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901

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: July 08, 2020, 01:12:35 am »

Vespers
If it’s your Night phase, trash your hand.
Otherwise, +2 Actions.
$2 Action Night

This usually just plays the same as Chapel. You rarely aren't trashing your whole hand with Chapel and a Necropolis isn't that good. The only place where it diverges is that it's bonkers with draw, meaning it's also probably overly strong.

This is better than Chapel in three nontrivial ways. It is nonterminal, it can trash more than 4 cards, it features a second option.
This is worse than Chapel in a very significant way. If you were unable to play all of your Actions, you are forced to trash good cards.

If this is on the board, you have access to a Village and the situation of drawing it with dead actions is very unlikely since it itself is nonterminal.

That is utter nonsense. You pointed out yourself that Necro is weak and you will rarely want more than one Vespers in a deck.
Ignoring that, even the most well designed engine (with a village that draws) can dud. Your Smithy can always draw into Actions.

Of course you ar than not forced to trash good Actions, but it is an obvious and significant disadvantage of the card relative to Chapel which allows you to choose which cards you want to trash.

Without junking attacks, this will still effectively be a better Chapel most of the time, as most of the trashing Chapel does happens really early on in the game. I think this is noticeably worse with junking however (although still very strong, especially given that you can play a junker and this in the same turn, and in junk-heavy games you'll be able to play out all of your good cards in hand most turns anyways).

I'm not convinced this is a bad thing though, insane trashing games are fun and this is probably different enough from Chapel to be worthwhile.

I agree that this is likely better than Chapel in most Kingdoms, but the card does have a disadvantage that Chapel does not have.
I also agree about the junking situation. You can easily imagine a Mountebank Kingdom in which both (yeah, might be the dominant strategy to go for two Mountebanks even though there is a good trasher) Mountebanks collide and trashing the Mountebank and some junk is worse than keeping it and the junk.

Such „shall I trash good stuff“ questions also arise with Count and, although merely on a meta level, with Lookout.

902

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: July 07, 2020, 02:19:16 pm »

Vespers
If it’s your Night phase, trash your hand.
Otherwise, +2 Actions.
$2 Action Night

This usually just plays the same as Chapel. You rarely aren't trashing your whole hand with Chapel and a Necropolis isn't that good. The only place where it diverges is that it's bonkers with draw, meaning it's also probably overly strong.

This is better than Chapel in three nontrivial ways. It is nonterminal, it can trash more than 4 cards, it features a second option.
This is worse than Chapel in a very significant way. If you were unable to play all of your Actions, you are forced to trash good cards.

If this is on the board, you have access to a Village and the situation of drawing it with dead actions is very unlikely since it itself is nonterminal.

That is utter nonsense. You pointed out yourself that Necro is weak and you will rarely want more than one Vespers in a deck.
Ignoring that, even the most well designed engine (with a village that draws) can dud. Your Smithy can always draw into Actions.

Of course you ar than not forced to trash good Actions, but it is an obvious and significant disadvantage of the card relative to Chapel which allows you to choose which cards you want to trash.

903

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: July 07, 2020, 01:19:31 pm »

Vespers
If it’s your Night phase, trash your hand.
Otherwise, +2 Actions.
$2 Action Night

This usually just plays the same as Chapel. You rarely aren't trashing your whole hand with Chapel and a Necropolis isn't that good. The only place where it diverges is that it's bonkers with draw, meaning it's also probably overly strong.

This is better than Chapel in three nontrivial ways. It is nonterminal, it can trash more than 4 cards, it features a second option.
This is worse than Chapel in a very significant way. If you were unable to play all of your Actions, you are forced to trash good cards.

904

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: July 05, 2020, 03:48:55 am »

Gold Vein - Landmark
When scoring, 1 VP per Gold you have.

I think Gold Vein is well balanced in the set, it is as if your Golds were all gained by buying Wedding. What do you think?

Seems OK, you rarely want more than 5 or 6 Golds. The Landmarks don’t have to be of perfectly equal strength (averaged over all Kingdoms) anyway as players can choose.

905

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: July 04, 2020, 01:16:56 am »

This does not work. First player opens with this, puts the +1 Card on the village pile, thus makes the pile unattractive to token-ify for anybody else and can transform it into a level 3 City in the midgame.

As Fragasnap said, this is better than Pathfinding in 3 ways: cheaper, locks out other players, available at T1 which massively increases first player advantage. Utterly broken.

About the first problem, the adventure tokens are interesting because they imply a tradeoff between getting copies of the cards you want to improve and getting payload to buy the respective Event. This basically comes for free.

