in some Kingdoms, and up to 22 in others.

While other victory cards may have some Kingdoms that make their caps easier to reach; the only example I can think of with a changing hard cap like this is Fairgrounds; and other than Black Market, it has a pretty small range of value. *Edit* Technically Vineyard and Silk Road have a kingdom-dependent cap; but only if you consider the situations of buying out the Kingdom pretty much.

For fun, a Kingdom that lets you get all 22 different types in your deck (without needing Black Market). It was actually pretty hard to figure out.

You have Necromancer, but no way to get a Zombie into your deck!

283

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Seprix's Card Creation Emporium

« on: May 08, 2018, 01:09:54 pm »

Maybe Busted Alt-VP Victory-$7
2VP per two unique card types in your deck.

That's a great idea but I suggest 1VP per different type in your deck. As it stands it is cheaper than Province and providing more VPs. Even in Action dense decks it is not "costly" to keep or add a Treasure so the card always provides 6VPs with the option of adding / not trashing a Curse for some extra VPs.

Isn't 2VP per 2 types weaker than 1VP per type?

284

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Asper's Cards

« on: May 08, 2018, 11:48:50 am »

Was going to comment, but can’t seem to find Mountain village in the OP, what does it currently do?

He he ^^
I don't know what it is today... First I confuse Outpost with Lookout, and now I'm confusing my own Cliffside Village with a card that probably somebody else made...

Cliffside Village is a Village for 5$ that also allows you to trash a card. Sorry for this. I forgot my own card name ^^'

Shows that I haven't played Dominion in ages.

It's much worse when you do this while playing a game of Dominion!

So I looked back to when you first posted Cliffside Village (btw I love the idea of people throwing things off a cliff as trashing) it didn't seem to get much feedback apart from that it was "boring" (Simple? Boring? Depends on how you look at it?) I did notice that you proposed this as a potential fix:

Cliffside Village, 5$, Action
+1 Card
+1 Action
Choose one:
+1 Action;
Trash a card from your hand

Did you ever try this? I understand that it somewhat eliminates the charm of how simple the original is and on on-gain penalty would still preserve the simple on-play effect but it does seem like a fairly appealing change to me. With this version you'd have to be more careful about adding terminals to your deck early if you're planning on Cliffside being your only source of +Action so it makes for more interesting decisions? Or it forces you to add other Villages to your deck so you're not spending those gains on other cards like you could if you were using the original version, if that makes any sense?

285

Dominion General Discussion / Re: What is the best knight to inherit?

« on: April 26, 2018, 10:44:21 am »

Following Chase's logic wouldn't Martin still be the best Knight to Inherit? Because if you can Inherit Natalie there must be cost reduction available, so aside from Quarry it should be easy for Estates to cost $0 so each Sir Martin would represent 2 additional gains of Sir Martins. Or are we assuming that in addition to all this other stuff going on you can overdraw enough and have enough actions to gain and play all the Estates in one turn?

286

Dominion General Discussion / Re: What is the best knight to inherit?

« on: April 25, 2018, 07:42:18 pm »

You can't inherit Night cards, only Action cards.

287

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Neat card interactions that were useful in the game you found them in.

« on: April 24, 2018, 03:54:03 pm »

Pretty much none of these Hero-To-Gain-Philosopher's-Stone examples are useful interactions, except for the ones Chris listed, and then the first three of Gazbag (and I still don't think Stonemason works the vast majority of times).

You can overpay Potion if you weren't aware, Stonemason is probably the single easiest way to "clone" a Potion buy.

288

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Neat card interactions that were useful in the game you found them in.

« on: April 24, 2018, 02:09:14 pm »

ITT people post pedantic edge cases that aren't even remotely close to any reason interpretation of the word "cloning".

Cloning suggests gaining a second copy of a card in your possession or that you're just gaining. It doesn't mean just "gaining things"; that was crj's entire point to start with.

Outpost and Possession are fantastically awful examples of trying to edge case, too. At that point we're just saying "Council room can clone Scrying pool because you MIGHT draw a potion and a silver to use that +buy with!!"

Those were supposed to be examples of gaining things though, not "cloning". And if you think Stonemason with Potion cards is an edgecase I have some news for you! Outpost is also a great way to gain more Potion cards without adding an extra Potion to your deck too, Council Room is nothing like that? I mean comparing an opponent's Council Room to a free Alchemist might be accurate I suppose?

I thought the  at the end would be a hint that it was a maybe a bit of a tongue-in-cheek post?

289

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Neat card interactions that were useful in the game you found them in.

