This time around, I’ll just reply to parts of Donald X.’s secret history with whatever I can think of to say. I’m also throwing out a swearing warning (even though if you’re on the internet you probably don’t mind reading swear words every now and then?)
We were playtesting Moon Colony Bloodbath, and man, it was done. We had to somehow move on, stop playing that game. Time for another Dominion expansion.
Rising Sun started in May 2023, just before the end of MCB (and Cornucopia/Guilds 2E). The last major change in Rising Sun was in November. Despite that, the expansion only just came out, man.
The story I have to tell now because it didn’t fit anywhere else, is that before TGG programmed the cards (in early July 2023), I played some on Tabletop Simulator. I played five 3-player games on it. I won 3 of them; the 2 games I lost, uh I was player 3, I blame that.
I'd had it on my mind to do a feudal Japan expansion. I'd been worried maybe there weren't enough good card names for it, but there were plenty. There was some concern that we needed to not offend Japanese people, and well that seemed as easy as just having Japanese artists. It was going to be all Japanese artists, then it was going to be mostly Japanese artists. We had trouble getting art in and well there are some pieces by Japanese artists.
In the first images of the set, the +Sun icon was the sunrise emoji on Discord. LastFootnote immediately brought up that a rising sun picture could be offensive. The set was also gonna be called Dominion: Japan, but no one liked that. Further research indicates that it’s just the Rising Sun flag that’s offensive, not necessarily the word pairing, and now that’s the name of the set. It had to communicate Japan without saying Japan.
People wonder why it's +1 Sun and not -1 Sun; man, we wondered too. There's no deep story there; +1/-1 was better than words, and +1 felt better than -1 (and also better than just a sun, with no +/-1 next to it). Many opinions were collected and it ended up +1 Sun.
I was the first to ask why it was +Sun and not -Sun. The idea was that it’s advancing time. I will quickly mention 2 other rejected ideas
* just a sun, no + or -. the concern was, it didn’t look like it was part of the card’s instructions
* instead of putting “remove a token from the prophecy” on the cards, put it in the rulebook instead. somehow no one liked this
Shadow: I wanted some very Japan-specific flavor on some cards, and to make it feel like a good fit, like I didn't just use the names. Ninja was a particularly difficult one. What would feel like a Ninja? I tried several things. Some spun off into other cards, but didn't feel Ninja-y enough. Finally I had this card you could play from your deck. Oh man. Perfect. So Ninja. Then JNails was complaining about Ninja, saying how he liked it except for the attack part, and while I wasn't taking off the attack, I thought, man I could make more of these. And soon I had five. So somehow this is the set with five cards with unique backs.
Even though debt and prophecies were in on day 1, the modern version of Ninja showed up in August. If you were wondering why there were “only” five that’s because the mechanic showed up super late (late August).
Artist: The first version cost $5. It was like that for a while. Also it triggered on the Action being played - you wanted to lead with Artist, then play your unique Actions. It flirted with having a Horse-friendly wording, but c'mon. Well it matters so much if you draw that Artist in your initial hand. I flipped it to wanting the actions already in play in order to improve gameplay, and charged 8D for that version, and that worked out. A late change was counting all cards rather than just actions, since that seemed simpler.
Artist started as “This turn, after each Action card you play, if you have exactly one copy of it in play, +1 Card.” It was nuts (especially since there was also that double-Scheme card). Plus the old version was confusing with Throne Room and stuff (Throne an Artist, that draws 1 card, then 2 cards, then 2 cards). I did suggest it could be a prophecy but at the time there were already other Pathfinding prophecies (oops they died later on).
Change: The initial card didn't have the "no D" clause. So you'd just go nuts with Changes, piling up debt you were never going to pay off. The "no D" clause solved this perfectly. A few players complained that they couldn't Remodel with this much because you know, they'd be in debt from the last one or something. And I mean for me that's just part of the overall package, it's a delightful card that yes may not just quickly Remodel all of your Estates, but hey can turn them into anything more expensive.
Change was a major push towards changing the debt rules so you can pay them off any time. For some reason Kevin didn’t like it. I also remember JNails endlessly crapping on this card, and not just because Root Cellar messes with it (e.g. can’t go Estate->$2, or Gold->$5).
Daimyo: The initial idea was a cantrip Throne Room for 8D. It's too confusing when used on itself, and also too powerful when used on itself. We know how to Throne Thrones, we'd get that part right; but I personally had endless trouble remembering all of the draws you get in the middle of other things happening. The fix was to make it a Flagship. It can't play itself, and it's just overall simpler and fairer, while also being nicely different from Flagship.
Here was when Donald X. realized that cantrip Throne Room was no good:
So. I played big Daimyo chains. I did not play them correctly. That is because this cool cool card is fucked up. It is so hard to remember to draw the extra card. It is even harder to remember there's an extra action lurking in there - not the regular Daimyo action, the one you got from Daimyo Daimyo. One way or another I should fix this, utterly screwing over this cool cool card that is simply too fucked up. I'm a big fan otherwise. I'm not sure that "you can't play Daimyos" is the fix, because you will now endlessly draw Daimyo Daimyo with nothing else and "I hate this card, kill it already." Possibly it just wants to somehow not give you the +1 Card and +1 Action when they're impossible to remember. Man I can't fix it in this paragraph but this is an issue.
