- Duchess: I see no synergy between special thing and ability.
- Forum: +buy when you buy Forum looks like something for a card you’d want to spam, like Herald. But would you spam Forum as is? Would’ve seemed fun with something like Fisherman.
- Silk merchant
- Changeling
- Messenger
- Catacombs
- Debt-cost cards: I feel like you’d make a card’s cost debt-only if you want players to be able to buy them on any turn. Do Engineer/Overlord/Royal blacksmith/City quarter have the perfect abilities for this purpose? Why couldn’t they have cost normal dollars?
- Mechanical link between hermit/madman, pixie/goat, fool/lucky coin, secret cave/magic lamp (while Pasture has a logical link with Shepherd)?
- Night ability on Werewolf
Were the special things on these cards put there and not elsewhere "because they had to be on some card" or for some divine, perfectly logical reason?
Sometimes I have a below-the-line ability as a premise, and then there has to be a top, and the top just has to be simple enough to fit the bottom. There is not always a connection; there isn't always any possibility of a connection.
- Duchess: No connection. It just had to be weak enough to not buy much normally (but didn't need to be as weak as it is).
- Forum: The card had to be worth picking up with the extra $, and not too cheap.
- Silk merchant: No connection, beyond, it wanted to be terminal.
- Changeling: Flavor connection.
- Messenger: No connection.
- Catacombs: No connection.
- Debt-cost cards: Engineer costs debt so you can't gain Engineers with it. Overlord costs debt so it can't ever play itself. Royal Blacksmith and City Quarter are trying to cost a lot of debt, and to make that work, they had to have abilities that you wouldn't want turn one. So Royal Blacksmith punishes you for having Coppers, and City Quarter depends on you having a bunch of Actions. They could have had normal costs... but, the entire idea was to have debt. People loved debt so that all worked out, it's okay that I made cards with debt costs.
- Hermit/Madman is just flavor. Madman had to be hard to get to not be a problem, so it's hard to get (and still strong). Goat is paired with Pixie so that hitting Flame's Gift with Pixie isn't game-winning. Lucky Coin is paired with Fool in order to speed up a game slowed down by "get 3 boons." Secret Cave is just what Magic Lamp wants to see, a cheap cantrip duration card. The Secret Cave is in play on two turns to help cracking Lamp, it's a cantrip to help you play another card with it, it's cheap so you can get it easily.
- The whole premise of Werewolf was an action card that could also be played at Night. It very specifically wanted to be a smithy, so you would draw them dead and then hey, they aren't dead. Action-Night suggested a Werewolf, and then a Werewolf has to attack, so the Night part attacks.