Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

551

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Neat and potentially useful card interactions

« on: December 13, 2017, 04:32:01 pm »

To carry on with the Shepherd theme:

Shepherd + Apothecary

Apothecary struggles with green cards and Shepherd struggles with Coppers, quite a nice skeleton for an engine. Apothecary can even set up your next turn with a Shepherd and some greens, retaining value even if you trash your Coppers.

552

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Ice Age

« on: December 13, 2017, 03:47:27 pm »

Well I have some free time so I guess I'll address a few things. Long post incoming!

Mountain village- The 5 ice tokens change seems to be focused on the coin ability giving it more self sustain and maybe to nerf buying multiple copies. Mountain village's bazaar effect seems most useful when spammed. However I can see 5 ice tokens making this card frustrating to buy when it's not early game.

So Mountain Village is a village instead of say some kind of payload card for a reason, the idea is that you have to buy them earlier than you would normally buy a village as this hopefully creates a unique and interesting play experience. The reward for having a frozen card then has the function of making them not so sad to buy later on too. With just 3 tokens it wasn't really delayed at all at the time you would usually consider buying a village so I upped the number of tokens to try and fix it. This also had the nice added effect of making the Coin token easier to get.

Pioneer- Seems like a worse peddler, since you are limited to 7 copper(without gaining more) really makes this card not that spamable which is the best use of peddler. Making this compete with cards like market and bazaar which is really rough. The free coin token is nice for later turns and for on gain effects but is a overall weird choice for a on gain bonus for me.

I mean there's only 10 in the pile y'know, getting 7 Pioneers seems rare. It's significantly better than Peddler until you trash Coppers - it's more like an Apothecary-lite, drawing the Coppers increases your handsize which is often important and increases cycling which is very important. It also removes Coppers from your deck so your other draw can pick up better cards. It's an early-mid game accelerator where as Peddler is a mid-late game payload card.

Sleigh- This is such a strong early game card. Not a huge fan of the RNG factor. Seems a little bit similar to Chariot Race design except Sleigh works better with lower cost cards and is more controllable RNG. Sleight might be too good for 3.

It's pretty much a worse Wishing Well as an opening, I don't really understand the RNG factor comment either. It seems worse than Wishing Well to me in general but I have been called Luckbag on numerous occasions, so maybe Wishing Well is worse for other people.

Barbarian- I think it's attack is too dependent on having other coin token gainers. 4 coin tokens is rough to get in one turn with just this card, and keeping 3 coin tokens turn to turn to trigger this attack seems weak.

The trick is that "+$1 take a Coin token" is decent anyway, probably a reasonable $3 cost. The attack is painful but can be hard to set up - kinda like Legionary.

Cargo Ship- Seems much slower and weaker than Glacier and looks weaker than remodel to me. Maybe I am missing something.

It has the magic words "trash a card" although I might try this at $4. I suspect that's too good in the opening though, maybe a bonus for trashing Coppers would be better.

Okay now onto trivalknot:

The new cards are great.  I think it goes to show that if you can come up with the brilliant ice token mechanic, you can also come up with good cards that don't use it.

Campsite - Sounds like a very good village, competitive with Port or Worker's Village.  I don't think $2 or $3 makes a big difference.  Since the central concept is "a village that topdecks itself" rather than "village that makes you sacrifice $2", you could experiment with other conditions.  Like, what if it's a village that behaves just like Treasury.  Or maybe it topdecks itself only if you don't buy actions LOL.

Thanks for the kind words 

Campsite is quite strong, but $2 is a real cost so it isn't an automatic decision, or maybe it is and I've been playing it wrong! It also rewards deck tracking but not in an annoying way in my opinion, which I enjoy but maybe other people don't? It's certainly got nothing on Minstrel or Port for sure though.

Pioneer - I think this looks too strong to cost $4, especially with the on-gain bonus.  My main complaint about this is it seems a lot slower than Peddler, without being sufficiently different to justify it.

Ah I meant $4 without the Coin token, I didn't make that clear but yeah I figured it would be on the high end of $4's - not Ironmonger level but still very good, that's why I put it at $5 with the Coin token thing. Hmmm it's certainly not as bad in that regard as Hunting Party is compared to Lab, but Hunting Party is miserable IRL so I'll have to think on it. I won't repeat myself about the Peddler comparison.

Sleigh - It's certainly very good in the early game, when most of your deck is copper.  And if you get 6+, it seems pretty strong, maybe on par with Herald.  I'm a bit worried that it would lead to a monolithic strategy--Herald wants to add terminal actions, but this card doesn't want you to add expensive cards.

At the end of the day it's still just a conditional Lab so it'll never be a (good) strategy by itself.

Hunter - Funny thing about this is that you have to decide whether to discard an action or treasure before drawing 2 cards.  Looks fairly strong even with just the victory card part.

I didn't think of that actually... would people like it more if the victory part was first? The victory part is where a lot of the strength comes from, it would be too similar to Shepherd without the other stuff though - I made this before Shepherd was released mind.

Barbarian - This doesn't look that strong, but here you say it's stronger than it looks.  Well color me surprised.  It looks worse than Butcher, but then Butcher is amazeballs, and Tragic Hero demonstrates that if you make a nerfed version of an amazing card it can come out pretty decent.  The attack could hurt, but opponents can see it coming a long ways, and can prepare for it by buying provinces.

Worse than the best $5 in dominion is a fine place to be . Tragic Hero is a really strong Gold gainer guys - comparing it to Margrave is a mistake (why am I derailing my own topic?) If I make my opponent buy Provinces prematurely then I'm very happy, Barbarian did his job!

Okay I got sidetracked at the end there, but thanks for the feedback!

553

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Ice Age

« on: December 12, 2017, 08:46:55 pm »

I actually think it looks very strong when you have Victory cards; Lab + Fugitive is a pretty good deal, with some flexibility to boot.

Yeah the Victory is the key, without it it's a terrible Plaza thing.


