First off, thanks again to everyone that entered. There were a great deal of high quality entries, and it pained me having to go through your creative cards with a fine tooth comb looking for reasons to avoid shortlisting them. If I sound dismissive or unappreciative in any of my feedback, please put it down to time constraints; I enjoyed reading every entry.
Needless to say, there's a limit to how well I can estimate the playability of entries without going to gambit05 playtesting lengths, and I apologise in advance for any margin of error on my part.
| user | entry name | Link | notes |
| pubby | Dolmen | http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=20714.msg864160#msg864160 | Nice entry from pubby: Dolmen asks how Dominion would differ with a victory card "stopper" under each supply pile. This makes an early 3-pile less likely, particularly in 2P where VCs are often looked down upon in favour of building. Posible downsides are the 4+ multiplayer swinginess of who randomly gets the first shot at each Dolmen, and in 2P we'd have to see whether a 13 card Province pile substantially increases the first player advantage |
| Aquila | Expedition Camp | http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=20714.msg864179#msg864179 | Resources are a cool addition; they're like spare parts for engine-crafting. The ability to check the second card when buying introduces a degree of luck, but helps get past the unwanted resources in a given game. Expedition camp is a cheap Outpost in the rare circumstances that you can set up the second turn, but more often than not looks to be a one-shot resource gainer. The lack of control over what resources you're gaining looks frustrating here, unless you're just playing a generic Action-based strategy. |
| gambit05 | Revenant | http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=20714.msg864183#msg864183 | Revenant brings those often taken for granted +Actions and +Buy to the table, in an often limited pile, with a one-shot card draw ability for the late game. I assume the modified pile size functions to bring the one-shot ability into play faster in small games, but I wouldn't expect this to pile in such games unless the actions or buy were valuable enough that you wouldn't wish to part with them. |
| X-tra | Institute + Grant | http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=20714.msg864189#msg864189 | Increasing the starting deck size is new to me; I'm a big fan of how this blows open the typical opening. These cards complement eachother well; institute is likely your go-to draw card in this action-sparse deck, and in a 4-4-4 split (27.5% odds) you could open 3 of them. For completeness, the other opening splits occur with probabilities: 5-4-3: 65.9%, 5-5-2: 6.6% My first thought was that grant is too harsh on anyone trying to build an engine; that said, I think there is potential for avid engine fans to trash their grants on the second shuffle where the pieces are present. This would certainly make for a memorable game. |
| Xen3k | Pigeon | http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=20714.msg864191#msg864191 | I enjoyed this card's flavour; pigeons are indeed the rats of the bird kingdom. The lonely pigeon is a self-gaining Copper, but collides to cantrip+silver. This walks the fine line of being an easily gained nuisance, without quite fully sabotaging your game. |
| mandioca15 | Stockade | http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=20714.msg864198#msg864198 | Interesting concept; as the game goes on, you could see this pile self-balancing. Having to return these from play when you start greening is a drawback, but more than made up for by the sheer amount of early/mid game draw. You'd likely let this do all your drawing while you build towards a three-pile, and it would do it easily; your first play of it could well be a full deck draw. This will all too often be an unskippable card in 2P, which makes it rather unfortunate if your opponent picks this up on a 5-2. I'm not sure how I'd balance this; but one thing you could consider is splitting the stacks into tiers, and drawing an amount depending on which tier the top card in the supply belongs to? Regardless, best of luck perfecting this idea. |
| fika monster | Ring Master + Circus Members | http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=20714.msg864216#msg864216 | This is fun; and appeals to my inner set-completionist. That said, I'm a little concerned by the power of the circus members; a 5-gainer is already rare at $5, but these cards, though limited, clearly transcend $5 value. Maybe Ring Master would enjoy costing more; or there could be another implementation for gaining circus members other than from a pile of gainers from which you'd only ever want one or two at most? Anyway, I look forward to seeing what you do with these guys. |
| infangthief | Florist | http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=20714.msg864219#msg864219 | Florist is a cantrip that gives you some control over the events pile from which it is gained. The idea certainly works, and I agree with the decisions made to avoid swinginess. With this card, either the top flower is useful and the card is gained organically, or a lower flower is game-changing and encourages buying a Florist directly. Either way though, I'm not convinced this adds enough to the game. |
| majiponi | Devil’s advocate (+ Reverse Hierarchy) | http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=20714.msg864286#msg864286 | Devil's advocate asks whether you prefer cash or trash, and how much you mind giving the next player the trashier version of the card. I think there are a lot of situations in 2P where you simply don't ever buy this first. |
