I was very pleased by the diversity of ideas I got in this contest!
Excavate by JW
So, this is half Guildhall, half University. I think it will be more awkward than either of them, since engines are the main thing that want Villagers, but many engines are allergic to Treasures. Does it really need the extra Treasure pile? Given that Guildhall doesn’t add another kingdom Treasure pile to the game, it seems like this wouldn’t need to either. I think Guildhall, University and Sculptor already covered this ground pretty well.
Fief by Faust
It seems lot of people liked this idea. Well, so do I. A make-your-own rotating split pile is a super cool idea, and one that I hadn’t even considered. About the implementation, though, the top card seems too strong. Compare to Horse Traders: it costs $4 and forces you to discard 2 cards, but this costs $3 and only forces you to discard 1. Also, maybe the bottom card should be $6 or greater? That would open up more possibilities. Someone also suggested making it a $2-to-$5 pile instead, which is also worth considering.
Spellcaster’s Guild by emtzalex
I like it. Favors are already a way to expand a card’s abilities in unpredictable ways, and this adds to that.
Rally by AJL828
This is basically a Seer, but it only works on one card. It has the potential problem of swinging heavily on how good the Supporter is, particularly whether or not the Supporter is terminal. If it’s something you don’t want, then you won’t get it and you have no reason to get Rally either. I’m not sure this adds much to the game that isn’t already added by Seer.
Facilitator by xyz123
The basic idea is similar to Band of Misfits, but there’s no other way to play the set-aside cards, and you don’t need to worry about piles emptying. I’m not sure this adds much that Band of Misfits doesn’t already add.
Key by Chappy7
So you can’t normally gain the locked cards, right? I ask because it says the locked cards are added “to the supply”, but my understanding is that being “in the supply” means that you can gain the card. Either way, this is similar to the Potion mechanic in that it’s an extra hoop you have to jump through to get a card. Potions are one of the least-liked mechanics in the game because jumping through that extra hoop is often awkward and not fun. Unfortunately, I suspect that this card would be similar.
Foreign Lands by Carline
This is another card whose value is going to swing heavily on how good the added pile is. If the added pile is a bad terminal, then it’s hard to see when this would ever be worth going for: it will be at most 8 VP, but cost $10 and 2 Buys and take up two spaces in your deck. If the added pile is something you want anyway, this becomes that “worth 1 VP per copy of this” outtake that Donald tried and said didn’t work. There can be in-between scenarios, but I think the extremes will happen a lot, like they happen with Obelisk.
Trading Vessel by infangthief
This offers very interesting choices around player interactivity, which I like a lot. The problem is, it’s a Merchant Ship variant. Merchant Ship sucks. If it gives your opponents a benefit, it double sucks. I suspect this would end up being Woodcutter 2.0, a card only bought grudgingly for the +Buy. Put on a different Vanilla bonus and you have a solid card.
Crusader by Firestix
So, this has the interesting restriction of the extra pile having to be a Victory card. At first I thought this would be less interesting than the other entries simply because of how relatively few Kingdom Victory piles there are, but now I’m rethinking that. Victory cards are different from other Kingdom piles in that the point at which you actually want them in your deck varies dramatically depending on the card. Nobles is something you want as soon as possible, Mill is good to get early, Tunnel is good to get once you can support it, Gardens and Silk Road are either grabbed at the end or rushed in the beginning, Distant Lands is a midgame card, Fairgrounds is an endgame card. So basically the strategy for this card is going to be very different depending on what the Holy Land card is, and that makes it very interesting.
Middleman by LastFootnote
This seems like exactly the wrong amount of randomness. Black Market is fun because you really have no idea what you’ll turn over. Plus, the power of whatever you get is limited by the fact that there’s only one copy. With this, you have a good but not perfect idea of what you’ll turn over, often creating expectations that will frustratingly lead to disappointment. I can see the complaints when the game is over: “You only won because you happened to get more X!” I do like how simple and easy to resolve it is: no choice to make, just gain the top card. I wonder if it would be better if the pile were more diverse? Maybe it would be too similar to Black Market then.
Merchant Road by 4est
I like it. This is a good implementation of the idea of a Treasure that gives you $ per Action card you have in play. The problem with that idea is that the value will vary wildly depending on the Kingdom; this solves that nicely by limiting it to one card and guaranteeing that card is non-terminal. I think I would get rid of the ability to gain the Good, though. That part doesn’t seem needed and a $5 Treasure that gains Grand Markets is pretty broken. A 5/2 split might be gg. I know the gaining would make this easier to use if there’s a really pathetic Good like Pearl Diver, but I’ve seen plenty of games where Pearl Diver empties simply because it’s a cantrip. The fact that the extra pile is always non-terminal might lead to less diverse strategies than some of these other entries. But I think the interesting decisions will still be there, and the fact that it's guaranteed not to be a dud terminal might actually make it more interesting.