I forgot about this one! This started out as a Coin token Salvager... that was outrageous so now it gives you a steady stream of tokens. Durations that stay out multiple turns are cool so that's great.

554

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Ice Age

« on: December 12, 2017, 04:06:11 pm »

Snowy mountain (Top of stack)-
Cost - 4
Type - Action
Effect - +2 Card +1 Action When you play this card set it aside and put two Ice tokens on it for each snowy mountain set aside.

I like the idea of an Ice Token card setting itself aside each play, but the split pile thing doesn't appeal to me.

I do have one in the file but it's action isn't particularly inspiring. I think Citadel might evolve into something using this mechanic though.
Thanks for the comments loneXolf, although  think some of your evaluations are way off . It's still good to know what is popular though so I'm taking everything on board.

Anyway here's some updates:

5 tokens means that if you get this turn 1 or 2 it'll miss the first 2 shuffles and also makes the Coin token slightly easier to trigger. I like that this is a village that you have to get earlier than you want, that makes it interesting to me but I'm a bit worried it won't be popular?


This was a bit too good. 6 tokens means this if you're player 1 and play this turn 3 the curse will enter your opponents deck on their turn 8. That seems more reasonable to me?

Venturer is scrapped for now because it's strange and doesn't seem popular, which isn't a winning combination.

Now for some new things- a few Coin token and off theme cards:


I like self scheming cards and Walled Village always missed the mark for me as the scheming village. $2 might not be enough so I'll have to try it at $3 if that's too good. Or make it so you have to pay for each Campsite individually perhaps, but that might need weird wording.


This seems like a well balanced simple thing, Pioneers are super-settlers right? It would probably be fine at $4, although a strong opening for sure. This seems like a nice on-gain ability that doesn't exist because overpay was in the only Coin token set (I assume).


One of those things that seemed simple in my head but was a bit of a nightmare to word on a card. Could this cost $2? The warning bar on the bottom of the art amuses me, so it's staying!


This is stronger then it looks, I promise! It's really quite flexible, although it's still not that strong maybe it should give +2 actions when you discard.


Reasonably sized Bandit repost because nobody talked about it yet.

555

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Ice Age

« on: December 11, 2017, 12:04:38 pm »

Uh, by the way, did you know about Snow Witch from Co0kieL0rd's and my Seasons expansion? It's based on the same Japanese folklore as your Snow Hag and just like it, is a cheaper Witch with delayed Cursing (though in a different way).

...

I guess great minds think alike

Yeah I'd already designed and named Snow Hag, but I saw Snow Witch before I mocked it up. I made sure to use different art, even though yours clearly has the best art out there . I definitely like yours better, although mine still needs lots more testing and tweaking so hopefully it'll end up in a similar place.

I actually like the ice token mechanic a lot and it has the advantage you don't have to have that board. Moving the token each turn can be annoying. If you're just talking about art, I like yours, too. If I had known how dark the art we went for would look on a card, we might have decided for something else.

Hum... Considering Seasons is also based on turns instead of shuffles, perhaps ice tokens are fine as they are, after all. For cards like Snow Hag, you'd assume that getting the cards in the same shuffle wouldn't make much of a difference, either way, as then you'd already have to have a very bloated deck.

I was talking about card and art!

I meant to say a few words on the turns vs shuffles discussion actually. The main argument against turns is that if you don't shuffle while a card is frozen then it doesn't do anything, I don't think this is bad though - it can potentially make you reevaluate how good fast cycling/trashing is and change how you approach a board.

On the other hand, in order to have cards balanced properly if I change tokens to remove on shuffles then a lot of them will have to just have 1 or 2 tokens as missing 3 shuffles is really slow (especially in sloggier games) or have stronger effects to compensate. But what this means is that the cards would be stronger when you're going through your deck faster and if you're drawing deck every turn the the tokens might not matter at all, so it doesn't actually fix that problem in practice.

I like that having it be based on turns means the cards are weaker in stronger decks and stronger in weaker decks, because most cards are the other way around.

556

Dominion General Discussion / Re: How to Win Less...

« on: December 11, 2017, 11:59:48 am »

swiped away all of the broken cards

It had two or three terminals, including Bridge Troll and Artisan.
Forager and Bonfire to trash down to practically nothing

I think you missed a few, although maybe I just have a lax definition of broken...

557

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Ice Age

« on: December 11, 2017, 09:52:16 am »

Uh, by the way, did you know about Snow Witch from Co0kieL0rd's and my Seasons expansion? It's based on the same Japanese folklore as your Snow Hag and just like it, is a cheaper Witch with delayed Cursing (though in a different way).



I guess great minds think alike

Yeah I'd already designed and named Snow Hag, but I saw Snow Witch before I mocked it up. I made sure to use different art, even though yours clearly has the best art out there . I definitely like yours better, although mine still needs lots more testing and tweaking so hopefully it'll end up in a similar place.

558

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Ice Age

« on: December 10, 2017, 03:33:25 pm »

Look everyone here's a new card! I made it extra big this time because there's only one. I did have some updates on some of the Ice token cards as well but I might have accidentally deleted them and have to mock them up again.
At first this was supposed to be an attack where you pay Coin tokens to make it better, but that was useless on it's own and broken with other Coin token cards. So now you just have to reach a threshold and it turns on the attack. I think this is a bit stronger than it looks as people generally underrate terminal Silvers (Bard and Tormentor spring to mind) and its bonus is quite a bit better than +$2, the Coin token really makes a difference.

I thought a picture would be easy to find for this but none of them had the right dimensions, I'm not particularly happy with this one but oh well.

559

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Neat and potentially useful card interactions

« on: December 09, 2017, 01:06:20 pm »

Kinda obvious but Patrol is really nice in Shepherd games - the Pasture makes Patrol's scout part a bit better and Shepherd discards victories so your Patrols can suck them back up.

