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51

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #182: I Choose Nothing

« on: March 22, 2023, 11:45:31 pm »

Considering playing the Estate is the equivalent of playing a single Village, maybe there are games where you'd rather trash said Estates and use Sanctum as an expensive Great Hall for scoring extra.

It's the equivalent of playing a Village and a Laboratory (assuming that the Estate would otherwise sit irrelevant in your hand). Which, to me, makes this too strong for (but too weak for ).

When I play a Smithy-inherited Estate with Sanctum, do I get both cantrip and +3 Cards?

As worded I think you would - it's Sanctum giving you the cantrip as a reward for playing the Estate. I think you draw the smithy cards first then get the cantrip.

52

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #182: I Choose Nothing

« on: March 21, 2023, 11:19:53 pm »

Burrow
Action - $3
+1 Card
Choose one: Trash a card from your hand for +1 Action per $1 it costs; or you may return a card from the trash to its pile to gain a card costing up to $2 more than it.

53

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #181: Building a Better Harem

« on: March 10, 2023, 02:52:52 am »

Portrait
Treasure/Victory - $5
+$2
+1 Villager
_______________
Worth 2VP if you have 4 or more Villagers

54

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #180: Pay the Iron Price

« on: March 01, 2023, 10:57:25 pm »

Heist
Action - $5
Gain and play a Loot. Each other player may gain a Gold.

Circlet
Action/Treasure/Loot - $7
+1 Buy
Choose one: +3 Cards or +$3

55

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #179: Dominion reaction video!!! #4 will SHOCK you

« on: February 21, 2023, 10:09:31 pm »

Bunker
Action/Reaction - $3
+2 Actions
Discard any number of cards from your hand to draw that many
____________
When any player gains or plays an Attack, you may set this and any number of cards from your hand aside. Return them to your hand at the start of your next turn.

56

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Revised versions of published cards

« on: February 14, 2023, 10:19:55 pm »

Along the lines of other revisions to Cantrips that then deal with the top of the deck, and with a card that could use a buff.

Cartographer
Action - $5
+1 Action
Look at the top 5 cards of your deck. Put one in your hand, discard any number of the others, and put the rest back.

Also looks neat alongside Raze, Border Guard and Miller (Cost = Number of Cards revealed)

57

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #178: Another Person's Treasure

« on: February 11, 2023, 03:38:06 am »

Patent
Treasure/Duration - $5
Gain and set aside a non-Duration Action. At the start of your next turn, play it. Until then, each other player may play the set aside action at the start of their turn, leaving it there.

58

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #177: Groundhog Day

« on: February 05, 2023, 03:35:18 pm »

Recur
Action/Duration - $4
+1 Card
+1 Action
You may set aside an Action or Treasure from your hand. Gain a card costing up to $1 more than it. At the start of your next turn, play the set aside card.

You try to Upgrade a card, and it works, but the card comes back the next day.

59

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Imagining Dominion without Curses

« on: January 31, 2023, 11:29:28 pm »

I like how Curses are in the supply so it's one pile easier to end a slog game. The card that made it problematic, IGG, is gone now.

60

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Fan Mechanics Week 55: Jewelry

« on: January 31, 2023, 01:56:32 am »

Charm Bracelet: I like the premise and it's a good play on the mechanic - you're more likely to gain a stronger card after you buy, but it's less useful. Unfortunately with being able to play Treasures, this can pile itself out at any time. Would be better if it was just limited to Actions, or "gain a card costing less than the last card you gained".

Broach: I think it would be more interesting just with the villager effect. For the second choice something better would have been something relating to Villagers (e.g. you may pay Villagers for $1). As it stands, it can gain $5 cards (and a Silver), and possibly do more than that. Figurine is a $5 card just for +2 cards so even something like gaining a Moat (in your Buy phase) with this would be very powerful.

Circlet: With its reaction, it's not particularly hard to buy 2 silvers and then get a province. It is right to cost $7 but even then a bit too strong and not in an interesting way, I think there's the makings of an interesting concept here - +$X per Silver/Gold/Both you gained this turn is a good Jewelry mechanic. But not really suited to this power level.


Witchstone: This fits in very, very, nicely with all the midgame cursers that seem to be popping up in official sets a lot lately. The opportunity cost for cursing gets lower as the game goes on (buy your own junk -> forgo playing a decent card -> free cursing while you Green), just as the power of cursing goes down. Choosing this contest was worth it for this design. Gold star!


