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1426

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 14, 2019, 01:55:17 am »

If you reveal it on an opponent's turn it's more powerful (it doesn't have a delayed effect) and plays more like BoM (Choose a card and play it as that card).

Yeah and unlike with BoM and Overlord there is no cost restriction. You could play this as copy of anything: Platinum, Fortune, Prince, City Quarters, Goons, Kings's Court, you name it.
Which is why $4 is likely to be too cheap.

In response to math, it shouldn't be a duration. It doesn't stay in play, it gets set aside. Just like prince is not a duration. besides it doesn't get a delayed effect when played, only when it is revealed.

Sure, if you want to get hyper-technical it is not necessary and you could always avoid the Duration type.
Here it makes a lot of sense though. It is not like that type was introduced for mere fun back in the days but to remind players visualls not to clean up some cards.
Furthermore it is helpful in gauging the strength of cards. When you see something orange, you immediately associate it all the downsides of Durations.

The big difference is that if you target a Smithy (or any draw, really) with Copy, you get to draw cards and still have +Actions left, as opposed to other "Throne Room" variants which don't leave you with +Actions. I'd recommend a cost of $5.

I'm not sure what you mean.

That'd be like getting a haunted woods over a smithy when your opponent has a champion because you'll get the cards on a turn you didn't use up your action. Sure there are edge cases where it helps, but in general, getting things now is better than getting things later.

If Smithy draws into any TR variant except for Ghost that card is dead.
If Smithy draws into Copy, you can Copy Smithy which makes that very Copy behave like a non-terminal Haunted Woods without the Attack.

Never being dead is pretty huge. Even in decks with a decent Action density, TR fails often enough.

About Durations always sucking, I disagree that you always want stuff now instead of later. Delayed terminal draw is one of the things that can be as good or even better than immediate terminal draw for consistency reasons. Delayed Actions are also pretty useful. I'd often take Fishing Village over "+3 Actions +2 Coins".

1427

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 13, 2019, 01:10:13 pm »

This isn't a TR variant. TR plays twice, which is a huge difference in the case of Actions over a mere copy.

So BoM/Overlord is the appropriate comparison. This is better than BoM as it can also copy more cards: Treasures, Nights, Actions that cost more than $4, Actions whose piles are empty.
This is worse than BoM as, like a Duration, it stays out for one turn and as you are less flexible, having to commit yourself before your turn.

Looks overpowered at $4 but probably too weak at $5.

1428

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Contest #33: Pure Reaction card

« on: June 13, 2019, 03:19:58 am »

Clarification: The 2nd reaction is worded the way it is so that you can gain an Action card, Blockade it onto your deck, and then put the Blockade onto that Action's pile.

I like this a lot, a great take on the "hot potatoe" card.
I just worry a b it about bootstrapping the whole thing: you have to pay $4 (or forsake a Workshop variant gain) and once draw into the card to get the whole thing going and nobody might have an incentive to do so (as the pile-blocking might also hurt you).

Perhaps put one Blockade on a random Action Supply pile during setup?

1429

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 13, 2019, 03:14:34 am »

Foundry (Reaction) [$4]

When an opponent gains a card, you may trash this from your hand to gain two cheaper cards.

When do you cash this in? The threat of using it might cause some interesting decisions for everyone else...

Nobody will be prevented from gaining cards just because the opponent might be able to gain 2 Silvers.
This is more expensive than Engineer yet on average weaker (has to be in hand, can only gain $3s and its only advantage is that it is non-terminal).

1430

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 12, 2019, 03:49:09 pm »

I will post an image and name later, but for now:

Cost: 5

When you draw this, you may reveal this and set it aside. If you do, +2 Cards and return this to your hand.

I figure it's basically just a Reaction version of Lab, so it should cost 5. It's not identical, though. There are situations where it's worse and situations where it's better.

"When you draw this" triggers have been discussed before; the issue is accountability... by the time you have drawn it; it's in your hand, mixed with the other cards. How do you show if it was a card you just drew, or one that was always in your hand? Also, when is it worse than Lab?

It is often worse than Laboratory: as it has no standard type, you cannot gain it via University, there are again no Ironworks-style interactions, no interaction with the Vassal/Herald/Scrying Pool/Ghost/Golem family and so on.

1431

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 12, 2019, 03:34:16 pm »

There are many engine pieces which cost $4. Usually you want to gain them via gainers but it is not unheard of to use a Gold while buying Ironmongers or Mining Villages.
Also, no Counterfeit, no Venture and no Ironworks-style interaction.

