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[Captain Stupendous]

Hey everyone, I've been thinking of cards for a custom set I'm making, and this is one of the more interesting cards I've made. It hasn't been playtested at all, so I'd appreciate any criticism or comments! Here's the card text:

Interdict
Action
Cost: $0*
+$2 or trash one card from your hand and gain a card costing up to $1 more than the trashed card.

When you play this, place it on top of one supply pile of kingdom cards. This must be the next card bought or gained from that pile.
--------------------------
This costs $2 more per remaining buy you have, but not more than $6.

The idea behind this is that as long as it is the last card you buy on your turn, it will only cost $2.   Then when you play it, in addition to the small benefit you receive, you get to place it on top of a supply pile you don't want your opponent to gain cards from next turn. Then, on their turn, if your opponent wants to have a chance to buy a card from that supply pile, he or she will have to spend $4 to first buy the interdict since they will have to have saved an extra buy for the card they actually want. The more cards they want to have the opportunity to buy from that pile on their turn, the more interdict is going to cost them.

It's also interesting to note that interdict, like peddler, combos very well with trash for benefit cards. As long as you play several +buy cards before your TFB card, you can turn an interdict into a gold or powerful action card.

And playing interdict gives you an option to trash for benefit, would you look at that!

As I said, any comments are welcome! Should I make its max cost higher, or is $6 a good cap? Are there any crazy combos I haven't noticed? Or is it just too weird mechanically? Also, I'm sure the wording could be cleaned up some. Overall though, I think it's a neat card and offers some interesting tactical choices and possibilities.

[popsofctown]

The cost increase is rate is pretty brutal.  I think the concept isn't necessarily flawed but +1$ per buy remaining is much more reasonable.  At +2$ per buy remaining people will just be abandoning all hope of using the stack.

[popsofctown]

That said I don't think a max cap is necessary at all.  Some boards could become totally about expanding these things into Colony, but it wouldn't be many, and Dominion is like that sometimes, some boards are all about playing Goons and buying copper.

[NoMoreFun]

This is similar to "fool" from my expansion.

There's a problem with too much blocking in sets without +buy, and the buy condition makes it even tougher. It will ultimately be more annoying than cool as all the cards people want get , early on and nobody will want to open up the cards to other players, leaving big money as the only strategy.

Fool addresses this by being a solitary card, and quite a good card that will be in high rotation. I may also give it when gain +buys, which will make it more of a cost hit than a block. Another way to avoid piling out easily with cost reducers would be to give it a potion cost, but that will make it quite a brutal block.

[GendoIkari]

I think that a card that changes costs based on the number of buys you have remaining needs to give a buy as part of it's action. Otherwise the mechanic never comes into play in sets without +buy.

Also, I think there's no need for the main action to be a choice of 2 things. The card already has both the unique cost and the unique play rule, no need to add more complexity with a choice for the main action. Just pick a simple action (I like that it self-combos with TFB).

[popsofctown]

The upgrade effect alone might work fine, yeah.  I don't think the card needs +buy on it anymore than Tunnel needs to be an action reaction victory with "Discard a card from your hand".  The card functions without +buy.  It is a pretty crazy strong deterrent without +buy but the game will three pile on estates and pearl divers or something

[Captain Stupendous]

Thanks for the comments!

One other thing to keep in mind is that Interdict's trash for benefit ability provides both synergy and anti synergy with the card's other functions.

As already recognized, if you play some +buys you can trash a pricey Interdict to get a good action card or treasure.

However, as long as you don't play any buys first, you can play an Interdict and trash an estate to gain another Interdict sitting on top of a pile that you want to buy from this turn. So to some extent the fact that its a pretty brutal blocker is compensated for by the fact that a player who's been forced to buy a lot of Interdicts should be able to use them to gain more Interdicts off of blocked piles relatively easily. If I make the choice to change the cost increase to only +$1 per remaining buy, a player could even use Interdict to trash copper and clear a blocking Interdict off a supply pile.

[ehunt]

It messes with the late game duchy dance in ways that may be severe -- in practice if you interdict the last province in a game with no +buy you could create a stalemate since neither player will want to remove it.

[GeoLib]

It messes with the late game duchy dance in ways that may be severe -- in practice if you interdict the last province in a game with no +buy you could create a stalemate since neither player will want to remove it.

Well then you end on Duchies/Estates/something. That doesn't seem like the end of the world.

[Captain Stupendous]

It messes with the late game duchy dance in ways that may be severe -- in practice if you interdict the last province in a game with no +buy you could create a stalemate since neither player will want to remove it.

This is actually incorrect in a couple ways. First, the card is worded so that you can only place it on top of one supply pile of kingdom cards, which should exclude copper, provinces, etc. Also, even if the blocking ability were extended to the basic treasures and victory cards, its trash for benefit ability guarantees that even in a game with no +buy a player can play an interdict, trash an estate or something, gain an interdict blocking a supply pile, then buy whatever card was underneath the blocking interdict.

[ehunt]

It messes with the late game duchy dance in ways that may be severe -- in practice if you interdict the last province in a game with no +buy you could create a stalemate since neither player will want to remove it.

This is actually incorrect in a couple ways. First, the card is worded so that you can only place it on top of one supply pile of kingdom cards, which should exclude copper, provinces, etc. Also, even if the blocking ability were extended to the basic treasures and victory cards, its trash for benefit ability guarantees that even in a game with no +buy a player can play an interdict, trash an estate or something, gain an interdict blocking a supply pile, then buy whatever card was underneath the blocking interdict.

Oh that's nice !

[Emeric]

How interdict works with ambassador if there is an interdict on the pile where cards have to return ?

[Captain Stupendous]

How interdict works with ambassador if there is an interdict on the pile where cards have to return ?

That's a good question. I think that any answer would have to be in the FAQ for the card, but I think the way the rules work is that the returned cards would go on top of the interdict, and would then be gained by the other players. In a multiplayer game, this could result in some players gaining the returned card but not others.

While this may seem like a significant rules problem, I don't imagine it actually being too much of an issue at all because Interdict can only be placed on kingdom card supply piles and generally Ambassador is only played to return Estates, Coppers, or Curses so I don't foresee this situation occurring very often if at all.

That being said, I'd be interested to hear more opinions on what you all think would be a good starting cost and increase rate for this card. As popsofctown observed, the increase rate of $2 per buy can be pretty brutal at blocking piles; however as I noted in my previous comment there is always the option of using an Interdict in your hand to trash an Estate and gain an Interdict off a blocking pile. Also, reducing the price increase to $1 per buy makes it much more difficult to raise the price of Interdicts in your hand and capitalize off its trash for benefit self-synergy, which I really like. Thoughts?