(Donald X. did ask Sir Martin if they wanted to try a Daimyo that banned playing Daimyos, and the response was “fuck no.”)
Your comments of “I put Pathfinding on Throne Room all the time” and “Donald X. can do Mastermind chains but not this?” and “how did First Mate get printed” aren’t going work by the way. I think I suggested “Throne a card costing $4 or less” and “if you played this from your hand, +1 Card and +1 Action. either way, Throne Room” but they were both rejected.
Also originally this didn’t say “afterwards.” I remembered back during Plunder previews that Jeebus was sad that Flagship didn’t say “afterwards,” and I made Donald X. add it in (I’m there for you Jeebus). This was then followed by a conversation between “afterward” and “afterwards” (because that’s what happens when JNails is a playtester).
Kitsune: The first Omen. Initially it could gain a cheaper card; that was too good, so it only gains Silvers there.
The reason why Kitsune couldn’t have a Workshop option is because you instantly empty Curses and some cantrip and then the game is ending. Spoilers, another card in this same expansion also had the same issue.
Mountain Shrine: At first it cared if you'd personally trashed an Action this game. Also it had no +Sun and cost $4. Then it cost 5D, then gained the +Sun. It was like that for a while. Caring about Actions in the trash very mildly upped the player interaction in the set, while getting rid of the no-tracking situation.
As you may have gathered from other parts of the secret history, there was gonna be a theme of permanent upgrades that you’d have magically track (now it’s just on Kintsugi). The old version of Mountain Shrine had the gameplay of, trash an action as soon as you can. The current version is more of a game of chicken (don’t trash one of your actions or else you’ll activate everyone’s).
Ninja: I went through lots of ideas, trying to find something that worked and also felt even a tiny bit like a Ninja. Many of the ideas were not so Ninja-like, but did I mention that working was also important? It was always a Militia. The first version had two optional +1 Cards, and let you look at your top card any time in games using it. Then you had to gain a Ninja to turn on the peeking for the rest of the game (yes without tracking, ala Kintsugi), and it was just one optional +2 Cards. You know - optional because hey maybe when you peek at the top, you won't want to draw it somehow. Then instead of getting screwed if you didn't draw, it was your choice, +$2 or +2 Cards. I feel like that one hung around for a while. Then the bottom changed to, once gained, you could use Action plays as Buys and vice-versa. That turned into that part of Flourishing Trade. I should mention, a bunch of these Ninjas cost 5D. Then there was a Ninja that... did something I may still make some new card do. It was cool but needed work and maybe wanted to be an Event and then didn't get to be an Event, while meanwhile Ninja looked for other stuff to do. Then briefly, a Reaction Ninja that gave you +1 Card if it was revealed, ala Patron. Then a version that you put on the bottom of your deck, and could play from there as if in your hand. Wait, we got there. It got a special card back and then turned into the whole suite of Shadow cards. Which changed to let you play the card from anywhere in your deck, so you weren't worrying too much about the order when you had multiple Shadow cards. And then I moved the shuffling text to the card back, because Ninja in particular was cramped for space. And also, I finally changed it to costing $4 instead of 5D. That was just much better; in general debt costs are problematic.
The peeking Ninja had the built-in function of being able to trigger shuffles any time your deck is empty. Kind of a nightmare for online versions, and TGG never implemented it.
You didn’t expect Fated to cause rules questions, but I’m here to tell you that it does. It doesn’t work with Patron Ninja because you can reveal it when shuffling, and then what happens with +1 Card? We never figured that out, the card died after that.
Donald X. considered having it so you can reposition Ninja in your deck whenever you wanted to. Again a nightmare for the online versions. Ingix suggested that it can go on the bottom and you can play it from your deck. It was awesome, well done Ingix.
The 5D Ninja was fun with the shadow part but there were bad times. On 5/2 you can open this and Ninja, and there were some games where the other player could never hit $5 once. Also you could open double Ninja, which JNails described as “a real "fuck you, im not hitting 5 and neither are you.” The times where double Ninja was a bad open though, man the game invites you to do it and then you spend the game having no economy and getting attacked by other players and doing nothing.
Rice: This first tried "+$1 per different cost among Actions you have in play." It quickly switched to types, which I'd tried out at the same time but on Samurai. For a while it cost 7D and had +1 Buy and was trouble. Too often you wanted all of these. It had bad debt-cost gameplay. I upped it to 8D. We tried it at 9D briefly. I dropped the +Buy and it played a lot better. I tried a $4 one-shot version with the +Buy and liked it but it was very narrow. And I tried a version that cost $7 and had the +Buy and there it is.