I agree that it seems on average better than Gold but but so is Spices.
If Spices can get away with being nearly always preferable to Gold while costing $5, Buried Loot can easily get away with costing $6.

1432

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 12, 2019, 03:28:17 pm »

A simple gainer that is similar to Smugglers and Duplicate. It has the advantage of being non-terminal and the disadvantage of having to be in your hand to work (whereas you can draw into Smugglers respectively Duplicate can chill in the tavern).

1433

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 12, 2019, 10:51:18 am »

No idea where you pull the 9 points from. This is a dynamic matter, hard to evaluate and incredibly board-dependent. Estates and Duchies yields the same VPs, so a Silk Road or Gardens game is likely favouring whomever does not thin his deck.

I'm guessing his logic is this:
Points for not Chapelling starting 10 cards with income tax on board: 13 points (10 for income tax 3 for estates)
Points for Chapelling starting 10 cards with income tax on board: 1 (for income tax because chapel itself is worth 1 point, and you usually don't get rid of it)

So there's a 12 point difference between going for chapel and not, 3 for estates and 9 for income tax. So basically income tax gives you a 9 point penalty for going for chapel, and he's saying this is not enough of a deterrent for him in most boards (not surprising since neither was trench). Yes, in some games he might forego chapel (like with gardens) but in most games he wouldn't.

IMO, there's more to this than just a loss of 9 points. provinces and the cards that help get you provinces (gold, $5 action cards) are worth -1, so going for provinces is not going to net you nearly as much as in a normal game. Scooping up cheap cards (estates and 2 other piles) especially with +buy seems viable and in that case, chapel isn't necessary because you don't need high $ density. Just to compare: if your opponent uses chapel, gets all 8 provinces (likely will take more than 20 turns) that's 40 minus his higher cost cards + his lower cost cards. He could easily be at 40 or less. If you don't chapel and buy 8 estates and 12 other cheap cards, you'd be at 41 (30 for income tax, 11 for estates). If you opponent can't get all the provinces himself (especially true in some BM strategies) 3 piling cheap cards would really work in your favor.

Yeah, as I said it is a dynamic thing and thus just comparing the difference between trashing and not trashing your starting hand is a totally inappropriate. As you rightly pointed out, when each card is a Mill, piling on cheap cards becomes an actual strategy.

1434

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 12, 2019, 03:34:19 am »

Commodore Chuckles   Income Tax   http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=18987.msg803032#msg803032

Ooh! Wanting a deck with cheap cards is not a reason to skip chapel that I'd thought about, but it totally makes sense. Unfortunately, 9 points isn't enough of a swing to make me skip chapel.

No idea where you pull the 9 points from. This is a dynamic matter, hard to evaluate and incredibly board-dependent. Estates and Duchies yields the same VPs, so a Silk Road or Gardens game is likely favouring whomever does not thin his deck.

You might want to look at the conventional BM benchmarks: while thinning and junking are very important in Dominion, a significant VP spread changes that maths. I have lost quite some Fountain games because I overvalued thinning.

1435

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: scolapasta's cards

« on: June 11, 2019, 03:07:01 am »

I'd be careful with Archbishop giving +2vp unconditionally, it has the danger of leading to never ending games. It might be expensive enough that this doesn't become much of a problem, but I'd keep an eye on it. I always enjoyed how expensive trashers like Forge made you play a bit differently than the cheaper trashers so I like that about Archbishop.

Over the weekend, I reread the Fan Card Creation Guide, and saw the flaws here when I got to Common Pitfall #19: Cards that allow unlimited accumulation of victory tokens.

So yes, this needs to be changed! In trying to make this analogous to Bishop, the issue was that Worshippers don't trash immediately. I might try something like "While this is in play, when you trash a card, you may discard this. If you do +1VP per $2 it costs (round down)."

I am not so sure; my hunch is that Archbishop is far less crazy than Goons

Unconditional +2VP is new and potentially problematic but as the card yields Coins you will likely still buy something and drive the game towards the end. Suppose you have a deck with 5 Archbishops and 4 Villages. Will you keep it running and make 10VPs per turn or will you green? There is no way to answer this theoretically, best is to just set up a Kingdom and playtest it solo from this situation with one player greening / adding other engine pieces and the non-player just making 10VPs per turn.

Instead of the unconditional VPs you could also do something like Goons but for trashing: "While this is in play, when you trash a card, +1VP." Given that you likely already want to / have to trash before you gain Archbishops, it is unlikely to become very crazy (you have to gain new stuff, draw into it and the Archbishops to keep your VP engine running).

