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[eHalcyon]

I'm in the middle of writing up the next few cards, which should certainly start discussion even if they're flawed. The current Island aspect to the Loyalty Mat genuinely concerns me, in that it takes one of the common challenges to all dominion decks (greening) and removes it with little cost to the player. eHalcyon, I understand your suggestion about topdecking Loyalty Mat cards, but one of my main goals with the Loyalty Mat was to add reliability to your deck. Getting Manor in exactly the right hand is much more manageable when you actually draw a high-terminal hand, rather than when you simply guess that there are several terminals on top of the deck. The latter is obviously an option for good players, but if you're at the top of a shuffle, for example, that doesn't do much. I'll continue looking at this one. I promise that several of my next cards won't be on-theme!

Well, I gave a few different suggestions on how to restrict it, and the list was by no means exhaustive.  Top-decking was just one option.

[JacquesTheBard]

Alright, folks. The commentary on the last five cards was helpful and informative. I am determined to fix the Loyalty Mat into something that can add to the game in a meaningful way. In the meantime, I will continue to try out ideas for fixes to the cards already proposed.

For now, though, I will continue through the list of cards I’ve already thought up. Some will bear little resemblance to what you’ve already seen, but the first of this post has already been referenced:

$6 Action: Major Domus

Discard your hand and place your deck in your discard pile. If any cards were discarded this way, choose three cards in your discard pile and add them to your Loyalty Mat.

This is my favorite card in the set, and also easily the most insane. The comments earlier today regarding the Loyalty Mat have made me look for ways to make the concept more reasonable. There will be more adjustments, but first and foremost:

Loyalty Mat cards may only be added to hand at the beginning of your turn.

This actually has a major impact on the way I used to play with Major Domus. In a previous game, I tried a strategy of using Major Domus for draw in an engine by getting extra actions and then playing cards from the Loyalty Mat even after my hand had been discarded. This strategy, while fun, was not a good longterm tactic. Setting aside a village and a Major Domus to play from the Loyalty Mat seriously diluted the effect of each individual Major Domus. On the other hand.  When I toyed with the idea of giving Major Domus an extra action, I essentially created a perfectly reliable Minion. Consequently, I’ve decided to take a more sane option, and just make the Loyalty Mat cards available at the beginning of the turn, and the beginning only.

Is it still broken? Maybe. The Tactician + Demonic Tutor thing is quite potent, and can set up some nasty combos. At the very least, given how adding cards to the Loyalty Mat is strictly better than trashing them, I can’t help but notice that Major Domus does one of Count’s best tricks better than Count, in that it kills your hand to trash 3 cards. My favorite card, but also the least likely to survive critique. Does anyone have any ideas about how to save it? One option I’ve considered is a sort of Council Room effect that allows each other player to add a card to their Loyalty Mats. If I can miraculously make Major Domus work, I will be one happy bard.

Now for something simple:

$4 Treasure/Victory: Town Commons

+$?, +1 vp

This card is worth a $ amount equal to the number of Victory cards in play and in your hand.

Well, this should be interesting. Basically converts green into green. (For European Readers, “green” is sometimes slang for money in the US due to the color of the dollar bill.) This reminds me somewhat of Baron in the sense that it allows for early monetary spikes, and Fools Gold in the sense that it becomes very potent when stacked. Donald X once said that the main problem with a baby harem was that it would have to cost $2 to be balanced. This certainly contributes more than a simple $1, 1 vp! My main challenge with this one is the price. I’ve got it at $4 for now, but would it be better at $5? And would it encourage early greening a little too strongly? One tweak I’m considering is making it only count vp in hand or play, but not both. I suspect further playtesting will tell me a lot about this one.

$5 Action: Textile Mill

+2 Cards, +1 Buy

Trash a treasure card from your hand. Gain 3 treasures costing less than the trashed treasure to your hand.

I knew I wanted a draw card that would interact with treasure in interesting ways. I tried one that discarded treasure to gain better stuff, but it reminded me too much of Mine. Or Mint. One of those. I then thought of “downshifting” treasure. Gold to Silver, Silver to Copper, Copper to nothing. It was a crazy idea, but after playing a game or two with it, I think it works. It’s draw and buy, always a nice thing. It trashes coppers, which is excellent. Personally, though, I’m very impressed by its versatility. If you desperately need to hit a price point, you can drop a Silver and junk yourself in order to reach it. More impressively, you can basically use the Salvager effect on a Gold and get 3 Silvers for your trouble. Trashing Silver with this is obviously much worse than trashing Copper for thinning or Gold for massive income, but that creates an interesting challenge. Finally, it combos really nicely with most alternative treasures, such as Fool’s Gold, Royal Seal or IGG. Maybe too nicely. I guess we’ll see over time.

The next two cards were actually designed around flavor. There’s a sort of religion=trashing thing in place with Chapel and Bishop, and I decided to keep it going.