560

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Ice Age

« on: December 06, 2017, 06:23:22 pm »

Okay so I was thinking Frozen Cache can be easily turned into an Event and no current Events use Coin tokens or Ice tokens, so there should be enough design space for this expansion to have some Events. So here's an untested first draft idea I had of a new typoe of Event.

Escalating Events

So an idea I've seen pop up a few times is Traveller cards with some kind of condition that has to be reached in order to exchange. This is a cool idea, but I'm not a huge fan of it because Travellers are super high variance anyway - a Traveller missing the shuffle or Champion/Teacher being at the bottom of a shuffle can often decide a game and adding more stipulations to them compounds this problem. Events don't have this problem so much because you don't have to line up a specific card in your deck with whatever condition. Here is a quick example set of Events I cobbled together in about 20 minutes while watching TV - I'm not particularly thrilled with them but what do you think of the idea?







So the idea here is that at first you can only buy Fishing and meeting the condition "escalates" and lets you buy Tracking and then once you've tracked you can go Big Game Hunting - this would have to be tracked either with player tokens on the Event cards or by giving each player their own Event cards and you take the next step when you escalate.
On the Events themselves I like Tracking and it might work as the $2, Fishing is probably too easy to trigger with coppers and doesn't do enough and Big Game Hunting probably wants to be more generous because you have to unlock it.

561

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Ice Age

« on: December 05, 2017, 01:14:09 pm »

I might try removing an Ice Token each shuffle instead of every turn to smooth out the effect. It will make deck size more of a factor, but I think will generally solve more headaches in terms of card power and component count.

Define "shuffle". If you have one card in your discard pile and then have to draw/reveal/etc., is that a "shuffle"? What if you have zero cards?

Yeah I did think of tying them to shuffles but it doesn't really get rid of the problems, it just changes the problems. It isn't obvious in cases like this whether you've shuffled. It can also lead to problems when you draw your deck because you can gain and draw mid-turn and potentially trigger multiple shuffles in one turn which seems a bit against the spirit of the idea. It's also much easier to forget as shuffles can trigger at many different times during your turn and even during your opponents turn. So I'd say it introduces more problems than it fixes.

The idea with Venturer is that it's interesting by itself, with Coppers like a time bomb ticking down and Venturer speeding up the count and even more interesting with other Ice token cards. Kinda like how Butcher is interesting by itself and is even better with other Coin token cards.

I'm going to try a Yeti that reveals until it finds an action and Freezes that for 3 tokens. The increased cycling of the opponents deck should make them shuffle a bit more often which will hopefully make the attack hurt more.

Mountain Village, or the card that freezes itself when you gain it which is the main concept here (probably won't look like Mountain Village in the end!) wants to cost $2 so you can always open with it I feel. So the thing to tweak would be Ice token numbers or weaken the effect in a different way.  Swapping the Coin token and the +1 Card might make it a bit different to regular villages.

562

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Empires cards I still don't get

« on: December 05, 2017, 11:25:12 am »

Hmmmmm... Well the fact that you can buy cards for a pileout and then buy Triumph for $0 or buy 2 Triumphs when you have $5 is one of the best things about it, so now I disagree with you even more!

This is getting tiresome. If you really think I was saying that you should avoid debt on your last turn, no wonder you disagree. I just replied to Chris Is Me, explaining that I'm not saying that I don't see uses for Triumph at all, but that I'm talking about specific situations. That's all I've been saying this whole thread, except for the original post.

See here. Chappy7 then argues against that post.
See here. Quote: "It's exactly this kind of situation that I don't get, when you only gain a few cards and then buy Triumph midgame."

I get that people are busy with their lives and don't want to invest a lot of time going back and seeing what someone is actually saying on a message board beyond the very last post, but that kind of means you're wasting that person's time instead (and everybody else's, posting pointless arguments.)

I've reread all of my posts and they seem reasonable enough to me, I'm sorry if you feel like I've wasted your time but if you didn't want to discuss this then I just don't get why you posted the topic to a discussion forum in the first place. You mentioned my name in the post so I assumed you would appreciate some further input, I won't involve myself next time.

Obviously the pileout example was a bit extreme, but my point still stands, what you said in the part I quoted was saying that it was only good if you don't let debt carry over, which is silly. If that isn't what you meant then we have no disagreement there, no problem.

563

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Empires cards I still don't get

« on: December 05, 2017, 05:13:01 am »

Also you seem to saying that having the option to buy it with less than $5 isn't good because the debt carries over or something, but giving the option to do that is good regardless of whether it's the correct thing to do in a given situation.

I was totally not saying that having the option to do something is bad. I was totally saying that it's usually bad to do it, so the fact that you have that option is only marginally relevant.

So Triumph is only good if you gained 2 cards and you have $5 but not $8. With less than $5, it's a judgment call.

Hmmmmm... Well the fact that you can buy cards for a pileout and then buy Triumph for $0 or buy 2 Triumphs when you have $5 is one of the best things about it, so now I disagree with you even more!

564

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Ice Age

« on: December 04, 2017, 09:23:10 pm »

Oh wow this is much more well received so far than I anticipated!

I think the idea of Ice tokens is very cool. And I like a lot of the card concepts. I do think that instead of having 11 cards that use them, you'd be better served focusing on 5 or 6 of the simplest and best ones.

I agree with this, but first I'm going to have to figure out what the best ones are! I currently only have max 5 games with each of these cards so a lot more testing is needed.

Snow Witch: I like the idea of a frozen curser and I think you can take it 2 ways. The first is to have a cheap curser like this because the first few shuffles go quickly, so the delay on the curse is going to matter the most if you're playing this turn 3/4. The second is to make it more expensive or have some kind of condition so it only triggers late in the game and have the focus be more on a curse that is hard to trash so the attack is more about the - VP. I agree that giving this +2 cards is probably too close to Witch though, it was one of the first Ice token cards I came up with so I was trying to keep it simple. One thought I had was to give this the Venturer fast thaw thing, so it makes the Curses your opponent gives you thaw faster and then increase the tokens to 4 or 5. I also like the idea of a curser that "levels up" like City when a pile runs out, I think the original Young Witch did that? So maybe this could do something with that.