906

Rules Questions / Re: Competing for trashed Gold

« on: July 02, 2020, 03:50:24 pm »

Noble Brigand could just as easily set aside the cards, put it in limbo or whatever. I'd definitely not allow graverobbing if that funky edge case should ever arise in a real game as the thieving dude seems not like the kinda fella who would allow the graverobbing dude to take his loot.

Put that's just me valuing theme and common sense more than reading rules more literally than they were ever intended.

907

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 30, 2020, 01:34:00 pm »

The versions that Exile Horses are far too weak.

908

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 28, 2020, 12:16:59 pm »

+2 Cards and +2 Coins isn't that strong of a 5

Ehm, no:

"Highway:" This was "+2 Cards +$2," for $5. It was a solid card that I eventually decided not to do. It seemed strong and it's too easy to compare to other things. It had no special charm.

Source: The Continued Secret History of the Early Dominion Cards

909

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 28, 2020, 11:36:27 am »

A simple little card that gives slower strategies a bump in speed while allowing others to gain key cards or buy more expensive cards early. The o-play also contributes, and is intended to help out a money strategy so that avenue is also an option.

+2 Cards and 2 Coins is a strong $5 and this is hardly weaker.

910

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 27, 2020, 06:20:25 pm »

This looks very good precisely because, as you said, it is not as crazy as Peasant or Page. The only thing I do not like is the massive power jump from the $4 to the $5. One of the first 3 cards might get away with a slight buff, perhaps making one non-terminal.

911

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Threa

« on: June 26, 2020, 05:32:04 pm »

A player could simply mention "Curse" and that'd be annoying for the player who must collect them.

If there is a good source of extra Buys, Curse is actually a pretty bad choice (from the perspective of th choosing player, it is brilliant for the player for whom the choice is made) as it is a Tunnel sans Reaction for $0.

912

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 26, 2020, 08:00:44 am »

Simple Alt-VP support card that lifts all boats and thus makes all non-Province green slightly more attractive.

An alternative version would be: "When you gain a Victory card, +1."

913

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 26, 2020, 03:44:57 am »

I like this but it massively increases the first player advantage if there is a crap terminal in the Kingdom.

914

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 25, 2020, 12:33:19 pm »

Again, to avoid ambiguity, will set my entry as the following.

Gewgaw (Treasure, $5)

+$3
+1 Buy
---
When you gain this, gain 2 Trinkets.

This is strictly superior to cache.

So what? Cache is super-super-bad so it should not serve as a benchmark for anything. Banquet basically shows that $3 would be OK as a price for Cache (and you could argue that you more often want a $5 than Gold).

915

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 25, 2020, 03:44:18 am »

A natural buff to make it more Highway-like and create interactions with gainers is to play the Trinket, although that could very well make the card overpowered.

916

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 24, 2020, 01:37:07 am »

I think this should be $4 due to randomness. I would rather give more control to the player than change the price, though, because the benefits of the card can range from adding two more stop cards to your deck to essentially subtracting two stop cards with the horses. This is also hard to play when you want to draw your deck.

The randomness of the attack portion could also make it feel bad, especially in the uncommon case where the other player wants a Trinket. (Which is probably more common than wanting a Ruins or Curse.)

Stop cards is a bit of a disingenious term for one-shots and it is far from clear that those two Horses are superior to those 2 Spoils. The usefulness of either one-shot is highly situational and deck-dependent.
I agree that the card is a weak $5, but it obviously cannot cost $4 as the most likely option is a Ruins junker with the net effect of +2 Cards (which is weaker than Witch and Cultist but the latter is totally bonkers anyway and hardly the benchmark for anything so the effect is that of a weak $5).

This feels very weak to me. I don't think you usually want Trinkets in your deck, unlike Coffers which are almost strictly beneficial.

Well, an engine which yields 5 Buys and has enough draw power to draw into those Trinkets direly wants them as payload. But as the Buys come from a stop card in this instance, it is unlikely that such a situation can arise.

But in general, it is important to keep in ming that Trinkets are non-drawing Highways and potentially brilliant payload in an engine that yields enough Buys. That's the main point of it all, a Copper/Silver with Platinum potential.

917

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: A Dozen of Custom-made Cards

« on: June 24, 2020, 01:23:26 am »

Duality as Action-digging Village looks quite sound.

Mobsters can be read as a Fool's Gold variant. Looks far too expensive though, unless I am underestimating the last turn Capital tricks or in general the spike potential.

