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[jamespotter]

This card is one of many ideas that I have been tossing around lately...any thoughts are, of course, welcome.

Castle Gate
Cost: 2
Type: Action
Put a card from your hand onto your Castle Mat, then play any number of cards from your Castle Mat.

This card affords you quite a bit of flexibility, boosting your future turns at the expense of your current one. I imagine one would use it similarly to Native Village, as you gain control, but the card is harsher on you this turn.

[Archetype]

It's an interesting idea, but I think Native Village already does the idea well enough. This one has the flexibility where you can pick and choose what you want to play, but I'm not sure if I like that. The thing that makes me love NV is deciding whether its worth it to put the cards on your Native Village mat into your hand at regain access to your super good cards, but at the price of putting the really crappy cards you stored away back into your deck. This card makes it all too easy to save your powerful cards for later and keep the bad ones out forever. However, I do like the concept. What if you tried it as a Reaction?

Keep
Cost: 3
Type: Action/Reaction

Choose 1:
Put any number of cards from your Castle Mat into play or put a card in play onto your Castle Mat.
                                                     
When you gain an Action card, you may reveal this card from your hand. If you do, place it onto your Castle Mat.

[silverspawn]

This card is one of many ideas that I have been tossing around lately...any thoughts are, of course, welcome.

Castle Gate
Cost: 2
Type: Action
Put a card from your hand onto your Castle Mat, then play any number of cards from your Castle Mat.

This card affords you quite a bit of flexibility, boosting your future turns at the expense of your current one. I imagine one would use it similarly to Native Village, as you gain control, but the card is harsher on you this turn.

the way it is currently worded indicates that you "play" the cards from your mat, which doesn't even make sense for non-Action cards. If you wanted it to work like that, you'd have to use "You may put an Action card..."

[Awaclus]

This card is one of many ideas that I have been tossing around lately...any thoughts are, of course, welcome.

Castle Gate
Cost: 2
Type: Action
Put a card from your hand onto your Castle Mat, then play any number of cards from your Castle Mat.

This card affords you quite a bit of flexibility, boosting your future turns at the expense of your current one. I imagine one would use it similarly to Native Village, as you gain control, but the card is harsher on you this turn.

the way it is currently worded indicates that you "play" the cards from your mat, which doesn't even make sense for non-Action cards. If you wanted it to work like that, you'd have to use "You may put an Action card..."

You can play Treasure cards, too. And I suppose you could play pure Victory and Reaction cards as well, they just don't do anything when you play them.

[silverspawn]

there is one card that allows to play treasure cards during the action phase, and it's special and confusing and allows for all kinds of tricks and we probably dont need another one.

[dondon151]

Black Market is confusing more because of the buying part, not the playing Treasures part.

[LastFootnote]

Black Market is confusing more because of the buying part, not the playing Treasures part.

I disagree. The problem I have with Black Market is that you can play Treasures, but it doesn't say that on the card. Buying is well-defined.

[silverspawn]

Black Market is confusing more because of the buying part, not the playing Treasures part.

I disagree. The problem I have with Black Market is that you can play Treasures, but it doesn't say that on the card. Buying is well-defined.

yea, and  that allows for stuff that doesn't even have anything to do with the black market cards anymore. before I played my first game with black market, I had already read something about a combo with tactician, so I thought, alright you can play black market, buy stuff from the black market with treasures, and then play a tactician, that way you used the treasure cards which is normally not possible. but what i didn't know is that you can also play a bm, play treasures, don't buy anything, play tactician, buy a province. It's similar to the effect "all treasure cards also become action cards with "+1 actions, +x$ with x = their value." draw-to-x, menagerie, poor house, tactician are all stuff that combos with it. none of that has anything to do with the buy part.

[Awaclus]

there is one card that allows to play treasure cards during the action phase, and it's special and confusing and allows for all kinds of tricks and we probably dont need another one.

Black Market is special because it lets you buy kingdom cards that aren't in the supply and confusing because it does stuff that isn't written on the card. Castle Gate does none of that, and allowing all kinds of tricks is a good thing as long as those tricks are balanced or rare enough.

Castle Gate/Tactician is not a particularly strong combo, it's probably weaker than Tactician/Scavenger, which is not even a thing really, and the same is true for draw-to-x. It has a special kind of positive interaction with Menagerie, which is a strong card on its own, but it doesn't sound like anything to worry about. It also has a special kind of positive interaction with Poor House, but it only works in situations where Poor House sucks anyway.