Yeti: The first version of this worked on Coppers, which was obviously silly but yeah this one is a bit similar to Giant. I have a different handsize attack in this expansion (I'll post some more cards in a few days probably) which I'm quite fond of, so I'll try to think of a better trashing attack for this first.

Venturer: Yes this should say "each" thanks for pointing that out Jimmmmm! Also you give me too much credit, moving Ice tokens around like that was not something I had thought of, I might have to steal that idea! Maybe Expedition Party would be a better name? Is Venturer even a word? I've only played this in Ice token heavy kingdoms so far so I need more of an idea how it performs on its own.

Ice Cave: So originally this was a cantrip, that was silly so I made it a Woodcutter but yeah increasing the tokens to 2 is a better starting place now that it's terminal.

Frozen Cache is a dud, but I thought it was cute so I thought I'd post it anyway. I do like Accatitippi's idea of making this an event though, but then I'd have to think up at least 9 other events for this set, so if I decide to do events then this could return in event form. I also blame Disney for making art for this so hard to find!

Frost Spirit: I for some reason totally blanked that this can also "trash" Provinces and the like. Hmm well it's not like broken trashers are a new thing to dominion so I'll leave this as is for now, it can specify non-Province or have a cost limit or something if that's a problem.

Citadel: This is the newest card here, it's just a simple card I had that I stuck the Ice token thing onto as a minor downside so it occasionally misses shuffles. It will probably be cut yeah.

Thanks for all the great feedback so far!

565

Variants and Fan Cards / Dominion: Ice Age

« on: December 04, 2017, 04:30:07 pm »

Dominion: Ice Age is a homemade Dominion expansion. I am designing it as if it were an official expansion and so am limited to a few featured mechanics. Ice Age features 2 main mechanics, Ice tokens which strand cards out of your deck for a number of turns and Reserves, some which also strand cards out of your deck.

Ice Tokens

A number of cards in the set involve setting aside cards and putting a number of Ice tokens on them, referred to as "freezing" them. At the start of your turn you remove 1 Ice token from each card you own that is frozen with Ice tokens on it and when the last token is removed you put the card into your discard pile.

Snow Hag

This was one of the first and most obvious concepts - a cheap Witch but the Curses are delayed. This means that the junk will take longer to enter the opponents deck, but if the game ends before all the tokens are removed then your opponent won't have a chance to trash the curse, which could be interesting.
Edit: Changed from 3 to 6 tokens.

Yeti

This one needs to fixed up, but the concept is there.

Frost Spirit

Originally a cantrip, now changed to +2 cards. The cantrip version was far too efficient as an early game thinner and a late game Province setter asider. Hopefully making it terminal makes it harder to keep on top of icing things, we'll have to see. Masquerade is a crazy card, so I wouldn't be surprised if this follows suit. Province setting aside probably needs to be fixed, but it kind of needs to be able to set aside Estates so might be an ugly fix, unfortunately.

Crystal Ball

A Contrabandy thing, it delays your good cards and topdecks the Victories, ouch! Needs a new name now...

Nomad

A simple +Buy card with Ice tokens, referencing Nomad Camp.

Frigid Village

Replacement foe Mountain Village and pretty much the same concept. I know that Lost City for $2 seems crazy good, but Encampment does it and these take a year to enter your deck.

Glacier

I'm still keen on a Victory that starts off frozen, but no more Coffers so I have these variations. Any thoughts?

Igloo:

 I'm not sure about this one, it's seemed okay in playtest games but it still feels off for some reason. What do people think?

Reserves

Mountain Outpost

A cheap Smithy makes a future turn worse if you want it back.

Wanderer

I thought a Reserve that costed an Action to call would be potentially interesting, this plays itself from the Tavern, I think that's fine, other wording would be comparatively convoluted. The actual effect of the card was Inspired by Asper's Road, which I think is an awesome card idea.

Reclaim

Why isn't there a Reserve that looks through the discard? That seems like one of those low-hanging fruits that you have to do. The set needed a remodel variant and after many attempts I settled on this.

Bastion

Not actually a Reserve but uses the Tavern mat so it's in this section. Everybody likes action-victories so let's hope this works out!

Spelunkers

A simpler reserve and this sets Gold gainer, has nice synergy with Wanderer.

Sanctum

I've really enjoyed this in playtesting, it's terminal and a bit awkward so it's been good at $2.

Periapt

This actually seems pretty fun, it might have to cost $3 because stacking a bunch up is pretty easy.

Fishing Boat:

An attempt at a spin on Minion. You get both the $ and the draw, and the benefit of reserves, but there's no attack and the numbers are lower.

Outcast:

I think this is pretty cool, either getting stranded on your Tavern mat or getting a bigger effect but losing it forever.

Warship:

Cantrip Militia that's hard to get back. Getting attacked by an opponent's Warship makes it easier to get yours back. I think this might make it a bit too automatic so I'll be trying some new handsize attacks. I also probably have too many reserves and could do with some more simpler off-theme cards.

Off theme cards

Cabin:

Cabin is back with a brand new effect. I had the idea of terminal draw that gives you a bonus if it's played terminally, the worry of course is making a big money beast that is lacklustre in engines. Hunting Grounds sucks, even for big money and I don't think +Buys improves it too much, +Buys also gives this a reason to be played terminally in an engine so I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Hillside Village:

This a simple village to replace Campsite, also similar to Sleigh. I originally had this alternate between Village and Peddler but that basically cut the amount of village you got from this pile in half, which isn't particularly fun. It might be a little strong in this form, although probably still not up to minstrel and Port.