$3 Action/Reaction: Monastary

+2 Actions

You may trash a card from your hand
If your opponent has three or more actions in play, you may reveal this card and set it aside. Gain a card costing up to $4. Return it to your hand at the start of your turn.

Yesterday, I was looking through Silverspawn’s expansion when I found that he also created a trashing village called monastery. I didn’t intend to plagiarize, but I will understand if he wants me to change the name. Necropolis-style cards are quite difficult to integrate into functioning engines, but I suspect Monastery will pull plenty of weight as a nonterminal trasher. Thinning is hwinning, as Adam might say. The reaction was actually based off of “Conspiracy Theorist” in the “really bad card ideas” thread. Basically, it grew more potent based on the number of cards that your opponent played. With thin decks and extra action, Monastery should often enable the sort of multiple-action turns that trigger its effect. I’m quite proud of the reaction, given that workshop effects haven’t quite been done before. On the whole, I consider this one of my better designed cards.

The next, though…

$4 Action/Attack: Excommunication

+$1

Each other player gains a Curse. Each other player may trash a card in their hand.

I suspect that this will immediately remind the players of Bishop. They both produce a dollar, they both let opponents trash, and they both adjust your deck relative to the enemy’s deck by a vp point and an extra card. Comparisons to Cutpurse and Swindler are interesting as well. Obviously, opponents being junked will try to trash as much as they can manage, but if they can only manage to trash copper or estate, their decks are still slowly worsening, and their handsize shrinks. So why am I unhappy with this?

Originally, I planned a card called Interdict. This would relate to Excommunication as a sort of Urchin/Mercenary, Hermit/Madman deal. One would be a small attack, and the other a devastating one. However, there are serious problems with this. I made Excommunication a viable attack on its own, and I don’t know of any mechanism for turning it into the other card. Interdict’s intended effect, by the other way, made it a sort of self-Princed curser, which obviously came with problems of its own. To prevent the utter destruction of the other players, I would need to create some simple way to defend against it. However, at this point it became way too wordy.

In the end, I should probably just drop Interdict altogether. It’s sad, but sometimes this stuff is necessary. Will Excommunication stand on its own?

Once again, I appreciate feedback. Let’s see what ideas work, and what ideas don’t work.

[silverspawn]

town commons: you mention fools gold. let's see. if you have..

one copy: 1$ fools gold - town commons 1$ + 1$ per other victory card
two copies: 5$ fools gold - town commons 4$ + 2$ per other victory card.
three copies: 9$ fools gold - town commons 9$ + 3$ per other victory card
four copies: 13$ fools gold - town commons 16$ + 4$ per other victory card

so, your card is substantially better. I'd definitely try it at 5$ and buff it somehow if necessary, to keep it sufficiently different. aside from that, I think this is rather hard to critique without testing it.

Monastary: Nah, you don't have to change the name. there is no copyright for fancards. You can of course if it bothers you that there is another card with the same name.

One thing you do need to change is, you need to specify when you reveal the card. All events in dominion happen at a specific time, you can't just reveal it whenever you feel like it. "Hm, I want to buy the last card from this pile-" "HOLD ON I REVEAL MONASTERY AND GAIN IT FIRST" So, it needs to be at a specific moment. Like, "at the start of the Clean-up phase of the player to your right, if he has more than 3 Action cards in play..." or something. Also note that revealing this card defends against discard & topdeck effects, so the time when you can reveal it does change the powerlevel.

Aside from that... well, it's a necropolis + trasher + potential workshop. I dare say that's broken at 4$. The games where you want a workshop tend to also have trashing and lots of Action cards, so you are more ore less guaranteed to always get the workshop effect at some point, which makes it into an effect that's probably too powerful at 5$ (+2 Actions, trash, workshop). Even if you don't trigger it, the effect is okay-ish.

So, too strong. I don't really know if it's otherwise fun.

Excommunication: If you look closely, you'll see that it's in fact extremely similar to bishop, more or less strictly worse, and with far less strategical depth. Bishop is a terminal copper that provides you VP and doesn't change the number of junk cards in your deck relative to your opponents. Your card is... well, the same. That applies even if your opponent doesn't have a bad card in hand to trash. I would drop this.

Major Domus: It's okay for the trashing to be better than count, because a) count trashing is pretty bad without card draw, and b) your card costs 6$. This could be okay. But it could also be broken. dunno.

[eHalcyon]

Loyalty Mat cards may only be added to hand at the beginning of your turn.

Not sure if that's enough of a fix.  The trashing and Island use cases are still untouched.  It's a good start though.

$6 Action: Major Domus

Discard your hand and place your deck in your discard pile. If any cards were discarded this way, choose three cards in your discard pile and add them to your Loyalty Mat.