Winner: Witchstone
Runner Up: Circlet

61

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Fan Mechanics Week 55: Jewelry

« on: January 29, 2023, 07:34:00 pm »

I guess Jewelry isn't getting a lot of love; not many submissions. I still think it's an interesting concept.  It really is sort of a different phase in between the Night phase and buying your first thing, since you can't play Treasures. I like that it uses that space.

I guess the problem is that it is pretty narrow design space. You need resources that you can still use in your Buy phase because otherwise you could implement it as Night, hence all Jewelry cards produce Coins and Buys. You also need to care about stuff that happened during the Buy phase, because otherwise you could implement it as normal Treasure.

I chose this contest as I thought with all the card shaped things allowing you to play Actions in your "buy after treasures" phase that there'd be some design space for cards specifically designed to do that. Particularly frustrated by Sheepdog, Trail etc. worthlessly drawing cards in the buy phase. It's true that a lot of the designs that don't involve $ and buy would be fine as night cards, though I think anything involving playing a card after you buy it is better suited to Jewelry than Night Cards to make $ and buy worthwhile.

Anyway,

24 hour warning

62

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Revised versions of published cards

« on: January 29, 2023, 07:16:14 pm »

I thought there was some sort of mistake with Figurine and Longship being $5s. Figurine has proven itself as a solid $5 to me, and it's retroactively made me see Scepter and Capitalism as a lot stronger.

Jury's still out on Longship for me.

63

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Revised versions of published cards

« on: January 29, 2023, 01:11:26 am »

I don't mind a bit of randomness (I like Boons and Loots), but I think Ruins are too similar in function to Curses, and I don't like Hexes for various reasons. Meanwhile I really like the Snow and Idle Hands fan mechanics, as de facto "-1 Card" and "-1 Action" junk respectively, and think they could work to fix up a few cards.

Ruins
Action - $3*
+1 Action
Return this to its pile

Hex
Action - $3*
+1 Card
Return this to its pile

So when a card says "Receive a Hex", instead of the random negative effect, you gain a Hex ("Idle Hands"). New versions of the Doom cards would say "Gain a Hex" (and not have the Doom type), but there'd be rulebook to say that "receive" is the same as "gain".

I picked it this way around because I think it's more interesting with Cursed Village and Tormentor, but maybe the other way around works better.

This is all part of a "3rd editions" project - a way to "update" cards without replacing them. For Dark Ages it makes Death Cart stronger and Cultist/Marauder much weaker but I think they still work.

64

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #176 - Game Changer

« on: January 27, 2023, 06:47:57 am »

Bookkeeper
Action - $4
Draw until you have 7 cards in hand
___________
In games using this, don't discard Actions and Treasures from your hand during Clean-Up (reveal your hand before you discard).

Rules clarification: You still draw 5 cards for your new hand in Clean-Up. Basically if you don't play an Action or Treasure, you get to "Save" it to your next hand for free. This is not optional.

Note: The new wording for Patron only gives you Coffers during an Action phase.

65

Dominion General Discussion / Well designed cards

« on: January 27, 2023, 05:15:41 am »

Going to go for a bit of positivity. Post card (shaped things) that you really like.

Abundance: If you don't play it smart it's basically a workshop (early game gives you $3 after an Action, late game you arbitrarily buy Actions to activate it), but given its clear power it really encourages you to find strategies to make it count, such as by stacking. Sometimes they're no brainers (e.g. when Supplies is on the board) but generally it's more interesting especially considering you can trigger it before you really want to.

Witch's Hut: I initially thought the Attack was just thrown in as compensation for drawing the cards dead, because discarding 2 actions is such a high cost, right? Turns out there are lots of ways to consistently trigger the Attack in a well thought out strategy and it's fun to get there. Powerful with Big Money but the attack is too tantalising to resist so games with Witch's Hut usually end up interesting.

Cauldron: Similar to the above, I like the effort you need to put in to curse with this, either by lining up Cauldrons or gaining Actions at other times during your turn. It's really rewarding to pull off.

Grotto: Did Donald X learn nothing from the clunkiness of Research? This card is clearly worse than Cellar, right? Turns out, there's a really interesting design space in making cards miss the reshuffle. A really good "teacher card".