Hunter

Young Witch was cool so let's try a friendly version. YW gets weaker as the Bane gets better, but Hunter gets stronger as the Prey gets better. The actual card is a $5 Fugitive, but when you draw one with the Prey it becomes a Lost City! The Prey costs $5 so that getting a good Hunter:Prey ratio becomes a little more tricky, hopefully leading to interesting decisions.

Scarecrow:

A Candlestick maker variant with a weak Moat reaction, I think that's kind of thematic for a Scarecrow, only the weaklings are fooled! It works pretty well in this expansion because of the two cheap attacks.

Scrounger

This is from that bunch of random cards I posted, but with updated Mountain Village wording and nice snowy art. I needed another $5 smithy and this seems cool to me. Adds to a small discard pile mini-theme with Reclaim which is nice.

Outtakes

Cold Storage

A Workshop variant that can gain $5's, but you have to wait a bit before you get them. Could be brought back, didn't seem too exciting.

Frozen Cache

Boring, could be revisited as an Event if I ever get around to deciding whether this set should have Events.

Citadel

Bit boring, but the top seems fine if something else needs a simple-ish action.

Ice Cave

Didn't work out, Wayfinder is sort of doing this kind of thing.

Venturer

This was the losing combination of strange and unpopular, even though I like the idea of the Iced-Coppers on gain.

Rediscover

Again I'm not particularly happy with the name - it's hard to think of so many ice themed things! This is a cheap expand but the gained card is delayed based upon how much more expensive it was than the trashed card. Gain and play shenanigans are hard to do with this but trashing $5's into set aside Provinces might be too good, so this might have to be limited to gaining non-victory cards. Retired, it was okay but a bit wonky and a bit boring, I can do better.

Barbarian

I think there's something here, this was kind of secretly broken though. Turns out Coin token Oasis is a pretty good $4 without any attack potential! Warlord is the successor to this, hopefully it works out. Now Swashbuckler is doing the whole saving Coffers thing, and Villain has a similar attack so I guess this had some okay concepts going into it?

Taiga

A Peddler variant. In my mind this was just trash it to do the stuff, but then I thought it could Ice itself for a bit instead. It seems strong, but maybe it's Another one that just wasn't too interesting really, I might return to this freezing from play idea but I'd probably make it mandatory as a kind of soft one-shot. Probably something Pixie like, a slightly above the curve $2 that's fine if you never get it back and not particularly broken if you can play it 2-3 times in a game either.


Outcast

It's like a small Menagerie. Probably don't need this and Sleigh in the same set but it's not the worst. Yeah this was just a hole-filler because I needed some $2s, I can do better.

Cauldron

A nice simple thing. Gaining Silvers doesn't seem great, but imagine gaining a Village and a Smithy! Gets truly crazy with cost reduction, like most gainers. Really no problem with the card, I still really like it, it was just I have on-theme gainers and trashers so there just wasn't room for it in this expansion.

Igloo

This started out exactly the same as Cargo Ship from Renaissance (different wording but the intent of the effect was the same) I'll give myself a pat on the back for that. I eventually made it a reserve because I'm not a huge fan of having just 1-2 Durations in a set and reserves are doing a pretty similar thing anyway but it's still pretty redundant next to Cargo Ship. I will definitely still have an Igloo card in the set though!

Cargo Ship

The name is taken now and Coffers have been removed due to Renaissance making them redundant.

Cabin

Coffers, but I'll probably make a rework (or just another card with the same name/image.)

Mountain Village

Name and Coffers taken by Renaissance, replaced by Lake Village.

Seer/Avalanche


I still love this, but Coffers are out and the name was taken (a recurring theme of this set!). I might try to fix it somehow or just have it as a random card not associated with the set.

Signalman/Beacons


I'm not sure about these State things, they were kind of experimental anyway and I don't really love them anymore. They also all used Coffers tokens to track things in some way so not a great fit anymore.

Outrider/Frozen Wilderness/ Bountiful Wilderness



Outrider might return as a cheap +buy card with no accompanying state. Sinister Plot kind of does the whole building up tokens thing I was trying here too.

Campsite

Good concept but not right here.

Sleigh

Boring card.

Pioneer

It took me a while to admit it but this is a dud.

Spyglass

THis was pretty lame, but I think something can be done with it.

Massive shoutout to Violet CLM's card image generator. It was used for all of the card images in this set. http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=16622.0

And of course thanks to all those who helped me out with their insight and suggestions!

566

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Empires cards I still don't get

« on: December 04, 2017, 11:54:27 am »

1) Distant Lands is good because you buy it midgame and get it out, deck staying stable. Any comparison with DL has to consider that or it's just silly. 2) Gazbag and Aku_chi also compared to it, so stop feeling alone. But Aku_chi brought it up to mostly agree with me.

I pretty much agree with what Aku_Chi said regarding this in his last post: Midgame Triumph is better than midgame Distant Lands with enough support, but in those games it's usually better to delay Triumph and keep building towards even bigger Triumphs. I was comparing Triumph to Distant Lands in my previous post as Distant Lands is widely considered to be a strong card, I wasn't saying that is the best use of Triumph, I should have made that clear.

As I've said before, comparing it to buying Duchy only makes sense if you're actually greening, because otherwise you wouldn't buy Duchy. When you're greening and you would consider Duchy, it's because you can't afford Province. How often in those cases did you gain several cards earlier in the turn? If you gained 1 card and have $5, buying Duchy or Triumph is the same. If you have less than $5, Triumph is "strictly better" (because you can still buy it), but it means having debt for next potential Province turn. So Triumph is only good if you gained 2 cards and you have $5 but not $8. With less than $5, it's a judgment call.

I disagree completely about the part where you only buy Duchy if you can't afford Province. In a big money game that's true for the most part but in most games there are countless endgame situations where you buy Duchies over Provinces - generally if you need to score points but lowering the Provinces let your opponent end the game. Also you seem to saying that having the option to buy it with less than $5 isn't good because the debt carries over or something, but giving the option to do that is good regardless of whether it's the correct thing to do in a given situation.

