the cards would play in the exact same way if there were no lines on them at all; they're just there to make the different functions of the card easier to read.
Yes, but if we're going to include cards without
lines, doesn't that blow the doors wide open for other
Village variants that you don't have listed? (as well as several other cards I would guess) Unless the category is weirder than I imagine.
Also duh, you could replace
"cheaper" with "older". Like the cards are leveled-up versions of earlier cards. That's another one that had occurred to me, but well, I had dismissed Treasury and Great Hall from that idea since they do other stuff too. And insisting on cards that don't do other stuff left me with the Herbalist issue, and Tournament came after Peddler.Anyway, I think that works apart from the
Harem having no line thing, which maybe you have a reasonable explanation for that still excludes e.g.
Mining Village?