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1001

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: May 11, 2020, 08:39:43 am »

This is potentially quite powerful. A 3 cost card that does more than an Overlord. However it is slowed down by the fact that you have to put the card it copies onto your Exile mat. Is that enough to weaken it? I hope so.

Some Watchtower vibes in terms of the versatility of the Reaction. You can use it to build up the emulator power or you can use it to Exile green or purple.
There is funky stuff like Exiling several cards per copy of Portal in a Garden game (Sanctuary or Bounty Hunter can only Exile one) imaginable, e.g. Beggar-Gardens-Portal.

1002

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: May 11, 2020, 05:07:32 am »

This is a great design!

I like the Salvager combo: take one Province out of your deck and get the payload for another one. 
The Lurker combo is pretty crazy too.

If I get stop-move correctly, Action-Victories land in your hand but are not Exiled.

1003

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: May 10, 2020, 04:35:10 pm »

I neither get the Attack which does nothing in most Kingdoms nor the appeal of a random collection of vanilla bonuses which is entirely unrelated to the Attack. Nor am I a friend of cantrip Attacks, even if they are highly Kingdom sensitive.

1004

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: May 10, 2020, 02:34:02 pm »

While it lacks the versatility of Captain, a delayed level 3 City is nonetheless slightly stronger and too straightforward. You get all you need for an engine via one card alone.
Also, the power difference between those two cards is enormous.

1005

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Is Harvest the New Scout?

« on: May 10, 2020, 05:54:27 am »

I don‘t see it. Sure, Harvest is weak and you would virtually always prefer any of the „terminal Gold plus something“ $5s over Harvest. But whenever you need virtual Coins (Tactician) or prefer Actions over Treasures (Herald) and got the terminal space for Harvest, it is OK.

There are far worse $5s, like e.g. Mine.

1006

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: May 10, 2020, 02:36:54 am »

Seems too strong and too centralizing to me. I'd make it a $5 or leave it at $4 but as terminal Copper or without virtual Coins. Being able to gain a $5 onto your deck after the first shuffle is already pretty strong (there is a reason DXV priced Artisan at $6).

1007

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: May 07, 2020, 12:36:39 am »

Thank you! And thank you for the simple fix. However, I think I need to leave the price at $6. Even though the card says +1 Card, +1 Action, +1 Buy, and +$1, it being at the start of your next turn makes it worth more. If a Caravan this turn is a Laboratory next turn, then a Thelony this turn is a level 3 City next turn.

That would be the case if Thelony were a cantrip on the current turn.
But it is not, it is a totally delayed Market and thus weaker than Caravan in two respects: Lab is better than Market and totally delayed is worse than only the non-cantrip part being delayed (like in the case of Caravan).

We know from the Night-Durations that delaying the card draw is OK. But the card being terminal on the current term is definitely not something you want, you want the +1 Action now.

1008

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: May 07, 2020, 12:33:16 am »

Great Cathedral • $4 • Project

At the start of your turn, choose one: exile a card from your hand; or put a non-treasure card from exile into your hand.

Cathedral is already the 2nd strongest card-shaped thing in the game and not only is this way stronger, there's a 50% chance that only one player can buy it on turn 1 which puts the other at a severe disadvantage.

I just realized that this 50% is wrong... each player has a 50% chance of being able to afford it on turn 1; which is a 25% chance that one player but not both players will be able to buy it turn 1.

No, Awaclus is right. The chance that Alice gets heads and Bob tails is indeed 0.25. But the chance that one of them gets heads while the other gets tails is 0.5.

1009

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: May 06, 2020, 04:05:52 pm »

It is significant but so is opening 5/2 on a board with Mountebank. Many cards can semi decide the game in the opening without anybody calling them broken. If opening sensitivity should always be low, a card like Fisherman would have no right to exist.

1010

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: May 06, 2020, 03:28:04 pm »

Updating my entry:

Pony (Action, Cost $4)
+2 Cards
+1 Action
Exile an Action card from your hand (or reveal a hand with no Action cards)

This is obviously too weak. If a Fugitive variant made you discard an Action it would likely already be too weak at $4 as you want to sift through non-Actions. Exiling from hand is far harsher than discarding.
So this is only good for money decks or as defense against Ruins junking.

