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Author Topic: Vampires, Monks, and Swordsmen: heterogeneous sorted piles + a new kind of junk  (Read 2354 times)

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Ankenaut

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Here are three different riffs on an idea for piles made up of several different cards. Unlike Knights and Ruins, however, these piles aren't shuffled. They're sorted by cost with the least-cost card on top (and you can't gain the higher-cost cards until all the cards on top of it have already been gained).

Vampires

There are 4 Vampire cards, and the Vampire pile consists of 2 of each for a total of 8 cards in the pile. Vampires gain you a card proportional to their own cost (and hey, sometimes a Vampire can make another Vampire), and they give your opponents a new kind of junk: Victim cards. The Victim cards given out get progressively nasty, and they're not trashable. However, you can get rid of them by playing them, taking a hit to some other resource(s) that turn. (Rules clarification: the Victims have negative cost, and since "up to" means the same as "less than or equal to", when someone plays Vampire Armand, you can take a Serious, Critical, or Grave Victim (or 2 Curses of course), but not a Stable one. Also, I interpret -1 Action to mean that it kills a whole Village if you try to play it with one, but it's ok to end the turn on a negative number of actions, and then they just reset to 0 your next turn like always.) Put out 5 of each Victim card when playing with Vampires. (The images are from the Interview with a Vampire film series.)




Monks

There are 5 Monk cards, and the Monk pile consists of 2 of each for 10 total cards. All Monks give you Prayer tokens and allow you to keep playing more Monks. Each of the Monks can redeem the Prayer tokens for some kind of resource (except the Abbot who just gathers together all the Monks), but not coins (Monks pray and work, but not for profit), so they can help your engine, but you need to get your payload elsewhere. (The images for Postulant, Brothers, and Prior are from some very cool beer-brewing monks in Norcia Italy. Novice is from some monks in New Mexico, and Abbot is a St. Benedict icon.)



Swordsmen

There are 10 different Swordsman cards with costs ranging from $1 to $10 (1 of each in the pile), but they're basically all the same. It's a Peddler-variant plus a potent attack - like Militia, but they can't just discard their worst 2 cards, and you can get them down to 2 if you play more than one. However, playing more than one is tough because there can be only one (yeah, I probably should have used Highlanders instead of these awesome Angampora fighters). So, it's definitely a great card to have in your deck, but you only get to keep playing your Swordsman as long as no one has bought the next one. Once someone does, you get one more play and then it goes in the trash. At the beginning, you get a deal on this, but it's likely a one-off play. As the game progresses, you're essentially participating in an auction for exclusive right to the card. It's definitely worth more than $1, but are you going to pay as much as $10? Probably not. But if you do, you have to trash that one too. However, since you "won" the Swordsman pile, you get a Victory card of your choosing - much better than the guy who paid $9 for it.




Image credits:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Last_Rites_ca_1600.jpg
http://www.ncregister.com/images/uploads/C0131T01-Charles_Kinnane.jpg
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/546131892282758787/
https://veneremurcernui.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/awesome-articlevideo-on-traditional-benedictine-monastery/
http://osbnorcia.org/en/blog
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedict_of_Nursia#/media/File:Fra_Angelico_031.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swordsmanship#/media/File:Angampora_sword-shield_fight.JPG
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Ankenaut

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Empires has a way to bid. I wonder if it is something like the Swordsmen pile where you essentially bid for the right to keep playing a card.
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Ankenaut

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Hey, sorted piles ... like Castles
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King Leon

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Vampires
I think that Armand us the only well-priced card here. The other vampires are either horrible bad (Louis) or underpriced. I don't know why you need four different kinds of victims. I think, that Stable is absolutely sufficient, I like that idea of a "self-trashing Ruin". Overall, Armand feels like a Bureaucrat variant. Nothing special, but sometimes quite usable.

Monks
I really like this idea, but there are some small issues:
Prior and Abbot seem to be too strong to me. Prior is almost strictly better than Lab and Abbot is much better than Golem. Remove the "Take 3 prayer tokens" and he is fine. On the other hand, Postulant is very weak, add +1 $ and he is okay.
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Roadrunner7671

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The problem with Vampires is that you're not forced to play the negative costing cards, so they're basically Confusciouses that can be drawn by Scrying Pool.

There are also rule clarifications: If you trash a Grave with Salvager, do you lose four coins?
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Ankenaut

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The problem with Vampires is that you're not forced to play the negative costing cards, so they're basically Confusciouses that can be drawn by Scrying Pool.

I don't see that as a problem. That's sort of the point. They're junk, but you can't trash them in conventional ways. The card itself gives you a way to get rid of it, but that's not required. I assume that Confusions could be trashed, no?

There are also rule clarifications: If you trash a Grave with Salvager, do you lose four coins?

If there is a way to interpret the negative cost in a way that works, I say go ahead. Sure, Salvager gives negative coin. Maybe you could Bridge first and reset them to 0?
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