To me, it doesn't look like you "have to" limit it to Actions at all. However, there is an actual problem with not limiting: a single-card no-benefit trasher that can be used as a pseudo-Beggar in the late game could be weak but balanced at $2 on its own (comparable to Stonemason without overpay and probably better). This card does that and much more — it turns multiple mediocre turns into one strong turn and a number of weaker ones, connects your cards that you want to connect (except it doesn't work for Treasure Maps), and functions as a splitter.

Limiting it, though, creates a new problem, which is being a dead card in a hand with no Actions. It's not a problem for Throne Room, but I think it might be a bit of a problem here, since Castle Gate is not suitable for decks that are already consistent while Throne Room is.

[dondon151]

I disagree. The problem I have with Black Market is that you can play Treasures, but it doesn't say that on the card. Buying is well-defined.

I agree that playing Treasures is not obvious, but that could easily be rectified with a different wording on a different card. I don't agree that buying is well-defined. Buying is supposed to happen only on the buy phase. Black Market's buy doesn't happen on the buy phase. The usage of the word "buy" on Black Market evidently means more than just the act of buying, which is why it's so confusing. It's somewhere in between a buy in the actual sense of the word and a full buy phase, but it's really neither. The bought card comes from a special set of cards outside of the supply.

Playing Treasures during the Action phase isn't a conceptually difficult thing, and neither should buying during the action phase, but I've had more people ask me why Peddler still costs $8 from the black market than why they're playing Treasures during the action phase.

It's similar to the effect "all treasure cards also become action cards with "+1 actions, +x$ with x = their value." draw-to-x, menagerie, poor house, tactician are all stuff that combos with it. none of that has anything to do with the buy part.

Enabling combos isn't the same thing as being confusing.

[silverspawn]

let's just assume everyone agrees that it should just be action cards. there is another problem, you can build during an ongoing effect of castle gate. I have a bunch of cards on my mat, then I play castle gate, I start playing actions, at some point I play another castle gate, I put another action on there, I decide not to play it; now some other things (TR f.e.) have to resolve, they do, and now all Action cards from the mat except for the new one have been played. Can I play that last one now? All I have done so far is play action cards from my mat from the first Castle Gate, which then triggered other effects and stuff, can I play an Action card now that wasn't there at the moment I played the first Castle Gate?

Also, at which point do I have to decide how many cards I play?

I think there should be a wording like so:

Put a card from your hand onto your Castle Mat. You may put any number of cards from your Castle mat aside. Play them in any order.

But that still has the problem that it's not clear when you choose the order. This is probably the reason why official cards never have effects like this with more than 2 cards; with 2 the order is clear once you play one of them.

[jamespotter]

First of all, thanks for all of the critique. 

I had thought of the fact that you can play treasures in the middle of your action phase with this card, but it did not seem to lead to any broken situations to me, and I wanted it to work as a pseudo-trasher. I had not considered the actual strength of the card that Awalcus points out, however, so perhaps this should cost 3 or 4?

I think that silverspawn's wording is the best so far, but perhaps it can be changed to make it clear that you decide to play the set aside cards one at a time.

Here's the wording I am now proposing:

Put a card from your hand onto your Castle Mat. You may set aside any number of cards from your Castle mat. Play the set aside cards one at a time, in any order.

[silverspawn]

I don't think you even need the "one at a time" part, it's clear with just "in any order". However, that doesn't solve the problem that it's not clear when you choose the order. Say you have 2 smithies and a remake on there, you start by playing one smithy, now you might want to play the second smithy first, or you might want to play the remake first. Can you still decide now? did you have to decide beforehand?

if anything, it has to be

[...]your Castle mat. Choose an order, then play the cards in that order

unless you do want the flexibility to always decide the next card at every step, then you need to say that.

but most importantly, not restricting it to Action cards is just a terrible idea. Don't do that.

[Awaclus]

but most importantly, not restricting it to Action cards is just a terrible idea. Don't do that.

No, that's a good idea. Restricting it to Action cards makes the card basically pointless — the most useful feature of the card is connecting cards that you want to connect, but you still have to connect Castle Gate with those cards first.