1436

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 11, 2019, 02:20:12 am »

Sustainable Living -
Event - $3 2D
-
(Once per turn)
Trash up to five cards in your hand. If their total cost is $20 or more, gain two provinces.

I would argue that this would make Chapel even more desirable. Chapel will let you get cheap cards out of your deck more easily than this, since it's cheaper and you only need to buy it once. (Not to mention that you can't trash your Coppers if you need to play them to use the trasher.) Chapel can quickly remove the cheap cards from your deck so you can more easily use this event to gain Provinces quickly.

That's a fair point since Chapel helps you convert from low-cost to high-cost average cards. One particular use case I was thinking this is in a 4/3 opening where you buy a useful $4 card, then use Sustainable Living in the $3 turn on the two estates. By T3 you've already gotten rid of most of your estates, a leg up over Chapel.

Indeed. It is basically a more expensive Bonfire for Estates and given how often one opens Bonfire, even in Kingdoms with trashers, this will often get bought.
Not sure whether it can compete with Chapel though.

1437

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: scolapasta's cards

« on: June 09, 2019, 08:29:21 am »

Worshippers seem most similar to Monastery to me. Like with Monastery you trash at the end of your turn, so it is good with draw (and in the middlegame with junkers, here Ratcatcher can frequently miss your junk), and like Monastery it does not hurt your economy.
The advantage of Monastery is that it is nonterminal. The advantage of Apse Chapel is that it trashes on average more cards than Monastery (I think that you trash on average 1 card more often 3 cards), that you can save the Worshippers and that you can use them to trash the Apse Chapel itself.

1438

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards

« on: June 09, 2019, 08:23:40 am »

I think that this is a pretty good shot at a VP cantrip as it disables any pure VP engine.
The problem are in my opinion not un-thinned decks, here Blasphemer probably cannot compete with Gold for BM.
But in a Kingdom with enough engine pieces, such that you trashed most of your junk but still have a relatively thick deck, Blasphemer could be too good.

1439

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 07, 2019, 11:34:26 am »

The possible wording that let you trash a card from your hand went with "at the start of cleanup". The possible wording that was "during cleanup" didn't let you trash a card from your hand, it only let you trash a card instead of discarding it. It was never suggested to let you trash a card from your hand "during cleanup".

On the one hand it is my mistake that I did not notice this detail, on the other hand such confusion arises naturally when you do stuff in the Clean-up phase.
Hence my suggestion to put the window at a moment where no such rule confusions could arise, like the end of the Buy phase. Or, Ratcatcher style, at the start of the turn if one wants a nerfed version of Worshippers.

1440

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 07, 2019, 11:23:05 am »

(*) if this doesn't seem intuitive, I could change the rule to "At the start of your Clean-up phase, before you discard anything, remove tokens from here: for each token removed, you may trash a card from your hand or from play." The current wording feels simpler.

I feel that this wording would be necessary. "Trash a card" is ambiguous; no official card says this without specifying the "from".

Do you think the "before you discard anything" is necessary? Or is that implied by the "start of your Clean-up phase"?

If you want to prevent confusion, you can use "at the end of your Buy phase" as it is more or less the same window as the start of Clean-up.

Not with night.

This only matters for Undercroft. If you want to be able to use the Worshippers you gained via Undercroft in that very turn I'd make more sense to do Undercroft as Treasure.
The phrase "during Clean-up" is anything but clear. Before you discard everything or after you drew a new hand makes sense. But what if you use a Worshipper to trash a card while drawing a new hand? Will you draw a substitute card for that or not?
I think that one should not do timing windows in the Clean-up if it is avoidable (Scheme obviously cannot work any other way). Normally the next player is starting their turn while you are cleaning up. So better put that decision at the end of the Buy phase, like Wine Merchant.

1441

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 07, 2019, 01:30:40 am »

The inverse of Tomb and thus a bit lame.
It also inverts the you get via cards that trash from the Supply like Lurker.
Tomb makes trashing attacks weaker whereas this is neutral about them.
1 per card might not be enough to prevent you from thinning, hence the 2 .

1442

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 07, 2019, 01:02:55 am »

And here comes my submission. (The separate post is intended, because this one is unrelated to the previous.)



Dowser
Type: Action
Cost: $4*

+1 Action
Reveal the top 4 cards of your deck. Put the ones costing $2 or less into your hand. Discard the rest.
-
During your Action phase, this costs $2 less, but not less than $0.

I'd stick with the original version as the self-synergy is neat but add a clause that makes the pile appear after the first shuffle. Might feel a a bit wonky and two horizontal lines are never visually nice but I think that it is the most simple solution that prevents a scripted opening.