The Samurai at the time cared about types and was a Moat instead of an attack. At the time I mentioned that the set was on pace to be incredibly oppressive (Ninja, Kitsune, Jito, some of the prophecies, and Samurai and Snake Witch were on the names list). I tend to enjoy getting beat up by the game (as long as I have the chance to fight back), but I recognize that there are people that won’t.
I remember that Sir Martin always hated Rice because uh it cares about types. They’re also the same person who hates Patron. The one-shot version was sometimes cool but basically unplayable without other gains. Also it needed a wording to not go infinite with Gamble.
Rice Broker: The initial idea was trash-for-benefit that gave you +2 Cards and +1D per $1 the trashed card cost. A giant hand of cards, but well, some debt too. It was nuts. Then I had one that trashed two cards, one for +Cards and one for +Actions. I don't like to do much trash-2-cards at $5 these days, plus it was strong and also uh you know sometimes you had to eat good cards for +Actions but only needed +1 Action and it just didn't feel as good as I wanted. So what could I get out of this card? What I wanted really was something like Apprentice, only different. So the final idea was, make it better at trashing Coppers, worse at trashing Estates, and shift it from liking trashing Golds to liking trashing Actions. And there it is.
I never got to try the +D version but Donald X. was constantly saying it was nuts and I believe that. I got to try the +Cards +Actions one and it was also nuts (especially for 5/2).
Riverboat: The initial idea was a card that set aside 2 unused $5's, and when you played it you got your choice of the $5's to play. It cost 6D and then 7D and well. Debt costs are problematic. I'll tell that story here. See, like, well first of all it didn't fail to be useful turn one, like e.g. City Quarter and Daimyo cleverly do. So you'd open with it. Hey you'd open with two of them. Lots of times one of the effects was worth it. The gameplay is not great there. But also, once you start wanting a debt card, well you can buy it every turn. And the game pushes you to. You pay off debt from the last one, damn you only have $2. What can you buy with $2? Hey - what about another one of these debt cards? This gameplay sucks. The set always leaned on on-play debt, but it had more debt-cost stuff and lost some. So anyway! I was not thrilled with this card. I tried a cost $4, gives +1D on-play; that's better, but because you're focused on picking which $5 to do, it's easy to forget to take your +1D. I had other ideas too though, and also tried a $3, sets aside just one card, plays it next turn. And hey that's Riverboat. It's simpler than the original and doesn't have debt-cost issues or the remembering issue. Then Billy suggested that it didn't have to be a Command card, and well, it did seem like it didn't have to be, so it isn't. The loops aren't a problem when you have to wait a turn for each iteration. Many moons later, I realized that Matt had proposed a similar card as a fix for a Trait that turned a card into a Duration card.
Lemme tell you about the old version (called Brothers). I hated it! It was my pick for least favorite card in the set (guess what JNails’s was). If even one of the $5’s was a strong trasher (Recruiter, Sentry, etc) you just open 2 Brothers immediately. The $4 version was better but I still wasn’t the biggest fan. Riverboat was easily the best version.
Ronin: The first thing in this slot was an attack that made other players topdeck VP or Curses they got. We had that in the file for a while. You know, eventually it hurts, but it's easy to think "this sucks" whenever there's that "eventually." Some games of course it never gets there, though other games it teams up to make a Witch painful. We got sick of it and I put in "other players can't gain two of the same card in a turn." That hoped it would go the distance; it's a novel duration attack. The gameplay was not great. You think, well lots of games you can't build past single Province anyway, this could be fine. But no. As Sir Martin put it, he'd never finished a game with that Ronin. At the point at which I needed something new, I was making Shadow cards, so hey, it could be one of those. I tried +2 Cards and "Draw to 7," both at $5. They were both good but we liked "Draw to 7" more.
The first version of this card turned into Progress (that’s why it forces you to topdeck Provinces, it was always an attack at heart). It started at $3 with “at the start of your next turn, +2 Cards,” then went to $5 and “+3 Cards.” JNails’s first impression of the $5 version was “how is that a buff, now it has to compete with the good cards.”
I had some good memories of “other players can’t gain 2 of the same card in a turn.” There were some funny interactions, such as Port failing to gain Port, or Distant Shore failing to gain Estate. The big concern was that you were trapped in a cycle of buying Province Duchy Estate every turn because there’s no other way to get ahead in points. And if you dud (you’re shoving Estates into your deck), you’re in trouble.