| mxdata | Distant Island | http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=20714.msg864288#msg864288 | Distant Island is a strong precursor for any players looking to start greening. For the extra coin, it significantly beats Island in that it requires less draw and actions to perform its task. You would only ever buy Duchy in preference ot this if the game were ending, or you couldn't manage deck control. I feel sorry for Duchy in games with this. |
| NoMoreFun | Key to the City | http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=20714.msg864291#msg864291 | Key to the City takes the existing Key concept and runs with it. Depending on how awkward it is to pick up a $2, you may find yourself trying to get this in early, or just fighting it when your opponent gets one into play. Could be stalematey when both players have one in deck. Constantly having to empty the pile to thwart your opponents' key could be tedious. |
| faust | Tulip + Rare Tulip | http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=20714.msg864292#msg864292 | Tulip is sort of a Spoils that gains you a Rare Tulip. The interaction here is pretty neat; if one plays with these and then draws their whole deck with the tulip pile low, they can potentially buy out tulips, draw one in with rare tulip, play a tulip, buy a tulip, play a rare tulip... to duplicate their rare tulips at a price of -$1. Is this worthwhile? Probably, particularly if you can prevent the Tulips from returning to the supply. |
| silverspawn | Missionary | http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=20714.msg864307#msg864307 | Missionary asks the question "how much do you love terminal card draw?". Naturally this depends on whether there are villages in the kingdom. In most cases there are, and having your draw buy itself is difficult to turn down, even if the uncontested pile would end up gaining you 20. |
| grep | Army of the Dead | http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=20714.msg864341#msg864341 | This looks entertaining. $8@8 seems a reasonable price for this project if you can spike it first. The first mover advantage on it could be considered swingy mind. |
| Gubump | Developing City | http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=20714.msg864387#msg864387 | This is an interesting card, and I think I also prefer the updated version. Developing City is kind of a one-shot Lost City, with the option to sacrifice another action for two of itself. Coupled with a workshop variant, this can be a deferred Lost City, plus any WV perks granted, or at least until either pile runs dry. I like it. |
| emtzalex | Astrologer + Zodiac pile | http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=20714.msg864436#msg864436 | Astrologer is an interesting card to consider. With few enough in your opponents' hands, you may be able to build around them becoming one of the later effects, but such a strategy would require a lot of profitless setup, and could easily fall apart. More likely, you and your opponent would only buy some to take advantage of the early village zodiacs, and an underterminaled turn could still then see a player ruin them for everyone. Perhaps these are best spammed with gainers, and cycled to the nearest useful non-terminal option. |
| The Alchemist | Air + Water + Earth + Fire | http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=20714.msg864457#msg864457 | This is a novel idea, and does a good job matching elements to effects. The effects are generally pretty strong, though as you say, some more essential than others, depending on the kingdom. Earth seems the most likely to be a dead card, and players have little incentive to remove dead cards from atop the pile. |
| DunnoItAll | Mice | http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=20714.msg864698#msg864698 | Mice feels like a deceptively weak-looking card. Opening with two of these, one could reasonably expect to gain another two T3, and gaining two mice or being in the money from there on out. Throwing in a trasher might be worthwhile, but I would expect a monolithic mice deck to be pretty happy greening in no time. I appreciate this quick analysis probably pales in comparison to your playtesting; it would be fun to see how this played out in your games. |
| spineflu | Gentry | http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=20714.msg864481#msg864481 | This works for sure; a card similar to Great Hall, but more malleable to available draw/actions. Groom aficionados will be ecstatic to work their way through 16 of these. Gentry is fine. |
| spheremonk | Caravel + Carrack | http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=20714.msg864522#msg864522 | This is cute. Caravel is an expensive peddler variant that becomes easily worth the investment if you can collide them for Carracks. A good card, up against strong competition. |
| Timinou | Rabbit | http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=20714.msg864570#msg864570 | Rabbit takes a little unrewarded investment to get started, but evens out once you can make a pair collide. With the use of throne room variants, you can milk a huge amount of value out of these, but otherwise these are a fairly static payload. I'm not fully convinced the gaining effect justifies the pile size tweak, but I appreciate the effort. |
Congrats Xen3k! Your scourge of a card nosed out in front of the competition for the novel way in which it unassumingly creates chaos, while creatively taking to the challenge requirement of varying a pile/deck size.