567

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Industrial Revolution [UPDATED]

« on: December 03, 2017, 04:05:11 pm »

Okay so this is a super long post so apologies in advance for any typos that slipped through.

Cathedral: This is crazy strong! It's just a much better Junk Dealer- I have a suggestion to make something more interesting which I'll get to in a minute.

Town Hall: I don't understand the discard the top card of your deck option, I feel like it's supposed to be a drawback but it isn't- it just cycles you a bit. But more importantly this is just too many options, especially for a non-terminal.

Hospital: Okay so I like the idea of another card that can trash from discard but I have a few problems with this. Why can't it just trash any cards? I don't see the point of listing all the different varieties of junk. Mainly though I just see this leading to miserable games that come entirely down to who draws their Hospital at the bottom of their shuffle. To combat this I suggest letting this trash from hand and discard and putting a limit on how much it can trash.

Observatory: Am I missing something or is this card just terrible? I can't envision a situation where spending a $7 buy and playing a do nothing terminal is worth reordering your deck a bit, it doesn't provide any economy or even cycle you at all.

Steel Foundry: Hunting Grounds isn't the most logical Training target but this is probably balanced, I have a soft spot for big terminal draw even if the +$1 is a bit strange.

Infantry: So this is a big Masquerade Ambassador crossover thing with issues in multiplayer. I suggest making this more like Ambassador and returning cards to the supply and then gaining them to opponents hands to get rid of the multiplayer issues. Aside from that this is terminal draw, a thinner, hand attack and a junking attack in one. It's a hellish concoction of all the most powerful abilities in dominion and is easily the most powerful card in the set, could/should be more expensive.

Artillery: I can't see a non-oneshot Pillage leading to fun times. The drawback is also way too flexible, + buys are often a non-issue and the discard a card option is never too bad because this gives +1 Card. I'm assuming you don't intent to have to pay separately for each opponent in multiplayer because that introduces politics. Oh and this gains a card too? I think this needs to discard your hand to be close to fair.

Police Station: I think others have pointed out the problems with this- it does close to nothing on a board with no attacks and you can reveal this infinitely to one attack. Also the reaction on this is a lot of words and in the end it's just a Moat reaction that gives your opponent a choice- so it's strictly worse than Moat's which doesn't seem worth all the text.

Stock Exchange: So the top part is a Pawn that can choose the same option more than once and combines with your existing money and the bottom is a bad Diadem or a treasure Secret Chamber. Why are there 3 relatively complex effects stuck together and the action-treasureness thrown on top of that? The action part can't combine with treasures so it seems like reasonable $3 or $4 cost to me, maybe it's good enough with Peddler variants that it has to cost £5 but that seems sad on most boards. The buy phase ability isn't strictly superior to Diadem or Vault- Diadem gives +$2 and Vault is a terminal Action that gives +2 cards. This seems like another really weak card to me, I suggest ditching the Diadem part because Diadem exists and Donald has talked about the problems with it as a regular kingdom card and splitting the other two parts into separate cards. Make the action part give +$3 and that could be a reasonable $7 and the Secret Chamber treasure could work as a $1.

Oil Refinery: This is the kind of cool effect I like to see on these expensive cards! It isn't clear to me from the text on the card whether you lock in the choices when you play Refinery or whether you choose each time you play the named card, based on your commentary I assume the former but a clarification on the card might be nice. I doubt this is broken, it seems much weaker than Pathfinding which basically plays a free Lab whenever you play the card. I worry about shuffle luck with this though, it's expensive so it's hard to get many copies and they don't stack particularly well so if you draw it near the bottom of your shuffle that's really sad. Making it a Reserve would  solve that somewhat but make it a lot slower so I'm not sure on that.

Factory: This just a bit dull, I feel like Pathfinding is secretly the big expensive super Lab that this is trying to be. Menagerie provides this effect but with a funner hoop to jump through that "have loads of money". We need more wacky Prince and Oil Refinery type things as $8 and $9 costs than stuff we've already seen but bigger.

Supermarket: Similar feeling to above but at least this has the buy restriction which makes it a little more interesting.

Public School: I don't hate having a second Teacher but just making it an expensive action just isn't exciting. How about you need to meet certain conditions at the end of the turn to get the tokens: if you have a certain amount of unspent money you can get the +but token (to use the money), a certain amount of unused actions +1 Card (to draw more actions), a certain amount of cards in hand +1 Action (to play the cards)  and a certain number of unused buys +$1 (to use the buys). Jumping through hoops like Menagerie or Magic Lamp is fun!

Metropolis: This kinda sucks right? How much more do you have to build if you can afford these? I see it used to give +3 VP I don't think that was too good for $10, it seems like going straight for Provinces will just go under this unless it's a Colony board.

Theatre: So this should say "If there are no other supply piles" because otherwise it counts itself and never works maybe, but that's just a wording nitpick. Also I think $4 for a non-mandatory cantrip trasher is too good, Junk Dealer and Upgrade are like the best $5's in my opinion apart from maybe Cultist or Mountebank, regardless of whether you agree with that though they're clearly near the top so that effect is kinda like Fugitive where it's too good for $4 but not enough for $5. Also the wording on the trashing part is weird and doesn't really work (Every card that trashes cards can trash "your cards" so it doesn't really get around the trashing attack problem) so I'd just get rid of that bit. This is a really cool card though!

Salesman: I think to comparison to make is Lab to Hireling rather than Pathfinding to Seaway so maybe this should cost $4 but it's probably fine at $3, I like it.

Worker: First off I think your design philosophy on these $1 costs is a bit off. $1 costs should be pretty much the same powerlevel wise as $2 costs, Poor House would be fine as a $2 and no existing $2's would break the game if they cost $1 instead (Okay Stonemason but it breaks the game at $2 so it doesn't count) Poor House costing $1 is pretty much just a gimmick.