Samurai: Another of those names that had to somehow be in the set. I never had a great fit for the flavor. The first attempt trashed a $5+ card opponents discarded from play. Then a Reaction with Rice on top, that was a Moat. I mean that's fitting for the name anyway. Then it got "other players only draw 4 cards for their next hand" as the attack, which lasted a while, with +$3 next turn and also Setup adding an Event that you could only use if you had a Samurai. Trying to piggyback off of what Ninja was doing at the time. The Event part wasn't great and turned into, if you've gained a Victory card this game, +1 Action. Then cantrip. Then, okay, just cantrip all the time. Oops now it was too strong. And it cost debt and this was being a problem too. Then I had one that had the gimmick of, it only worked every other turn. If you had another Samurai in play, it gained an Action (a cute thing when there are expensive debt cards), otherwise it did the +$3 next turn and attack. It had a certain charm when it didn't seem broken. But then the attack, you know it's okay, but Relic is the good version of it, this version has poor timing for remembering it irl. I play Samurai; it's not doing anything until your clean-up. You take your turn. In clean-up you're shuffling... well I don't have to wait for this, I take my turn. I may finish my turn and even be shuffling the Samurai into my deck, before you finally have to remember to draw 4 cards instead of 5. It's not great. So... I tried giving out debt as an attack, because people cling to that, that thing that Bridge Troll does except it uses another token somehow. A debt attack it turns out is super bad to do, because it's cumulative with Bridge Troll and Highwayman and Militias, so we can say knock you down to 3 cards and then give you a debt and also a -$1 token and you are just not getting turns. It's more like "time to quit Dominion" than it is "time to flip the table." So anyway. Not that. I had a couple versions of debt attack, including "other players with no D get +1D," which is just like Bridge Troll but already too much, again since it's cumulative with Bridge Troll. And some different forms I tried otherwise, that tried to preserve the Action-gaining or do some other fun thing. And easily my favorite was the final card. It only attacks once ever; that's different. And well +$1 Hireling has been waiting patiently to finally be a card. And it's more like a Samurai than the other things I tried; it does a little fighting, then hangs around at home. It cost $5 for a while before I bumped it up to $6, after losing to Samurai stacks too many times.
I suggested the Samurai that trashes one of their $5’s during their Clean-up. The idea was, people hate Knights, but I wondered if people would like it more if it didn’t involve flipping cards from your deck. Donald X. tried a single-gain board with it, and immediately hated it. You desperately buy $5’s to keep your Samurai’s alive…until all your Samurais die and you can never keep any $5’s for the rest of the game. In my defense I hadn’t considered that these boards exist.
Some comments on “If you had another Samurai in play, it gained an Action (a cute thing when there are expensive debt cards), otherwise it did the +$3 next turn and attack.” It had the problem of, the action-gaining was nuts (especially when the card tried to be non-terminal), and the attack didn’t impress, it’s just Bridge Troll. Also man the -$1 token is in the running for worst mechanic in Dominion, only 2 cards use it, and it looks even more stupid when the next set introduced debt. There was also another major issue:
So yesterday it was "if you have another Samurai in play, gain an action, otherwise attack and +$3 next turn." What genius; look at this amazing game designer, making a Militia that simply can't attack every turn (without an extra-turn combo, and then technically it still isn't okay), while giving you a fun thing to go for with it. I explained it and Billy was all "isn't this bad times in multiplayer?" And we went through the situation and goddamn motherfucker. If two or more players always play Samurai, there are bad seats that always draw 4, while other players draw 4 or 5 alternating. I don't know how Billy just looked at the card and knew that. We went over it repeatedly, with different situations, it's very clear. If say A B C D, everyone always plays it, then B and C are screwed. You want to be the first player to play Samurai, desperately, and then to play it every turn. Well so the big question is, how likely is this in multiplayer? Multiplayer is more casual. Surely those games aren't so full of draw-my-deck and here's-my-always-Samurai. And any hiccups and this problem is gone. Man. It was enough that I didn't play that fantastic-for-2-players version today though.
This multiplayer thing may not sound so bad when the attack is just a 4-card hand, but imagine if it was harsher (maybe a 2 card hand). Now it becomes more noticeable, man you two have 5-card hands and I’m always at 2, even though I made zero mistakes in my gameplay.
Finally the Hireling version. It started at $5, but Donald X. was playing it against the TGG bot during December-January, and sometimes the bot just endlessly bought Samurais. What would happen is, you (the human (unless you’re not a human)) try to build but get slowed down by Militia, and meanwhile the bot has 4 Samurais in play and can’t miss Province. At $6 that’s harder to do. I wasn’t too scared of Samurai, but:
I've continued to play games with $5 Samurai, and I am so fucking sick of it. I can repeat, it plays great when no-one buys it. I don't mind it at all when it's a minor factor. I don't care if experts should be able to beat it up; it's sucking the joy out of games. Looking forward to the $6 version.
Snake Witch: I had been planning to do an attack called Snake Witch, since they were a Japanese thing. What about a cantrip Witch for $2? That sounded cool. I came up with the condition and was immediately happy with it.
Donald X. brainstormed a big list of conditions for a $2 cantrip Witch. My favorites of the list were Menagerie (again) and “if you trashed an action this game.” After the first game, Donald X. realized that $2 Snake Witch has to return to the pile or else you just buy Snake Witches and then 2 piles are gone (sounds familiar...)
Tea House: The premise was, an Omen that changed after the Prophecy happened. It started out as $5, cantrip +Sun, if the Prophecy has happened +$2 else +$1. Really, it could just be cantrip +$2 all the time, and so it is. I still liked the changing Omen concept, but didn't manage to make one of those.