1011

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: May 06, 2020, 12:22:40 pm »

Pony (Action, Cost $4)
+2 Cards
+1 Action
Exile a card from your hand

Stronger than Laboratory, for less cost. Also compare to Junk Dealer; stronger than that for less cost. This Pony as written could possibly work at .

While you are correct, a small detail is that this is not strictly better than Lab. A Lab never hurts whereas this might. Or in others words, although Pony is better than Lab, you want more Labs than Ponies.

Of course practically speaking, just like you can trash the second Junk Dealer via the first, you can exile the second Pony via the first. And as Pony can exile green, it is longer useful than Junk Dealer.

1012

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: 3-step Traveller Line based on Kudasai's "Army"

« on: May 04, 2020, 12:37:54 pm »

I like the original far more. This is more megaturny whereas the original is more build up and then use. Also, this suffers from information overload without achieving anything fundamentally different from the original.

Also, it looks overpowered. Even if you stopped at Lieutenant it would be a decent BoM variant.

1013

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Actually Passable Card Ideas

« on: May 04, 2020, 01:12:28 am »

Way of Contradiction
Way

Follow the instructions printed on this card.  If you don't, +1 VP.

+1 VP is hardly overpowered on a terminal but as Way of the Worm already exists I don't see the appeal of this.

1014

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: May 03, 2020, 03:04:00 am »

Here's my entry, a standard Horse-gainer that gives you a way to use your horses without losing them (for a slight nerf to your hand).

Jockey • $3 • Action - Reaction
Gain 2 Horses.
-
When you play a Horse, before returning it to its pile, you may reveal this from your hand and discard a card to keep it in play.

I like this a lot. Fugitives are strong but do not net draw, so Jockey cannot become too crazy.

1015

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: May 01, 2020, 04:26:18 pm »

I'm changing my entry again - typing up yall's entries for the trello board gave me a better idea (revised version)

Badlands • $5 • Action - Attack - Duration
Now and at the start of your next turn: +2 Cards. Gain 2 Horses.
-
While this is in play, when another player plays a Horse, instead of following its instructions, they choose two: +1 Card; +1 Action; or +$1 (The choices must be different); then return that Horse to its pile.

Bur or no buy, it is basically a Wharf so everybody will go for it, there will always be copies in play, Horses will never do anything.

So absent action density sensitive cards like Golem or Scrying Pool, this will play very similarly to a Wharf without Buys. Which is totally OK, Wharf is after all crazily overpowered. But you could achieve the same thing in a far more straightforward fashion.

1016

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: May 01, 2020, 12:52:39 pm »

NoMoreFun had the very same idea and I think that this is more of a $4 than a $5. Gain a Horse is very similar to +1 Card but in the case of Apprentice I think you more often than not prefer to draw the cards immediately.

Thanks for the help. I went back-and-forth on $4/$5 before I submitted. Though, of course, Apprentice is what I was thinking of, you are certainly correct that Apprentice is better in more situations (including most engines). Keeping it simple, and not wanting to jump into the "Horses to your hand" quagmire, do you think it fits better into a price category if I either cantrip it at $5 (adding +1 Card) or remove the +1 Action at $4? Or a I overthinking, and is it simply best as-is at $4?

As cantrip it is too good. Compare it with Upgrade in the case of an Estate: instead of 1 Silver you get 2 Horses (Upgrade could achieve the same if Experiment is in the Kingdom).

Adding +1 Card to non-terminals usually implies a strong increase of the power level. For example Cellar as a cantrip would be a $5 and Candlestick Maker would even be a $6.

1017

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: May 01, 2020, 06:13:32 am »

NoMoreFun had the very same idea and I think that this is more of a $4 than a $5. Gain a Horse is very similar to +1 Card but in the case of Apprentice I think you more often than not prefer to draw the cards immediately.

1018

Game Reports / Re: Possessed 6 Times in a Row

« on: April 30, 2020, 01:32:19 am »

Sounds like you should have played money as a simple counter. He did after all twice hit 8 or the equivalent of it. You could have bought 2 Provinces in that time.