Onto Worker itself, Champion is pretty much the only situation in which this card is any good. Weak terminal cards just don't get bought, or shouldn't get bought at least, I mean if Cultist gave Workers out instead of ruins it would still be broken. Sure you can buy loads if you have the buys and they aren't the worst thing ever if you have too many actions, but that probably just means you haven't built your deck in the most efficient way and buying fewer villages and fewer more powerful terminals will just be better in 99% of situations.

Market Stall: This one is better- it isn't strictly worse than any existing $2's like Worker is to Pawn and nonterminal +buy is good utility. As an aside all $1's should technically cost $2 and more than one extra buy is super useful! These cheap cards make extra buys less useful actually because they lower the power level of a kingdom.

Furnace: It's just Masquerade, if this costed $3 it would be third best $3 after Ambassador and Masquerade.

Landfill: This could easily have the gain be optional or give +$1. Otherwise it doesn't do anything on most boards.

Plot of Land: So this has two effects which don't do anything on their own but can have interactions with other cards, I'd prefer it if there was a guarantee that this has an interaction every time. My idea for Cathedral was some kind of Remodel variant that turns things into this and this is a non-supply pile.

Sewer: Wait why does this cost $2? I thought the theme was $1 costs and this seems like a good $1 because it's terminal and looks a bit bad next to Courtyard but not strictly worse.

Banknote: I don't think the edge cases where this being an action are common enough to justify this; Conclave, Minion, Festival and others do the action phase Silver thing but actually add to the game on their own merits too. (Also Scrying Pool is broken and treasure attacks are weak so I don't think that's much of a selling point)

Statue:  Again why include $2's if the theme is $1's? This compares too favourably to Estate maybe, if that matters. I don't really think this is interesting enough to exist given the infinite VP generation potential, even if it turns out okay in the end.

Coal: It's like a weaker but predictable Pixie! That isn't a bad thing, although I worry you just burn this immediately most of the time. I would hesitate to make cantrips cost $1 so I guess I'll let this not costing $1 go.

Slums: This seems fine, but bland. Your expensive cards are too complex and cheap cards too simple! A few vanillas is fine but some of them could do with spicing up.

General store: The floor with this is gain a Silver, which is very weak, if there are other $2's or $3's it gets better. I think this effect wants to be on a more expensive card so you can actually get mileage out of gaining multiple cards.

Reforge: Nice idea but it does have rules problems as others have pointed out. It could give 1 token for copper and 3 for other treasures, this makes it better with Silver and special treasures but that doesn't seem bad to me.

Boom Town: Cool card! I might stop the bonuses at 4 so losing the split isn't completely devastating.

Demolish: This is really strong! I'd probably have it at $4 because double Demolish is an incredible opening.

Pauper: I like it.

Reserve: Doesn't work rules wise but easily fixed by making it a... reserve!

Refund: This is really strong, like a more flexible Temple that gives economy. $4 or maybe even $5 seems appropriate. I think the reveal is unnecessary too right?

Flea Market: The top part is just Oasis with +1 buy which is okay at $4 but a bit boring. The on gain effect is pretty cool though!

I know it's the main theme of the set but I think there are some potentially good cards here that have been kind of shoehorned into being super expensive or super cheap (General Store is a good example) a few off theme cards are fine and I wouldn't lower the quality of the cards just to fit a theme.

568

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Neat and potentially useful card interactions

« on: December 03, 2017, 10:57:51 am »

Watchtower/Trader + Cursed Gold

Trash those pesky Curses with Watchtower or Trade them for Silvers which can fuel your Pookas!

569

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Fun with Setup

« on: December 03, 2017, 10:35:40 am »

I had to pretend you weren't joking to come up with an excuse to reference Spawnsire of Ulamog.

Completely acceptable. I was collecting foils of him for a while just because I liked seeing 20 in a cost.

Compass - $4
Treasure
+$2
You may buy cards from the trash this turn.
-----
Setup: Put one of each Victory card in the trash.

This can make infinite turns. Just because you can endlessly buy on-gain effects when going from the trash, you can get Villas endlessly. You'll probably need Mandarin-Capital too (and a way to draw that Mandarin so maybe Rats are involved, and Royal Seal with a drawing card, anyhow it's possible).
One card from the trash for each time you play a compass, maybe.

Mind elaborating on this? Where is the infinite $ coming from?

Infinite $ from cost reduction I assume, you can do infinite loops with official cards and this needs enough different pieces that I don't think it's a problem.

The only problem I have with this is that ts has the strictly better than Silver for $4 problem. But it probably wouldn't be terrible at $5, or you can slap a +1 buy on it or something if you think it's weak for $5.

570

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Town Planner

« on: December 02, 2017, 04:29:47 pm »

Isn't the top similar to Ghost Town? Just instead of alternating between nothing and a start of turn Lost City it alternates between Necropolis and a start of turn Lab? Obviously being a reserve makes it a bit better but unlike Ghost Town it can be drawn dead and isn't gained to hand so it seems similar power level. I don't understand the comparisons to Lab, am I missing something?

Ghost Town is more like Ruined Village now, Lost City next turn. Which is very slightly better than Nothing now, Lost City next turn. But even so, Ruined Village now is really, really bad. Necropolis now is much better.

Nothing probably wasn't the best word to use, a bit too ambiguous for these parts. It's much more like having a dead victory card in hand during the action and buy phase than a Ruined Village, which is what I meant by nothing. This is pretty much the same as Ruined Village apart from the edge cases when being an action card matters.

The comparison to Lab works the exact same way that Caravan can be compared to Lab... in that you get the Lab effect on the turn after you play it (or in this case, any future turn).

I mean yes, but Caravan is a cantrip which is why the comparison to Lab makes sense, they both give net +1 Card. This has a village function and gives net +0 cards meaning it's purpose in deckbuilding is completely different to Lab so the comparison doesn't make sense to me.

But I suppose your Ghost Town comparison is maybe even better than the Caravan one. Except that one of the +Actions is moved from next turn to now, which is almost always better. And being a Reserve instead of a Duration makes it better. So, this is a lot like Ghost Town but very close to strictly better.