Just like how Brothers, Ninja, and Rice started out costing debt and then they failed, there were Tea Houses that also cost debt, and it also ran into the same issues (I pay my debt and have $2, I guess I buy Tea House). That’s the story of why this expansion has only 3 kingdom cards that cost debt.
JNails really liked the idea of checking if the prophecy was activated. So much so that they asked me why it changed like 5 times. Donald X.’s answer was:
I liked the premise of a card changing when the Prophecy happened. It wasn't good enough, hey there that is just above. It couldn't be $4; it was bad at $5. There are things you can do there; one of them was turning it into Tea House.
Tea House had other concerns. Mainly, will this be too good for casual players? It never scared me when the TGG bot was buying them, it turns out the prophecies matter a lot (Tea House money activating Great Leader for the engine is a bad idea). And it turns out that casual players tend to just buy one copy of each card in the game, and that ones that don’t like buying Tea Houses. I think LastFootnote was also worried that casuals would buy Root Cellar (it’s cheap) and be trapped under debt and do nothing the whole game, but Donald X. wasn’t worried.
Approaching Army: At first you got +1 Card in Clean-up, and the included Attack wasn't an 11th kingdom card. We also tried +1 Card immediately. I liked +$1 best, and it was simpler to add an Attack than to insist that one should be there.
+1 Card during Clean-up was cool sometimes, but you could lose all those cards to Militia. Sure Expedition also has this issue, but Approaching Army literally forces in an attack that could be Militia, that’s pretty stupid.
Divine Wind: I really wanted something with this name, as it's this historical thing, a tsunami wiping out invading Mongols. The first one was a Moat, which is awful gameplay. There was "once per turn when gain a card may trash it or when trash a card may gain it," how is that even a Divine Wind. I had a conditional Moat, also stupid. Then I had this sweet thing that wipes the board clean. So fun.
My first impression of a Moat prophecy was, wouldn’t you just ignore all the attacks because they’ll all turn off? Donald X. laughed at that thought; in my defense I was thinking of $5 terminal silvers, those really do not impress if they can’t attack. Eventually Donald X. actually tried it in a game and realized that “blank[ing] the cool parts of these cards is not actually amazing, go figure.”
Anyways Divine Wind is super fun. What’s funny is that during all of playtesting, I never played with it against a human (I played with it against the bot a lot, but part of that was also bug-hunting). That video on JNails’s channel is legit my first time playing with it. It never needed to change and other prophecies needed more testing. The other thing is, I suggested that the text include “ignoring Heirlooms” because that’s what you do, you ignore Heirlooms. JNails and Ingix said it was unnecessary and then it got removed.
Enlightenment: The first version was a Donate, it let you Donate when it triggered, that's basically it. I messed around with the wording and what happened to the hand of the person triggering it. I had a version where everyone had no hand for a round, that was cute. There were versions with "+30 Cards" as a way of shortening the text. The text was always problematically long and complicated. Then I had this unrelated idea of turning Treasures into Actions that could be Way of the Pig'd, and hey that's a lot like trashing them all only better, and it became the new Enlightenment. And it's just so much cooler. At first they were only Actions in Action phases, but that tripped people up, so now they're Actions all the time, but only Pig-able in Action phases. Which makes it a combo with Vineyard and other things, which is fine.
The Donate version had to somehow dodge the issue that it becomes the best Lab ever for the person activating it. No joke, there was a version that shuffled everything into your deck and left you with nothing. If there weren't Wharves everyone would just pass their next turn.
The problem with the new Enlightenment is that it goes infinite with Scepter. That was why it tried out only transforming treasures in your action phase, to dodge the loop. But then Scepter found a new infinite loop with a different card (that immediately died) and Donald X. decided to just errata Scepter.
Flourishing Trade: Started out as "Action plays can be used as Buys," taken from a Ninja. Then it got the Bridge effect, then lost the Actions-as-Buys part, then got it back as a once-per-turn that could also turn a Buy into an Action, but that's tricky, so then back to just Actions into Buys.
The version without the cost reduction just constantly did nothing. This tried converting +Buys to +Actions as well. For some reason a lot of Smithies give +Buy and they just become nuts if their +Buy is basically +Action.
Growth: Tried triggering on all gains but requiring you to not have a copy of the card in hand; okay not gained this turn and not in play; okay what about, costing less than every card you've gained this turn? You buy a Province and it comes with a Gold and a $5 and a $4... I gave it a fair shot, I really liked the idea of a crazy chaining gains thing, if only it could work out. It did not work out. So: it only triggers on gained Treasures. You can still chain if you somehow have a bunch of those, and there are a couple loops, but normally it's more like, your $5 comes with a Gold.
The first version I got to try for this was “When you gain a card, you may gain a card costing less than every card you've gained this turn.” It was funny that if you accidentally gained a $0 on your turn (maybe Spoils) you were screwed. But it had issues: it was insane with Colony (it gains Platinum which gains Province…), and also so many playtesters failed to figure out what it did the first time they read it. Ben King said “At first I thought it meant you gained an extra card for every card you had gained at any point during your turn, with gains growing as O(n^2).” I don’t know what O(n^2) means so I’ll have to hope that you do.