Stowaway: Lots of good ways to make use of its effect, even in games where it's the only Duration. i always like seeing it on the board, but it doesn't feel too powerful.

Replace: Especially compared to the card it... replaced (Saboteur is best forgotten). Just the perfect card for the likely first expansion people buy - it's Remodel, but has a few interesting tricks up it's sleeve. In playing with it, you end up realising more about what good old Remodel from the base set can do.

War Chest: My other favourite of the direct replacements. Amazing how such a simple tweak on the same mechanic can go from a card you regret buying to something very fun as you try to determine what card it is your opponent really wants. Really good non-attack interactivity.

Magnate: Other strengths of the replacements keep coming to mind. This card has all the fun of Counting House and Coppersmith in terms of seeming like it can be super powerful, but actually taking a bit of work to make work. But it feels far less luck based. A card where being situational feels very intentional and I want to see more like it. Also perfect for the theme of Prosperity.

66

Variants and Fan Cards / Fan Mechanics Week 55: Jewelry

« on: January 23, 2023, 06:57:26 pm »

For this contest, design a card with the Jewelry type (originally posted by Scolapasta in the Week 61 WDC)

My entry for this week is a new Treasure subtype: Jewelry:

Normally your buy phase consists of of two sub phases: First, play your treasure cards (spend coffer, pay off debt); second, buy card(s) (or event(s), or project(s))

Treasure-Jewelry cards are are cards you can play any time during your buy phase. Frequently, they will care about what or how many cards you have bought.

Examples:

In my view, "Jewelry" is the type that allows you to play things during your buy phase precisely after you've bought a card. So you could technically do a pure Jewelry (can't play until you've bought a card), or an Action-Jewelry. Of note is the phase is still called your Buy phase, even though there's two distinctive parts to it.

Scolapasta's examples were all Treasure-Jewelry and in my view those are the most interesting designs and are the least likely to avoid confusion. But I won't rule out other interesting designs. If the answer to "Could this have just been a Treasure" or "Could this have just been a night card" is yes, then it won't do too well in judging.

I have a template here

67

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Fan Mechanics Week 54: At the Border

« on: January 23, 2023, 06:34:46 pm »

Thank you Aquila for judging and apologies for missing the judging. I will post a new contest shortly.

68

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Plunder Card Power Levels First Impressions

« on: January 23, 2023, 05:47:09 am »

I didn't get around to voting, but it's interesting how weak people are ranking Fortune Hunter.

It's very often at least a Terminal Gold and it has a few other tricks up its sleeve. It's also likely to come up in people's experiences in "extra plunder" games, giving it more Treasures to interact with. That's setting it up to be seen as very strong, and I thought Terminal Gold was already considered too good for $4. So it's very interesting that even in first impressions something similar to it in power isn't really impressing anybody.

I wonder how strong a Terminal Gold actually is.

I think it is a simple matter. LastFootnote has argued that Adventurer is a $2, i.e. digging for Treasure is not better than drawing. So Fortune Hunter is similar to +2 Coins, +1 Card which is weaker than Smithy. Smithy is a strong $4, so Fortune Hunter is a weak $4.

That sounds like something I would say, but Fortune Hunter is different from Adventurer in a lot of important ways. Adventurer's base value is +$2, and you have to work pretty hard to make it reliably better. Fortune Hunter's base value is +$3. It can whiff more easily than Adventurer, but it's still not likely to in the kind of deck where you want it. But perhaps equally important, Fortune Hunter puts the other cards back instead of discarding them. So it's effectively pulling a Copper out of your next hand (or next draw if you didn't play it at the end of your Action phase). That's usually a pretty nice side benefit. Also, Fortune Hunter sometimes lets you choose between different Treasures, and you can smooth out your money a bit that way. You can even opt not to play any of the Treasures! With Adventurer you're stuck with whatever you get.

That's good for hitting precise price points the way Courtyard-BM and Gear-BM is. It's too bad the simulation forum is dead as I'd like to see how it compares to other BM strategies.

69

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Plunder Card Power Levels First Impressions

« on: January 20, 2023, 01:10:48 pm »

I wonder how strong a Terminal Gold actually is.

Well, strictly worse than Treasurer, so it couldn't be priced at $5 or higher. Could well be in the sour spot where it's too strong at $4 and too weak at $5.