« on: April 24, 2018, 01:33:21 pm »

But there's nothing special about Potion here. It can also gain King's Courts or Grand Markets.

In one respect, it's at least slightly special. If a card's cost is purely monetary, then Talisman or Duplicate can help you get a lot of copies of it, especially if cost reduction is available. But no amount of cost reduction will let you use Talisman/Duplicate on potion-cost or debt-cost cards: cloning those remains the exclusive preserve of Changeling.

Disciple can also "clone" copies of potion/debt cost cards, lot's of things can gain them but I'm not sure what you're classifying cloning as meaning exactly.

“Lots of things” is a stretch. It’s pretty much just Lurker, Disciple, and Changeling.

Stonemason, Pilgrimage, Squire can gain Pool/Familiar, Develop if you're playing a very Alchemy heavy game, if you're counting extra turns then Outpost and Possession sort of, most Remodel variants can technically gain them, opponent Ambassadoring Transmutes. That's lots of things to me, I mean none of these are even much of a stretch  .

290

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Neat card interactions that were useful in the game you found them in.

« on: April 24, 2018, 12:29:47 pm »

But there's nothing special about Potion here. It can also gain King's Courts or Grand Markets.

In one respect, it's at least slightly special. If a card's cost is purely monetary, then Talisman or Duplicate can help you get a lot of copies of it, especially if cost reduction is available. But no amount of cost reduction will let you use Talisman/Duplicate on potion-cost or debt-cost cards: cloning those remains the exclusive preserve of Changeling.

Disciple can also "clone" copies of potion/debt cost cards, lot's of things can gain them but I'm not sure what you're classifying cloning as meaning exactly.

291

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Revolution

« on: April 24, 2018, 09:19:09 am »

Seems like good fan cards aren't getting much attention at the moment, I'll try and do my bit to fix that I guess...

Advancing Village: That new one did look busted, I agree with going back to the other one.

Furnace: This cards seems like Remake level strong to me, even ignoring the exhaust to play it immediately mechanic. Personally I don't think cards that can trash 2 or more cards at once and give economy at the same time should cost less than $5. It's not like broken trashers are particularly uncommon among the official cards though so maybe it isn't a problem. I do think that the exhaust to play immediately mechanic isn't the best fit for a $4 cards though, just because if you get it on turn 1 the exhaust doesn't do anything because you aren't playing any actions turn 2 regardless. 

Canal: I like this, $6 seems like a good cost for it. It's still probably broken half the time because cost reduction, but at least you can't accidentally buy out the Provs in one turn like with Bridge/Troll. This is thronable, I assume the wording is annoying as an in-play effect or something?

Purist: Good change, 4 actions seemed bonkers on this.

Components: Seems hard to trigger considering it adds 2 Silvers to your deck, I guess that balances being able to open with 2? Are Spinning Mule and Steam Engine in the OP the other machines? Steam Engine might have tracking problems? Maybe not? Patent and Steam Engine both seem much stronger than Spinning Mule to me, I guess that's fine.

Foreign Art: Wow seems really strong, in an engine this diverting itself is basically a bonus because you want to draw it at the end of the turn. Diverting other things does make this less good in earlier parts of the game but I'm not sure it matters all that much considering how good this is as endgame payload? Less good in money, there the diverting actually matters. Insane engine payload though, should probably just be +$3 to be honest.

Innovator: So individually these two effects are Watchtower and Secret Chamber. Two weak effects, is being able to exhaust for both really enough to make this worth $5? I know there's some self synergy there but I think this is really weak and could probably cost $3?

292

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Chase's non randomized sets of 10

« on: April 23, 2018, 11:20:21 am »

If the first one is using a Bane shouldn't it be a set of 11??

293

Dominion General Discussion / Re: A quick Temple tip

« on: April 19, 2018, 01:12:28 pm »

Does any mathsy person know what would happen if I tried to divide by Potion?

Simple: ($6 + 2P)/P = 2 with remainder $6. In other words, if you have $6 and 2 Potions, you can buy 2 Transmutes and still have $6 leftover.

Except my point is that you also need the buys: ($6 + 2P + 1 buy)/(P + buy) = 1 with remainder $6 + P. In other words, if you have $6 and 2 Potions, but only 1 buy, you can only buy one Transmute.

But on a coins-provided-per-cost basis how does Philosophers Stone compare to Silver??

294

Dominion General Discussion / Re: A quick Temple tip

« on: April 19, 2018, 12:22:24 pm »

Does any mathsy person know what would happen if I tried to divide by Potion?