Harsh Winter: This started out as a kingdom card, Jito. It was, cost $5, next turn +$3, until then other players take D with their cards. A debt Swamp Hag. Then it changed to +2D, no that's no good. Then okay not a duration, +1 Buy +$3, and this turn when you gain a card you put 2D on its pile, that works basically like Tax. And we had that experience for a while. It was problematic in multiples or Throned, piles could get giant amounts of debt. As a Prophecy, it's never duplicated; a pile has 2D or no D. At first I thought the wording would try to line up perfectly with Tax (with Tax possibly getting errata to make this happen; however it worked best, man, I didn't care if Tax was slightly different in exotic cases). This didn't quite work out, and well if you have it in a game with Tax, you will want to pay attention to what order you resolve them.
The debt Swamp Hag was crazy. My first game with it, I ended with 57 debt (ok there was also Root Cellar); if there wasn’t Horn of Plenty that game was unplayable. I suggested doing Tax again, but was not prepared for playing multiple Jitos. Sure they give you money so you can pay off your debt, but when you pay it off, have only $5, and stare at a bunch of piles that all say 6D on them, you do wonder “what the heck am I supposed to do?”
Rapid Expansion: DZ suggested this one. Unchanged, and one of my favorite Prophecies.
Not many playtesters get to say that they suggested a card and it survived to print without ever changing, but I get to. My thought process was to turn Hasty on its head: instead of one pile being Hasty for the whole game, it’s instead all piles being Hasty for the second half. JNails complained about how this messed up gain and play but I think it’s funny.
Sickness: For a long time this slot had a big pile of pain that got handed out when the Prophecy triggered. Initially, 2 Curses, 2 Estates, 4 Coppers. The wording is tricky if you want to make sure that it doesn't suck to trigger it yourself (e.g. there's one Curse left and hey you get it). It was still a contender for a while, with an "if there are enough left" wording that playtesters complained about. When it looked likely to die, I tried various other ways to hand out Curses. "When you gain VP, others get Curse." "When you gain a card costing $3 or more, you're Cursed." "At the start of your turn, Curse onto your deck." Wait it's a horrible trap with Blockade (spotted by JNails). "At the start of your Clean-up, the player to your left..." No that timing just super sucked. Aha, it could give you an option. You gain a Curse onto your deck, or discard 3 cards; something you will rarely be willing to do, but you do it some, and hey you'll do it if they Blockade Curse.
Since I enjoy Coven, I thought I would like the Sickness that gave you 8 junk at once. I got sick of it though (ha I beat you to the joke), my memory is having a functioning deck and then suddenly my hands were terrible. The wording was also a struggle, it was “When you remove the last Sun, if there are enough left, each player gains 2 Curses; same for 2 Estates and 4 Coppers.” JNails especially hated it (citing it as…overly casual?). Also here was Donald X. giving up on some of the outtakes. (You may also remember that “when you gain a Victory card, each other player gains a Curse” started out as Old Witch’s artifact.)
Invasion Fleet: But really three different things. Game one, start of turn gain curse onto deck. This seemed fine. It does put a clock on the game, or at least, that pile will run out. One in six games it would be with Kitsune and so be less exciting, although you know, it would still happen some. Since we had start-of-turn draw we got to decide, Curse first or draw first. Game two, when you gain a card on your turn, first, discard a card or trash it. Just helped Kevin, looked in general as stupid as most Invasion Fleets. Game three, the one where gaining VP hands out Curses, but not working on Estates. Well it was not amazing fun times having it work on Vineyard. So the schedule again was, now try "Province" and then "drop it." I am leaning towards not trying the Province step, I'm not seeing the point.
Amass: At first it cost $0, now it costs $2; there's your playtesting dollars in action.
When this costed $0, you can turn 1 autopile Cavalry (but not Villa), Forum, and/or Nearby cards.
Continue: Initially it didn't say "once per turn" and could gain Attacks. The former loops, the latter is super no-fun when they Militia you turn one.
Continue went infinite with Possession (the player buying Continue gets the +buy and no debt, and also lol Possession). The attack part was partly because of me. I hate Importer City-state and wanted to stop it here if possible (you have 5/2, they open Continue Ninja, your 5/2 becomes 3/2, ragequit).
Sea Trade: The first version was an Improve that exchanged a card for one for up to $2 more. Then there was a complicated "that you'd discard from play this turn," and man, okay there are tracking issues if you somehow return a Throne that played a Duration, but "non-Duration" is sure way simpler. For a while it returned the card to its pile, then it trashed. And well it was in the file until late, when one day DZ said, hey didn't you make people sad about Bonfire to avoid problems with trashing stuff from play? Yes. Yes I did. So I replaced the Improve. We quickly tried a few things and I liked this trasher that needs you to have Actions in play. It's a little redundant to have both this and Asceticism in one set but well I could live with that.