1443

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 07, 2019, 12:59:48 am »

(*) if this doesn't seem intuitive, I could change the rule to "At the start of your Clean-up phase, before you discard anything, remove tokens from here: for each token removed, you may trash a card from your hand or from play." The current wording feels simpler.

I feel that this wording would be necessary. "Trash a card" is ambiguous; no official card says this without specifying the "from".

Do you think the "before you discard anything" is necessary? Or is that implied by the "start of your Clean-up phase"?

If you want to prevent confusion, you can use "at the end of your Buy phase" as it is more or less the same window as the start of Clean-up.

1444

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 06, 2019, 08:02:13 am »

Yes, it's mathy. So are actual taxes.
If you didn't get the point, this is supposed to encourage you to keep the average cost of cards in your deck low. I struggled with finding a way to encourage a deck of cheap cards that usually matters but isn't too brutal.

I like the idea very much but you have to scale up the variable somehow, multiply it with something or whatever.
Something like -2/-3 vs -6/-7 is just a VP spread of 4. That's precisely identical to winning a '6VP per player' Landmark split by one (8VP vs. 4 VP) and just the third of winning the Province split by one.
This is not enough to make you not thin and run a deck with cheap cards.

1445

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 04, 2019, 11:15:14 am »

Especially since the only reason was because he deemed my playtested card unbalanced for an arbitrary reason.

Price is not an arbitrary criterion. Some folks don't mind mispriced cards, some do.

The notion that a card (which has not been posted outside of this contest and went through several changes while this very contest has run) has been playtested is highly dubious.
The natural assumption of anybody is that what we see here are rough ideas and not polished cards.

1446

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 04, 2019, 10:23:07 am »

Seriously dude, stop endlessly whining about not having won. The point of these contests is not to win but come up with cool cards, see other people do the same and analyze cards together.
Kudasai has been incredibly nice to everybody (he even offered another poster to host this last contest!) and analyzed all cards pretty well.

Calling the poster, MeNowDealWithIt, who has won this week's contest with a sound and interesting card a "random person" is pretty rude.

1447

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 03, 2019, 07:39:39 am »

So you really need the stars to align to have that reaction be relevant.

True that. The situation in which Attacks are in the Kingdom and you want 2 Silvers occur infinitely more frequently than the rare situations in which you want to handgain 3 Coppers.
As you seemingly disagree with Silver generally being better than Copper, feel free to point out other situations than Guildhall and Gardens in which you actually want to play Beggar.

1448

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 03, 2019, 03:06:08 am »

That's the when-played effect.  Gubump was referring to the while-in-play effect, which is the replacement of cards gained on other players turns with Copper. Usually the card you would be replacing is a Curse, and replacing Curses with Coppers is a benefit.

Nope. He argued that the card has no downside which is simply wrong as self-junking yourself with 4 Coppers is most of the times a huge downside.
The Trade-like defense is always good, although weaker than Trader, whereas the on-play effect is nearly always bad.

I never said or even implied that. I specifically said that the while-in-play effect was positive and not negative. The prompt was to "design a Duration card that creates some sort of vulnerability to you while it is in play." WHILE it is in play, not its immediate effect. I don't appreciate the strawman argument you seem to be using.

My mistake, I thought you refered to the copper self-junking being good.

I totally did not keep this trivial detail about the parameters of this contest in mind, all I remembered was "Duration with some liability". He can speak for himself but I seriously doubt that Kudasai minds the inversion, i.e. a liability on play but a neat thing while in play, given that this is pretty creative and harder to do then the other way around.

1449

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 03, 2019, 02:00:20 am »

I think I can count the games I've seen someone actually react a Beggar on my fingers and I've been playing since before Dark Ages came out anyway, the below the line parts of both seem pretty irrelevant to be honest.

Different experience for me. The Reaction is far more useful than the on-play effect which isn't surprising as 2 Silvers are nearly always superior to 3 hand-gained Coppers. Gardens, Monastery and Guildhall Kingdoms with trashers are the only situations which come to mind in which you might want to play Beggar.
2 Silvers on the other hand are useful in a zillion of situations and the topdecked Silver defends against nasty trashing attacks.

1450

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 03, 2019, 01:47:44 am »

That's the when-played effect.  Gubump was referring to the while-in-play effect, which is the replacement of cards gained on other players turns with Copper. Usually the card you would be replacing is a Curse, and replacing Curses with Coppers is a benefit.

Nope. He argued that the card has no downside which is simply wrong as self-junking yourself with 4 Coppers is most of the times a huge downside.
The Trade-like defense is always good, although weaker than Trader, whereas the on-play effect is nearly always bad.