You've disregarded the fact that Ghost Town is gained to hand, which is where a large part of its power comes from and is pretty much the only thing keeping it from just being worse than Village.

Town planner is basically Village but the +1 Card is delayed, which I'd say is a drawback overall because you'd rather have the cards immediately so you're more likely to have terminal actions to go with your Village. I think this is closer to being a $2 than a $4, but $3 seems perfectly fine to me.

571

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Town Planner

« on: December 02, 2017, 08:16:39 am »

Isn't the top similar to Ghost Town? Just instead of alternating between nothing and a start of turn Lost City it alternates between Necropolis and a start of turn Lab? Obviously being a reserve makes it a bit better but unlike Ghost Town it can be drawn dead and isn't gained to hand so it seems similar power level. I don't understand the comparisons to Lab, am I missing something?

572

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Empires cards I still don't get

« on: December 01, 2017, 05:58:36 pm »

Not both of those are true at the same time though. If you rid yourself of the Estate, the Triumph was not strictly better than Duchy. It was $5 for 2 VP, although you paid those $5 over 2 turns.

But if you trash the Duchy then it was $5 for 0 VP, so it's still strictly better in this situation. You can't really compare trashing it to not trashing it like that. The only ways it's not strictly better that I can think of is when the cost of the card matters, cost reduction or Goons type triggers. It's also important to note that this is pretty much the floor on Triumph.

In the midgame situation Triumph is kind of like Distant lands where you can start to green without hurting your deck too much but you have to trash the Estate rather than playing the Distant lands.

Yes, you're right. That was a faulty statement from me. It's strictly better than a Duchy. But it's still $5 for 2 VP and having to trash a card, so it's pretty bad. Distant Lands on the other hand is $5 for 4 VP, although you have to pay it all upfront and it's terminal while some trashers might not be.
I'm still not getting it, for all the reasons I wrote.

Like I said, it's important to note that this is one of the worst cases for Triumph. It needs a little bit of support but it's not uncommon to be able to get 3VP+ Triumphs, at which point the comparison to Distant Lands starts looking okay. I don't think anyone is saying that 2 VP Triumph is very good, just that in it's worst case it's still pretty much better than Duchy.

573

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Empires cards I still don't get

« on: December 01, 2017, 05:00:19 pm »

Not both of those are true at the same time though. If you rid yourself of the Estate, the Triumph was not strictly better than Duchy. It was $5 for 2 VP, although you paid those $5 over 2 turns.

But if you trash the Duchy then it was $5 for 0 VP, so it's still strictly better in this situation. You can't really compare trashing it to not trashing it like that. The only ways it's not strictly better that I can think of is when the cost of the card matters, cost reduction or Goons type triggers. It's also important to note that this is pretty much the floor on Triumph.

In the midgame situation Triumph is kind of like Distant lands where you can start to green without hurting your deck too much but you have to trash the Estate rather than playing the Distant lands.

574

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Empires cards I still don't get

« on: November 30, 2017, 01:42:21 pm »

I just played a sloggy moneyish game with Treasure Trove and Triumph which was pretty cool, picked up some 4vp Triumphs and a 6vp one when two Troves collided. I then dudded about 4 turns in a row and lost, but that's how those games go I suppose.

I suggest playing some games against Lord Rat to see how good Triumph can be uncontested, it doesn't take much to make it worth 6vp+.



 

575

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Seprix's Tier Lists For Every Dominion Set

« on: November 22, 2017, 04:24:02 pm »

A couple of observations from this:

1) First of all, I really like this idea. Thanks for doing it and thanks to everyone for the good , civil discussion in this thread. There are lots of good points being made by everyone to support their opinion

2) I am really impressed with how this shows the huge difference in the 2nd edition cards versus the ones that were replaced. Most of the replaced cards would have been F or at best D, but the majority of the new cards are rated A to C. That is pretty cool!  I wish all of the people who rejected base Dominion because they felt it was too simple or predictable would have started with 2nd edition. Perhaps their opinions would be different now.

3) The last Qvist ranking had Wishing Well at 26 and Smugglers at 33. So how are they possibly worthy of an A ranking? Wouldn’t a card worthy of an A ranking at least be in the top 15 of its cost group?

4) Lookout is a card I like to buy early, but, of course, I never buy a bunch of them. It doesn’t take that long for them to possibly do more harm than good. It only ranked 20 in the last Qvist ranking. To me a card ranked S would have to be a card so fundamentally powerful, you don’t dare ignore it. If there are other good thrashers, I have no problem ignoring Lookout. Personally, I would not have any trouble with Lookout as a B, though I can see a case for it as an A.

5) Like many, I would definitely put Cutpurse at least on the same level, if not above Explorer rather than the other way around. In Qvist rankings, Explorer ranked 87 out of 96, but Cutpurse was 45 out of 73. So Cutpurse ranks much higher among 4’s than Explorer does among 5’s. I pretty much always buy a Cutpurse, but Explorer is very ignorable.

The Qvist rankings are good for getting an rough idea of card power. However, it is difficult to compare different costing cards with each other using the Qvist rankings. I like Seprix's idea of a tier system better for comparing between price points.

I get what you’re saying. They are two different measures of the cards. However, I still don’t see how a card can be considered middle of the pack in one list, and in another list, though a different rating system, they are somehow among the best cards in Dominion, which is what a card in the A tier should be.

So my question was how can Wishing Well and Smugglers be A tier in these rankings if they are not even close to that in other rankings.  Did we come up with some new use for them over the past year that suddenly made them better? Or what is it that makes them A tier cards? I must be missing something because I just don’t see them as outstanding as I would expect an A tier card to be. They both have their situations where the shine, but they are often quite ignorable.

I wouldn't put much stock in the Qvist rankings beyond the top and bottom 5 or so cards. I mean Smithy is at 15 and Envoy at 30- they're pretty much the same card!