295

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Trade

« on: April 18, 2018, 09:08:24 am »

So I've seen this communal mat idea come up a few times before and I don't think I've ever really seen a design that couldn't just work by using the trash. Let's look at a couple of official cards that interact with the trash, Forager and Lurker. Forager could be a trade mat card "put a treasure from your hand onto the trade mat. +$1 per differently named treasure on the trade mat." and Lurker "put an action from the supply onto the trade mat, or gain an action from the trade mat." the only real functional difference is how the cards interact with other cards, Dominion is all about how the cards interact with each other so I don't really see how cutting these cards off from all the interactions with old cards really adds anything.

Lets have a look at your cards...

Canal: I think this is prime example of what I'm trying to get at. This card basically reads "Trash a card from your hand. While this is in play, when you gain a card from the supply you may gain a cheaper card from the trash." The thing with this one is that the bottom part wants desirable cards to get onto the trade mat, but the top part will just be used to clear out Estates and Coppers, so this relies on other trade mat cards to have full functionality. It might work okay in trade mat heavy games (looking at the other 2 trade mat cards it unfortunately doesn't) but if it's the only trade mat card it doesn't work, if it used the trash instead it can still work with all the trade mat cards (assuming they're changed to use the trash too) and all of a sudden it will interact nicely with at least 1 card from every expansion as well so the below the line part will actually be relevant a decent amount of the time.

Balance and power-level wise I think this is clearly a little too good at $3. I think this compares favourably to Moneylender and Sacrifice even ignoring the when in-play part of the card. I'd like to see this at $4 at least, although I think it needs a built in way to get nice things into the trash/mat.

Charlatan: I don't really understand the thought behind this one... I think Canal has a lot of problems at the moment, but I can at least see the thought behind it and what you were going for (I actually think a Haggler from the trash could be a great card if it's done right), this I just can't see what you were thinking. My best guess is in games with this and Canal then Canal can put Curses onto the mat for this to give out after the Curse pile empties? Why not just make a card that can give out Curses from the trash?

Witch is a really strong attack, Urchin is weak-negligible, so you're going to give out the Curse at every opportunity making the whole trade mat part of the card quite baffling. In a 2 player game saving the Curse on the mat is basically just giving your opponent a chance to give out the curse, because this can only ever add 1 and remove 1 Curse from the mat. In a 3+ player game this just doesn't work, it gives out the Curse to the player to your left and everyone else just has to discard. Non-symmetrical attacks are a pretty big no-go in Dominion, especially when they're this unbalanced. You can save the Curse up so you can play a 2nd Charlatan to give out 1 Curse to each opponent I guess? That's the only time I can see you not just giving the Curse out straight away. As well as all this the card is also overpowered, +1 Action with a Curse attack is too good at $4 and this also continues to attack once the Curses run out.

Forgery: Okay, this one I can see not wanting to interact with the trash, then it basically becomes Necromancer, but then why does it interact with the other trade mat cards? There are only 2 other trade mat cards to look at right now, but Charlatan has no interaction with this and Canal just snipes all of the cards this puts on the mat and makes this quickly become useless (and the game probably revolves around who hits $5 with Canal first to take the best card off the mat for free). I think it's very hard to find an effect that couldn't work with the trash but shouldn't just be its own thing.

This one is also very overpowered, compare to Band of Misfits. Band will usually have fewer than 7 cards to choose from, it uses cards in the supply so it can't provide exclusive effects like this can and it can't play a card if the supply pile empties. It also costs $5, because you have to pay a premium for this kind of versatility.

296

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Antiquity (WIP! Please help!)

« on: April 18, 2018, 03:54:07 am »

I need to playtest this, but here's an update that's nastier in a lot of ways:

Snake Charmer - Action - Attack - $5
+1 Card
+1 Action
You may trash a card from your hand. If you trashed two or more cards this turn, gain a Gold.

Each other player trashes an Action card from his or her hand or gains a Curse.

A cantrip trasher and curser in one card is crazy strong. Cantrip trashing is probably already a $5 (it might not have the benefits of Junk Dealer and Upgrade but it is not mandatory which might be useful in the endgame). The gold gaining is more or less ignorable but the attack is basically Familiar.
Of course you could argue that the card defends against itself but it might just come down to a luckfest: whoever gets Snake Charmer first will more or less win the game. The only other card that trashes and junks at the same time, Ambassador, is cheaper.

Wow yeah this is busted! The Gold gaining is also super relevant because trashing aggressively and using a Gold gainer to build economy is generally when Gold gainers are at their best (look at things like Donate+Market Square/Windfall as the most extreme examples of this). So this card basically trashes, builds economy and attacks all at once and is a cantrip so it's easy to spam.