Grand Duke by Timinou
This is too strong. It combines two abilities that on their own are both very strong. Other $5 gainers can’t play an additional $5 ability on this turn and the next, and Captain can’t gain $5 cards. You have to discard a Victory card but that doesn’t seem too hard, for the same reason that Villain’s attack is weak: in the beginning you’ll have Estates, then later on you’ll have Provinces.
Wheel Of Time by UltimateGeek
Wow, points for craziness! Of course, the immediate complaint will be, “what if somebody starts off with an obviously better card?” This situation definitely seems unfair: if Player A wants Player B’s card, they first need to rotate the pile to gain Saidin, then play Saidin, but that still won’t actually play the card they want, so Player B gets 2 plays of a good card to Player A’s 2 plays of a bad card. And then Player B can just rotate the card back before Player A can actually play it! In the long run enough other things can happen to even out the number of plays, but in Dominion, the first few turns are crucial. So while I think all the rotating wackiness could be fun once you’re able to play multiple cards from the pile every turn, as it is this is horribly unbalanced. At the very least the price range of the cards should be limited, maybe to just $3 and $4, but even then some lopsided games would emerge.
Work Assistant by Joxeft
So basically this is like the +1 Card token but you can’t choose the pile to put it on and you have to play another (cantrip) card first. I think this will lead to lots of interesting strategic decisions about how many of this and the extra card to buy and when. However, I would drop the part about returning to your Action phase, that just adds unnecessary complication. I suspect the reason you added this is to help if the extra pile is a Treasure, but I think the best way to fix this is to instead limit the type to Action cards.
Morph by LibraryAdventurer
I love the how this works thematically. The shapeshifter can become anything, but always has to start out as its true form. The part about taking debt if the played card is over $5 is definitely clunky, though. I think a better way to limit the power of this card is to instead force the true form card to be something cheap. That would also be cool thematically: the shapeshifter’s true form is something small and pitiful, but then it can become something big and monstrous.
Commune by spheremonk
This is more of the pure Black Market-stye randomness that I was looking for in a card like Middleman. I’m torn about whether or not this should have the Attack type, since the effect on other players varies so wildly. I think what I would do is make it an Attack and drop the Goat. The idea of an Attack fills your deck with a bunch of random mediocre cards seems very amusing. Overall, this looks fun.
Matchmaker by NoMoreFun
I think I’d like this better as an Event that lets you put a pair of tokens on two Action piles. That would be simpler while also making an additional interesting choice with regard to the Action piles. I do like the basic idea. But throwing in another card that can play either of the cards to me seems too complicated.
Distant Traveler by Lackar
To me this really seems like an auto-buy, and then a no-brainer when using. The interesting choice in Distant Lands is whether to gain it or a $5 card that will help your engine. You get this and then you don’t need make that decision. The decision of whether to leave it on your Tavern Mat will also rarely come up. With this the Distant Lands pile will nearly always empty long before the game ends, leaving plenty of time for a final placement back on the Tavern Mat.
Experimental Theologian by spineflu
I think this will need a ton of support to be worth going for, and I think the strict cost restrictions on the cards it can work with end up making this less interesting than it could be. Maybe if instead of $3 and $5 it was a card costing less than this and a card costing more than this?
Servants’ Quarters by Xen3k
So basically this causes you to gain extra points and extra junk when you buy a Victory card. And really, if you consider the fact that the extra points even out, it will just be extra junk. This will push the game towards megaturns. The game already favors these, so it will mostly serve to make sloggy games more sloggy. I actually think this would work better without the extra Duchy and Estate piles, since the normal Duchy and Estate piles are often ignored themselves. Either way, the idea doesn’t interest me too much; I don’t think sloggy games need to be more sloggy.
Viceroy by Alion8me
Viceroy seems interesting. Is it too strong? Trashing a Copper and then playing a Silver 3 times seems bonkers to me. You have to line them up, of course, but then there’s a swinginess problem. The basic idea doesn’t really need the Heirloom, but being able to gain a bunch of cheap Action cards to trash will definitely help. Would the card be more interesting without this obvious helper, though?
Band of Laborers by MochaMoko
This seems OK. It doesn’t really grab me, though. The vanilla effects feel arbitrary. I’m not sure what else to say about it.
Warmongering by Trinity_
It’s a Black Market for Attacks. This could actually mitigate the problems of Black Market randomly giving out powerful Attacks, because, well, everything this gives you is an Attack. Granted, some Attacks are garbage, but the probability of all 3 revealed cards being garbage seems small. This might perhaps have a similar problem with the Hexes in that being hit with a lot of different Attacks is often more brutal than being hit with the same Attack over and over, but it might not be so brutal as to be totally unfun. I think this mostly avoids the randomness problem of Hexes, though, since there’s strategy in choosing the Attack to buy. Overall, this could be fun.
Runners-up: Fief by Faust, Crusader by Firestix, Spellcaster's Guild by emtzalex
Second place: commune by spheremonk
Winner: Merchant Road by 4est