I had good memories with the Improve version of Sea Trade (hey I like Improve). I even once said that “oh man I just realized Sea Trade is a gift to those people (still) complaining about the Bonfire errata. except it will never fully satisfy them because they're too attached.” Returning the card to the pile had infinite loops (return Villa, gain Villa, topdeck your Treasuries and then play them).
But eventually I figured out (in November) that this was a bad thing. I did suggest that the Improve Sea Trade could’ve just said once per turn to stop infinite loops and stuff, but Donald X. didn’t want it. To him, this event was a borderline one, and if there was a great replacement it would win.
Other replacements that were considered and/or tried (being as vague as possible): a Gold gainer that was too easy, a variant of Trade (the Adventures one), a top of deck Remodel (no one liked it), and another that was too similar to Peril.
I had a duration Bridge that made cards cheaper this turn, but gave you debt next turn. What if there's no next turn? I hear you ask. Yeah. The card looked like it might be awful or broken, and finally we worked out that it was broken.
Lemme tell you about a stupid game in playtesting. Get just a bit of money at first (like, $4 or something), Continue a few times for Reckless Rope Bridge, buy all Provinces on turn 5. Also at one point the card stopped being a duration and gave you the debt at clean-up, and man Capital already covered that.
For a while there was a card that played a Treasure and gained a copy of it to your hand. It's like both parts of Specialist, but only for Treasures. It seemed fine, but was one of the cards that least had to be in this set.
I had some good memories with this card. I once said “why does this set have so many treasure gainers at $5, who needs this many” to which Donald X. laughed at. Eventually all the other treasure gainers left, ha I won that fight Donald X.. But also the outtake that I was defending died too, oops I lost anyways.
I tried an Event to replay cards; I'd been down that road before but forgot where it led. And an Event Band of Misfits.
The Scepter event was tried in Plunder and it had the problem of, repeat the Witch you played and the game is awful. Also it had to somehow stop you from infinite looping with cards that give +1 Buy +$3. I think the BoM event was first tried in a game with Altar and it was stupid.
For a long time there was an extra turn Event that prevented you from drawing on the extra turn except in Clean-up, but gave you +4 Actions. It seemed cool and then I was so so sick of it. Extra turns! You have to wait plenty when it's just one turn at a time. Then another extra turn Event trashed everything you played during it; this gameplay is not amazing either. Oh man I tried a 3rd extra turn card, that only gave you an extra turn if you hadn't played any cards or gotten any +$, and cost 3D. These cards contributed to me cracking down on 3-turns-in-a-row via errata.
Alright time for the big essay (as if this secret history wasn’t already long enough). Just focusing on the extra turn that didn’t let you draw cards (called Adventure), as that survived the longest. It first started as a 5-card Gamble, but that was crazy and confusing. That’s where the +4 Actions comes from, it’s to play all the cards you would’ve Gambled into. But during Menagerie, Donald X. had already tried an extra turn where you can’t draw cards. It was considered weak at the time (that’s what happens when you put it in the Horse expansion), but also back then Ben/Steveie discovered that Scrying Pool can cheat it, and it died.
But it goes way beyond Scrying Pool. So many cards can get around the “can’t draw cards” rule (examples: Mapmaker, Hunter, Catacombs; ignoring Poet because that won’t increase your handsize on the extra turn). When I pointed this out, Donald X. considered possibly errata-ing all those cards so that they all somehow say +Cards (hey Mapmaker ignores Chameleon and Relic, is that really a “feature”?). At the time it was July and there was still possibly time to change Cornucopia/Guilds. The targets there were Advisor, Carnival, and Journeyman.
Carnival was somewhat plausible: "+4 Cards, revealing them. Discard all but one revealed copy for each different name.” A bit weird because technically you reveal the cards, put them in your hand, then discard them from your hand, but it’s at least an option. We never got to Advisor but it could go to: “+3 Cards, revealing them. The player to your left chooses one of those for you to discard.” Journeyman was in trouble though. You can’t do anything like “+1 Card, revealing it […] Repeat until you have 3 cards without the name” because it goes infinite with Patron and/or Chameleon. You can’t set aside the cards, put some onto your deck, and then get +3 Cards, because it looks stupid (who’s gonna put the cards onto their deck and then immediately put it into their hand). Even if there is a solution to Journeyman (and good luck finding one), you’d have to do this for tons of other cards (Hunter etc). Not the most promising use of time.
Other options were to change Adventure. “During that turn, nothing can add cards to your hand.” Even completely innocuous cards like Haven now have to deal with “if you can’t put the card into your hand then is it just gone forever?” “Set aside your deck and discard pile.” Journeyman can’t try to get any cards from your deck and discard pile because there’s nothing in them (except for anything you Workshop). It’s weird though, it’s like a Chancellor variant. It could also be a Frigate variant, where you have to discard more and more cards until you’re down to nothing, but it’s just so wordy.