Statue looks fun and like a Menagerie Victory card (cards with variable costs like Destrier and Animal Fair make this shine).

I don't like the delaying of Tithe. It can easily be forgotten as it does not do anything on the second turn and it seems like a very unnatural nerf.

Stray Cat seems like a very weak one shot (if you count the net effects: Village and Workshop gaining Stray Cat = Hunting Grounds; obviously very weak)

Watchmaker is an interesting Lab variant and easily my favourite of the bunch . Probably not as good as Caravan or Advisor but $3 would obviously too cheap. And Lab variants always get quickly bought anyway so it is my eyes actually more of an asset than a liability that this is weaker than the other $4 Labs.

Science Grant is the best stab at the DoublePotion idea I ever saw. Sadly, it only works if Alchemist, Apothecary or Scrying Pool (i.e. either of the Lab variants from Alchemy) is in the Kingdom and never ever in any other Kingdom. That is too narrow and scripted for my taste.

918

Dominion Articles / Re: Sometimes you don't need to trash right away

« on: June 23, 2020, 05:35:11 pm »

It is not a binary but a tempo issue. Of course you should always trash but in the presence of sifters and drawers, you should trash slower than in their absence. It is elementary and more or less what you said in the article.

919

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 23, 2020, 02:42:14 am »

Way of the Magpie

Discard the top card of your deck. If it is a Treasure, gain a Trinket.

Gains you Trinkets when you want them, mostly.

Trinkets suck in money, they are natural engine pieces that profit from decks that consistently provide several Buys per turn.

920

Dominion Articles / Re: Sometimes you don't need to trash right away

« on: June 22, 2020, 04:13:23 pm »

Drawing and sifting are always partial substitutes for trashing, i.e. the presence and strength of drawers and sifters in a Kingdom decreases the relative strength of trashers.

921

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 19, 2020, 02:20:09 pm »

I just wanna say that Trinket is a brilliant design. Now you could argue that all Treasures are situationally good or bad. But this is one is even more sensitive, ranging in power between a Copper and a Platinum in megaturns.

922

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: A weird and likely terrible concept from a dream

« on: June 17, 2020, 09:46:41 am »

I would rather do it like in TTA (each player is building on an individually drafted Wonder) or the same as in TTA but symmetrically as it is always the case in Dominion (i.e. all players can build on the same Wonder, which is mechanically more sound but thematically awkward).
The resource compensation thing from the Civilization games (in Alpha Centauri you could switch production towards another Wonder) is unlikely to work well in Dominion, those wasted Buys and Coin are gonna hurt no matter what.

923

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 17, 2020, 04:34:20 am »

I'm changing mine up to better match the flavor/title

Larder • $5 • Action
+1 Action
Reveal cards from your deck until you reveal a card with an already revealed type.

+$1 per unique type revealed.

Put one of the revealed cards in your hand and discard the rest.
art: Adriaen von Utrecht / "the Pantry" via wikimedia commons. DFCv0.11

you know how when you get a little hungery and you go stand in front of the fridge with the door open, rummaging through to figure out what to snack on? That's what I'm trying to emulate here.

edit: also this might be horrifically underpriced when compared/contrasted with like, mystic.

It is a very cool idea but it might be too strong. Selecting one of the revealed cards would like already suffices to make this a Peddler+ at $5 but it might too often be a Double- or TriplePeddler. Hard to say in theory though.

924

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 16, 2020, 05:28:28 pm »

Maybe you don't play many multiplayer games IRL with casual players.

I mainly play 3P games. And none of us would ever Swindle one guy a Curse and another guy a Copper. That's simply irrational, it is a game and friendship has nothing to do with optimal play. I'd be insulted if a fellow player "gifted" me something in a game.
If fsome people behave like that, blame them and not the game.

925

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: A weird and likely terrible concept from a dream

« on: June 16, 2020, 12:23:35 pm »

Here's a mock-up of a simple concept, just a bunch of VP tokens.

That's obviously bad: you get the VPs of 2.5 Provinces while having to play less than you would have to pay for 2 Provinces and get to keep the VPs out of your deck.

You can only buy it once, so I made it better than average.

Tables specified that you can spend several Buys to work on a Wonder. Your card on the other seems to be intended to be just a straightforward Victory card.

You do't get the effect until completion, and I assume that, like projects, Wonders are only intended to be completed once. Project cubes could be used for this.

You still don't seem to get that it makes zero sense to ever skip this (unless there is a quick 3-pile) as it has a great VP/Coin ratio and does not junk your deck. That's why the card is strategically utterly boring.