Right then. The Loyalty mat concept reminds me of the first fan card I ever posted to f.ds:
Ivory Tower -- Action - Reaction
Cost: $5
+1 Action.
Choose one: +1 Card, reveal one Action or Treasure card from your hand and set it aside face down on your Ivory Tower mat; or put up to two cards from your mat into your hand. You may look at the cards on your mat at any time; return them to your deck at the end of the game.
________________
When you gain a card that is not a Victory card, you may reveal this from your hand. If you do, you may put that card face down on your mat.
Details:
- A variation on Native Village that makes it less luck-based.
- Restricting the action to Action and Treasure cards prevents players from using Ivory Tower as an unlimited Island for Victory and Curse cards.
- The reaction, on the other hand, can potentially help keep Curses out of your deck. It also provides another way to add useful cards to the mat.
This was too wordy and overly complicated. I actually submitted an updated version to LFN's mini-set design for Alchemy (which didn't officially conclude...
). Anyway, here's how it appears in my notes from when I was jotting down ideas for the contests (sadly, I have been very bad at keeping notes on my card concepts in general, though I don't post that many to the forums anyway).
Ivory Tower
$3P - Action
+1 Card
+1 Action
Choose one: Set aside a card from your hand face down on your Ivory Tower mat; or put up to 3 cards from your mat into your hand. You may look at the cards on your mat at any time; trash them at the end of the game.
Clarification: On-trash effects are triggered. They are resolved in player order starting from the player on whose turn the game ended.
This is the card you want if you want to put combo pieces together. It's a Native Village with much more control. Since cards are NOT returned at the end of the game, it makes for an interesting pseudo-trasher. Stashing extra Estates in the IT gives you a chance to pull them back into your deck near the end of the game. You could also put Provinces on the mat, but it's risky if the game ends before you can retrieve them. You definitely want a lot of them to give you as much control as possible.
There are some significant differences between Ivory Tower and the Loyalty mat. The biggest one is that Ivory Tower is restricted. To get cards out of it, you need to play this card
and choose not to use it to put a card on the mat. You can't just take cards off the mat for free at any time. Moreover, choosing to take cards still restricts it to 3 cards at a time. You can still use it to put together a mega-combo, but it's not as trivial to do so. Finally, a Potion cost means there's more opportunity cost to get multiple copies of it.
I'm afraid that, as is, the Loyalty mat does seem to be too brokenly strong with a card like Quest. Quest is a trasher (put Curses on mat, never take them back), pseudo-Island (put Provinces on mat, take them back near the end game -- since you can take cards back any time, this is not nearly as dangerous as it sounds), super-Haven (put unneeded cards on mat, take them back exactly when needed) and even as a pseudo-coin token card (put Coppers or other Treasures on deck, take them back when needed). It's bonkers.
I think the way to salvage it is to add some restrictions. Some ideas:
- You may only take cards from the mat for free once per turn. You could take more by playing a card that specifically allows you to grab cards from the mat.
- You have to discard a card of the same type to get one from the mat. This makes it tougher to line up mega-turn combos and also riskier to stash lots of VP on the mat.
- Restrict the mat so that it can only hold a maximum of X cards.
- When you take cards from the mat, they go on top of your deck instead of into your hand. This still lets you set stuff up, but it's not as easy.
On to the specific cards...
$4 Action: Manor
+1 Card
+2 Actions
When you buy this card, place it on your Loyalty Mat.
This one looks good. It works well on its own, and since the LM placement is only a one-time thing, it isn't broken. As silverspawn says, it should probably be on-gain. I don't think it's a problem that it works well with Workshop and Ironworks. Those cards aren't really OP anyway.
$2 Treasure: Ore.
+1$, +1 Buy.
When this card is in play, all Treasure cards cost $1 less, to a minimum of $0.
Just doesn't seem that interesting to me. It's nearly eclipsed by Bridge for functionality, since Bridge does everything Ore does and more. Even 2 Ore is not enough to buy a Gold on their own. If you are intent on keeping some version of this, I would try it with a $2 reduction to match Quarry.
$5 Action: Crop Rotation
Set aside all cards in your hand with the same card type (Action, treasure, etc.). Draw until you have 5 cards in your hand, then return the set aside cards to your hand.
Unlike the others, I understand what you meant here immediately. But they are correct that there is ambiguity; I just subconsciously made the correct assumptions.
I think my main concern here is that it could be dominating with Big Money. My intuition suggests that this could pretty easily and consistently grant +4 cards, sometimes even +5 cards. At the same time, I'd expect it to be really weak in an engine unless the engine has no Treasure at all, but even then it would fall off when you started to green.
That said, it's a neat idea and worth testing. It might not be as crazy with BM as I'm expecting, nor as weak with other action cards.
$6 Action-Attack: Assassin
+$2.
Your opponent places their deck into their discard pile. Choose and set aside two cards in their discard pile. Shuffle their discard pile into a new deck, and return the two set aside cards to the discard pile.
Others have mentioned the AP problems. I'd also like to add in that this card is just really slow to resolve even after you make the decisions. It requires you to shuffle the decks of every other player! You could have the other players shuffle their own decks on your behalf, but this can still cause game delay depending on whether you wait for them to finish before you continue play (which is technically required since it's part of resolving Assassin) and depending on how fast you play out the rest of your turn (if you are very quick, the next player will still have to finish shuffling before starting their turn).
It also anti-stacks. Suppose I play Assassin and discard their two best cards. Now suppose I play a second Assassin. If I am playing optimally, I have to choose the same two cards as before. If I choose something else, those cards I'd discarded first will then get shuffled back into their deck. And then you'd have to shuffle everything all over again. In practice, you'd just probably skip the attack part of Assassin plays after the first one.
$5 Action: Quest
+2 Cards
Set a card in your hand aside on the Loyalty Mat.
Most commentary on this is covered by my comments above on the Loyalty Mat in general. You might as well make the set-aside optional, since you could take the card back from the mat for free anyway. But if you decide to limit access to the Mat in some way, as I've suggested above, then this is a lever you could use to adjust the card's power.
But yeah, my main comment is that you should add some restrictions to the Loyalty Mat. Freely stashing and taking cards from it is just ridiculously useful.