1019

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: April 27, 2020, 01:28:36 pm »

Grand Laboratory
A Lab that can give you more Labs or function as a Workshop. Therefore you pay a higher price, I like that concept. Though I think, it is too easy to get with Workshop/Remodel variants. I would like it without the cost reduction, but that can gain another Grand Laboratory (which then would not fit the contest anymore). Might be a matter of taste. I like it anyway.

Yay baby, thank you very much for putting my card as a finalist! It is a little easy to nab a lab with a Workshop or its variants, but at least Grand Laboratory’s cost being down during one’s Action phase makes it less attractive for Remodel cards (can’t turn a Grand Laboratory into a Province, for instance).


Now, onto the contest at hand:

So uuuh I had a bunch of pre-made cards dealing with Horses prior to this week’s challenge. I really love the new Horse mechanism and went over my head with ‘em. So now I gotta pick only one of them to submit it here. However, it made me sad to leave the others behind. Soooo I kinda thought of Castles and well, I decided to do something akin to that. So here’s what I got:


I’m probably shooting myself in the foot here. This many cards means a higher chance to have off-balance stuff. And it very much gives a “this is too much” vibe. Moreover, I personally usually prefer modest and well-balanced cards over overly intricate stuff that ends up being somewhat messy. This is a prime example of quantity over quality here.
That being said, I think the idea of a Castle-like Horse line was too good to pass. Some of them Stallions, I’m not so sure about. Mainly Appaloosa and Gypsy Vanner. Balancing stuff correctly is kinda hard without outside perspective. So if you guys would like to point obvious stuff that went straight over my head with these Stallions, please do tell. I'd like to add that this was not tested yet.

Source for the horse breeds.

This is plain beautiful.
Did you make Shetland Pony intentionally so strong (basically, Smithy) to bootstrap the whole thing respectively to prevent a stalemate situation in Kingdoms without trashers (nobody wants to go for the first Stallion lest the next player gains the only trasher in the Kingdom, Clydesdale)?
On the other hand, as draw power is a substitute for trashing and as the trashing power of that card is weak, it is probably nothing to worry about (Dame Anna being random is far worse and definitely does screw up games).

1020

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: April 27, 2020, 01:21:45 pm »

This has to cost $4. Otherwise opening double Forest Hag will occur too often.

1021

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: April 27, 2020, 01:19:59 pm »

It is a Bazaar variant and likely too good.

I think it's probably delayed enough that it's balanced. It doesn't benefit you at all until the turn after you play it.

I think that the tokens (Horses are roughly similar in strength to drawing a card) more than make up for them being delayed. The card can never be drawn dead, unlike Durations it does not stay out and we know from Nocturne and Renaissance the strength of consistency that tokens or delayed effects provide.

Ii is nothing crazy though. What makes the card overpowered is the hand-gaining. Note that the on-gain stuff is of roughly similar strength as Den of Sins (I'd argue that it is slightly better) but without any of the Duration downsides (staying out, missing shuffles, being only a "half-card" in deck-drawing engines).

1022

Dominion General Discussion / Re: DeepMind for Dominion

« on: April 27, 2020, 09:25:36 am »

I wonder how the AI could deal with different setups. Starcraft has hidden information but the options are identical in all games. A self teaching AI might have a hard time to meta-learn (judge Kingdoms).

1023

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: April 27, 2020, 09:22:03 am »

It is a Bazaar variant and likely too good.

1024

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: April 26, 2020, 05:00:06 pm »

1025

Dominion General Discussion / DeepMind for Dominion

« on: April 24, 2020, 07:05:47 am »

I read yesterday that Google's self-learning AI project, which has been mainly known for excelling at chess and Go, is also pretty good at a RTS game like Starcraft.
My hunch is that this is far more complex than a turned based game like chess which features an average of 20 choices per turn and around 80 plies.

So if that AI is brillant at dealing with the giant decision space of a real time game with hidden information, shouldn't it be able to tackle a turn-based game with randomness like Dominion?

Is this feasible, is it likely that Google would be interested in that ... and would this hypothetical scenario ruin the game or actually imply a possible balancing tool for new cards (not that this is necessary)?