Wait I know what you’re thinking (cause other playtesters said this). Is it really so bad to have cards cheat Adventure, it’s fun to work around restrictions. I see what you mean but I was hesitant to just disregard all of this as “it’s fun.” Firstly, man it’s strong. I had games where my Adventure turns were more impressive than my normal turns (that +4 Actions is massive, especially when most villages are now Necropolises). Also it gives flashbacks to Siren: would anyone actually realize that some but not all draw cards can cheat Adventure? I know there are people out there who like Siren cheats but man they confuse people. Making Siren II is a bad idea. (Rapid Expansion sort of has that issue but the times where you want to fail to set aside the card are much rarer.)
All of this by the way, was just one issue for Adventure. One! What did Adventure cost anyways, 5D? Man there were boards where you literally bought Adventure, every single turn, for the entire game. The trick is to have cards that you want to find, like Peasant. It sounds fun but it's nuts.
Then one day in July, Donald X. was playing Rising Sun and Allies on TGG, and they constantly ran into Adventure/Voyage and Adventure/Island Folk. I think a few weeks later there was also a 4-player game where Kevin endlessly bought Adventure and took forever (and still lost). This is what officially made him sick of extra turns, and that lead to all the errata. Despite some playtesters protesting the Voyage errata (to be friendly I won’t reveal their names), it was never a question of “do the cards need errata,” just “when does the errata come out”?
The ending of this story is that, there were a lot of events, some of them can go. If Adventure worked out then Asceticism probably would’ve been purged but it didn’t work out and Asceticism survived.
Once per game Fortune effect. You can imagine this being cool, but it's stupid.
What makes this stupid is that the best play most of the time is to buy it the first time you hit $5 and get 2 $5’s.
There were multiple other Harsh Winters. "Trash all but 3 Treasures you discard from play." "Playing Silver or Gold uses an Action play"; that sounds like something.
The first prophecy was weak (you play 3 treasures to buy your Province and man the prophecy did nothing). Then Panic was made and it was way cooler. The second one managed to do even less, you just don’t buy Silver or Gold. I suggested that it could forced everyone to gain some Silvers (ha now you have to deal with literal terminal Silvers), but it didn’t happen.
One of the better outtake Events was a two-card Forge.
The problem here is that it required the cards to be differently named (so that you don’t immediately Forge 2 Estates). But you had to first reveal that they were different and also it’s not very strong.
"Discard all $5's at start of turn." That was fun for two out of three players once ever.
I think the first game with this, Donald X. and Kevin had a good time getting beat up by the prophecy and drawing their deck with Root Cellar anyway, while Dibson and Sir Martin were getting murdered. Less harsh versions were tried but eventually Donald X. got to “remove all $5’s from the Supply” and then Divine Wind.
There was one Matt suggested that had everyone passing good cards around. You discard your cards from play and another player takes one. I tried it where you just gained the card, and where you gained it to hand, which is more interesting as you can pick something that hand needs. But mostly we just pushed around the same good cards.
This felt novel in my first game with it. Then Ben/Steveie said that they just passed the same cards around (hint: it’s the debt expansion) and suddenly it looked way less interesting. Gaining their card to your hand did nothing to solve the fact that you constantly took the same card over and over. Also when JNails realized you steal the card, they thought it the most terrifying thing in the world. Sure it sounds like Masquerade or Rogue, but in practice it was just Wordy Save. The gaining to hand part led to Kind Emperor.
"When you gain a card besides with this, Barbarian it." It had a certain charm. Then there was a once-a-turn one that trashed from hand; you hold onto something that isn't a Province to protect them, and man it's not actually very interesting. I clung to the notion of eating your cards somehow. "Trash a $3+ you'd discard from play." There's also "When gain a card, trash it unless you discard a card."
If that sounded like gibberish to you the prophecy at the time was: “When you otherwise gain a card on your turn, trash a card from your hand, and gain a cheaper card that shares a type with it.” There was some fun in watching the Provinces in your hand helplessly die as you buy more of them, but also this effect can get messy. I suggested “At the start of your Clean-up, trash a card from your hand, and gain a cheaper card sharing a type with it” but it never hurt you, it just cleaned up your remaining junk cards and also your River Shrine.
I will wrap this up by talking about the teaser and previews.
The teaser was originally going to be the regular Sporcle quiz. I balked at that and suggested redoing Menagerie’s 3-word teasers. For some reason Donald X. said ok fine, and went for it. The idea of having people guess names in a discord thread came much later.
The original previews was going to have Biding Time instead of Growth, and Craftsman instead of Gold Mine. I complained that the previews had almost no $5’s (what are Craftsman and Gather supposed to gain). I suggested replacing Poet for Tea House but Donald X. decided against it because Panic pushes you to just buy Tea Houses. Eventually I suggested Gold Mine and Growth (to combo with Gold Mine), and that was accepted. In the end dominion.games did not have previews so all of this was a waste of time, but that’s what happened.
Ok I’m approaching 9,000 words, I think that’s enough Rising Sun talk. It was a blast to playtest and play, an easy choice for best expansion in the game.
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Topic: Secret History of Rising Sun by a Playtester (Read 1702 times)