Here is the card I am submitting:
| Currency • $5 • Treasure $2 Choose one to play: Exchange; or Staff; or Recruit; or Fund; or Option; or Put; or Tithe.
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And here are the 7 Outcomes I designed to go with it.
Exchange • Outcome Pay any amount of $ and +2 Coffers per $3 paid (round down).
| Staff • Outcome Remove any number of tokens from your Coffers. +2 Villagers per 3 tokens removed (round down).
| Recruit • Outcome Remove any number of tokens from your Coffers. Gain an Action card costing up to $1 per token removed. Set it aside. If you did, play it.
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Fund • Outcome Remove any number of tokens from your Coffers. Gain a Treasure card to your hand costing up to $1 per token removed.
| Option • Outcome Remove any number of tokens from your Coffers. +1 Buy per token removed.
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Put • Outcome Remove any number of tokens from your Coffers and Villagers. Gain a Victory card costing up to $1 per Coffers removed and Freeze it 2 times per Villager removed.
| Tithe • Outcome Remove any number of tokens from your Coffers. +1 Worshipper per 3 tokens removed (round down).
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This is an interesting challenge. As has already been pointed out, there is nothing that an Outcome could do that could not technically be done with wording on the card itself. However, that is arguably true of a number of these fan mechanics. For example, the cards using the
Aquatic mechanic initially had text explaining how they work (which technically could have just been put on without adding the type). Similarly, the cards with the
Level mechanic could have all just said "When you Buy this, instead of gaining it you may put one of your Level tokens on its pile." Thus, (imo) there is nothing inherently wrong with a mechanic having the effect of de-complicating wording.
However, putting it to optimal use is a bit of a challenge. The obvious play is to park more text than you could fit on a card, especially where you might want to do things multiple times or in different orders. However, this can quickly lead to an excessive amount of complexity. To me, what made the most sense was to use the mechanic to give a bunch of simple but wordy options, in a place where there is not a lot of room on a card.
One place where I have been frequently annoyed by the lack of space to do things is on Treasure cards that give a fixed amount of $. The symbol for the amount is huge, leaving only a few line beneath to add text. I sometimes try to get around this by making the payload conditional or optional or otherwise within the text, so it turns into the much smaller "+$X" but sometimes that is not what I want to do mechanically.
Thus, I came up with Currency. A $5 Silver plus, the more contemporary-sounding Currency allows the player to make a number of more advanced economic moves, each in the form of an Outcome. They can turn their $ into Coffers with Exchange (albeit at a less-than-optimal exchange rate), or use their Coffers (either from previous plays of Currency or from other sources) in a variety of beneficial ways. One of the Outcomes, Put, uses the
Freeze mechanic from Week 9, while Tithe uses the
Worshipper mechanic from Week 1.
While there are seven different Outcomes, each resolves fairly simply, so the overall operation is not too complicated (I hope). Exchange turns Coins into Coffers; Staff, Option, and Tithe turn Coffers into Villagers, Buys, and Worshippers, respectively; and Recruit, Fund, and Put each allow the player to use Coffers to gain a card in a way that is beneficial based on that card's type.