That's what I thought, but now I'm less sure. I think we would have said the same thing about +3 Cards if Smithy didn't exist.

70

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Plunder Card Power Levels First Impressions

« on: January 20, 2023, 10:22:56 am »

I didn't get around to voting, but it's interesting how weak people are ranking Fortune Hunter.

It's very often at least a Terminal Gold and it has a few other tricks up its sleeve. It's also likely to come up in people's experiences in "extra plunder" games, giving it more Treasures to interact with. That's setting it up to be seen as very strong, and I thought Terminal Gold was already considered too good for $4. So it's very interesting that even in first impressions something similar to it in power isn't really impressing anybody.

I wonder how strong a Terminal Gold actually is.

71

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: More Ruins - Post your ideas too

« on: January 20, 2023, 09:42:58 am »

This is a blast from the past!

I'm not really fond of Ruins any more. Cultist and Marauder don't feel very different to cursers. Death Cart is neat in the way that it can trash both the junk it comes with and Actions but I wonder if it would have worked with "trash an Action or a Curse". There's some interesting interactions with Ways and cards that assume Actions are valuable (e.g. Siren, Advance), and games where you are very happy to have a Ruined Market.  But not really worth the 50 cards in Dark Ages it takes up.

I think the fan mechanics "Snow" (oneshot +1 Action) and "Idle Hands" (oneshot +1 Card) are more interesting versions of what Ruins was trying to do. They're weaker but that leads to more interesting designs with the cards, and they still have the fun of Action junk.

If I was making a 2nd edition of Dark Ages. I'd remove Ruins as we know it and replace it with a pile of oneshot "+2 Actions", or maybe one of Snow/Idle Hands, which aren't in the supply. I'd still call it "Ruins" (in the card name) so existing cards can stay though theyd lose the "Looter" type. I think Death Cart stays but Cultist and Marauder are best gone (but maybe they'd be fine with weaker "Ruins").  People would accuse me of living up to my username but that frees up room in the box (you probably wouldn't need 50 of the new Ruins) and I would like to see Events etc. in Dark Ages with all the non-supply cards.

72

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #175 - Super Expensive

« on: January 20, 2023, 12:33:56 am »

Metropolis
Action - $10
+3 Actions
+3 Cards
+3 Buys
You may trash up to 3 cards from your hand.

73

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Fan Mechanics Week 54: At the Border

« on: January 15, 2023, 01:29:35 am »

IMO this should have a type as it impacts the game whether you buy a relevant card or not, so it has "in games using this" rules.

Anyway, my entry (no extra type included).

Infiltrate
Action - $5
Trash a card from your hand. You may play an Action from your Border twice

It's a Throne Room that can also trash if it misses an Action, expedite an Action you gained this turn, or salvage one you trashed earlier (for benefit?).

74

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #174: Back to the Future

« on: January 14, 2023, 09:33:50 pm »

Donald X: Don't make silver+ power level cards costing 4$ or less, they're too good.
Community: k
Donald X: here's Patron lol
Community: oh yeah look at what we got

Why do people always name Patron as the first official Silver+ for $4. Conclave came first.

Arguably it started with Delve. You never buy "Silver" in Delve games. But Silver is still ending up in your deck.

Conclave is terminal if you don't have differently named cards to play with it.  A hand with 2 conclaves and no other actions, you would rather have a Silver.

Patron can be drawn dead.

Gondola is the first true example of a strict Silver+ for $4, although there are reasons you might still end up getting Silver in games with Gondola (Silver gainers, avoiding opponent Stowaway triggers).

The rule made sense because it wasn't strategically interesting to have Silver+ on the board. When you have $4 and it isn't really a decision whether to buy Silver or the Silver+, so  in a way it's a waste of a slot. I don't think Drachma has that problem - it plays differently and you'll be thinking about shuffles and so forth.

75

Dominion General Discussion / Re: An Opinion on the 3 New Revisions (Seaside, Prosperity, Hinterlands)

« on: January 13, 2023, 03:58:09 pm »

I think Stowaway would have been better than Sailor for Seaside. It's no more complex than Pirate, and has the fun of interacting with Durations.

Sailor is lots of fun though. Having a few cards you don't like playing with because they're too complex is better than 1E where there are cards you don't like playing with because they're bad, meaningless, or slow the game to a crawl.