Also Catapult trashes and junks at the same time  . (I know it's different because you have to trash expensive things.) I guess Vampire/Bat kind of does that too sometimes, but yeah...

297

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Which cards are the most difficult to implement in digital format?

« on: April 11, 2018, 06:49:04 pm »

Have you ever tried playing with [Black Market] IRL?

I have not. I've seed it played in videos. It looks... cumbersome but reasonably straightforward. I can see tracking issues IRL: you have to remember how much of your money you've spent. What am I missing? Or is your point just that: that it's cumbersome?

I can see myself coding up something that does Base and Intrigue, and then being surprised to learn that treasures can be played in your action phase—and even more, that you can buy something in your action phase. But your claim wasn't about that, so... I'm still not seeing the thing that should make my head explode?

I think they're just talking about setting up the Black Market deck being a pain.

298

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: You may turn your journey token over...

« on: April 09, 2018, 04:47:28 pm »

Something else to think about is that it's generally better to have one big turn than two middle sized turns. That's why cards like Giant or Ranger are better than their averages.

In the case of a payload card like Giant I agree as you can use it to get Provinces.
In the case of a terminal draw card like Ranger I disagree; in a deck-drawing engine you want 1 or 2 pairs of Rangers and it wouldn't matter if Ranger alternated between drawing 2 and 3 cards instead of 0 and 5 instead. The former can be even better as it makes your engine more consistent.
Half-Market is probably somewhere between those two cases.

Front loading all of the draw to the first Ranger is great for consistency. It's similar to start of the turn duration draw like that. You draw the name number of cards but don't need to find the 2nd Ranger within the first 3 and it works really nicely alongside other draw cards too because you can wait until the end of the tun to play the 2nd Ranger so you don't need to find as many villages at the start.

I'd price blinking castle at $3 to begin with, I think it'd be quite strong there so maybe it'd be better at $4. $2 is definitely too low though because this gives +buy so that'd make them too easy to pick up. Something that is kind of lost talking about the net market effect of this is that if you have an alternating pair of these you can set this up to give +2 Actions on the first play, so you're getting a "phantom" village you can use to play your draw during the turn.

299

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018

« on: April 07, 2018, 12:30:39 pm »

Needs updating:
Prosperity

What kind of updates does Prosperity need?

Prosperity is a pretty weird expansion, it's the king of payload with Goons and Kings Court and what have you but it's quite lacking in draw and trashing, especially early game.
Watchtower, Rabble, activated Cities and Kings Court is the only draw in the entire expansion! City and Kings Court only happen later in the game and Watchtower is arguably worse draw than Moat, Rabble isn't even that great either, pretty average. Compare this to base, which has Moat, Smithy, Council Room, Laboratory, Library and Witch.

The trashing cards in Prosperity are all quite awkward too, for varying reasons. Trade Route is of the weakest trashers in the game, that's fine, something has to be, but it has this interesting mat and Coin token mechanic which is kind of squandered on such a rarely used card and means nothing else can put Coin tokens on piles. Loan is pretty strong, but it has the sad trait of being unpopular with a lot of players and not particularly loved by anyone either. It also doesn't play well will the special treasures that are a main theme of Prosperity. Bishop doesn't count because it trashes for your opponent just as much as it does for you. Mint, Forge and Expand are all pretty good, but a little awkward because of their high cost and force you to build first, trash later. That isn't a problem, there aren't really that many cards in game like that, but having 3/5 of the trashers in the set play like that is a little awkward - compounded somewhat by the lacking draw!

Prosperity also has a fair few dud cards, not as bad as Scout or anything but it takes a pretty sad kingdom for Royal Seal or Venture to get any play. Counting House is kind of in a Coppersmith situation, Contraband is fine these days, it plays well with Events and the 2nd editions removed a lot of duds from the card pool so there tends to be more options in modern kingdoms, but if you don't have the newer expansions/2nd editions this might not see much play. I don't think too many people would be upset if Mountebank was cut for a slightly less ridiculous attack either.

I think Prosperity is a fine expansion overall, but there are certainly improvements that could be made.

300

Let's Discuss ... / Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Transmogrify

« on: April 07, 2018, 06:33:14 am »

Transmogrify is the original Salt the Earth.

Yes, I often like to buy Transmogrify early, stack them up and mill the provinces once I've got enough of a lead to guarantee a win.

That doesn't work against a competent opponent.

Neither does Salt the Earth!