Is the conditional clause really necessary?  If no cards were discarded, you've either drawn your entire deck and Major Domus won't work anyway, or everything is already in the discard already and there's no reason to randomly neuter Major Domus in that scenario.

The critique for this one is similar to the one for Assassin.  The potential for AP is high.  And, obviously, the facility it gives to mega-turn combos like KC-Bridge is even higher than Quest.  Your change to the Loyalty Mat doesn't really change that.  If the idea behind the Loyalty Mat is reliability, I still suggest limiting it to taking max one card per turn, or allowing more cards but with a penalty for each one after the first.

$4 Treasure/Victory: Town Commons

+$?, +1 vp

This card is worth a $ amount equal to the number of Victory cards in play and in your hand.

Be careful how you format and word your cards.  For clarity and to better match official Dominion cards, you should do this:

Town Commons
$4 - Treasure-Victory

When you play this, reveal your hand.  This is worth $1 per Victory card in your hand and in play (counting this).

Worth 1VP.

Note that "+1 VP" in text form usually refers to VP tokens, rather than a flat Victory card VP value.  I based the wording of the Treasure value on Bank.

It's tough for me to value this card without testing.  A single Town Commons is pretty weak.  It's barely better than Secret Chamber.  Multiple Town Commons are better because they can count the same VP multiple times.  Right now, I don't think that it is too powerful.  Its value is comparable to Fool's Gold (PPE: I disagree with silverspawn that it is substantially better) but it does cost twice as much.

Like FG, it gets better as you play multiples, and it does grow better than FG does.  You may want to count only hand cards to nip that, and also to save on space (which is very tight on Treasure-Victory types -- just look at Harem).  Counting cards in hand is better because most VP cards can't be played; if you counted cards in play you would usually just be counting other Town Commons, and we've already noted that FG has that concept covered.

$5 Action: Textile Mill

+2 Cards, +1 Buy

Trash a treasure card from your hand. Gain 3 treasures costing less than the trashed treasure to your hand.

Seems interesting.  Interested in how it tests.  I have to wonder if it is too powerful for BM, but it might burn itself out.  Milling a Gold is a powerful move, but then you are less likely to Mill another Gold in the future because now you have 3 more Silver in your deck that are much weaker targets for the card.

$3 Action/Reaction: Monastary

+2 Actions

You may trash a card from your hand
If your opponent has three or more actions in play, you may reveal this card and set it aside. Gain a card costing up to $4. Return it to your hand at the start of your turn.

That should be spelled "Monastery" and the last line should say "Return this to your hand".

I think the reaction is somewhat problematic in its timing.  Reactions have very strict timing conditions that are relatively infrequent.  A reaction that says "when your opponent plays a card" is bad because it would slow down the game dramatically.  This card has the same trigger, minus the first two plays and with a fuzzier window of opportunity -- by the wording, I am allowed to trigger my reaction while my opponent is in the middle of resolving their action.

So first, the reaction will slow down game play.  After I play by third action card, I have to wait and see if anyone is going to reveal Monastery.  Even if nobody does, I have to play slowly in case somebody wants to reveal Monastery later.

Second, there are scenarios where "trigger any time" can make a difference.  Suppose one pile is out and there's only one remaining Duchy and Monastery.  If I am 4 points behind, I can't buy that Duchy, because you could trigger Monastery even in my buy phase and empty the third pile.  Note that this possibility is not in itself problematic; the issue is that it will really slow down gameplay and induce more AP in players who have to account for the possibility of opponents gaining cards in the middle of others' turns.

You could actually nuance it even more.  Let's say you announce that you will buy the last Silk Road.  But wait!  I reveal Monastery.  You've bought SR, but you haven't gained it yet.  Now I use my Monastery to gain that SR.  Too bad!  Now there is also rules confusion about whether your money and buy were actually used up.

If you want to keep a similar trigger, my suggestion would be to make it very specific: "when your opponent plays his third action card".

(PPE: I guess silverspawn already covered the reaction stuff, but hey -- I added more detail. )

$4 Action/Attack: Excommunication

+$1

Each other player gains a Curse. Each other player may trash a card in their hand.

You compare it to Bishop, but you overlook that Bishop often nets you more than +1VP.  This card seems much weaker than Bishop or any of the attacks you name.  When you play Excommunicate, I will usually trash my Estates and Coppers, and eventually I will trash Curses as well.  When Curses run out, either Excommunicate is a dead card to you or you give me more chances to clear out Curses.  I would maybe try this with +$2 instead.

[JacquesTheBard]

In terms of Excommunication being too weak, recall that I originally planned for it to have a "better" version in the Urchin/Mercenary style. If that still works, fantastic! I'll try to create a useful mechanic for Interdict.

I might discuss Interdict more in the next set of cards. For now, I had it as a very rare and frightening kind of curser: it could give out Curses from the trash. Players on the receiving end could end Interdict's effect on them permanently by sacrificing good cards in their hand (Pillage, but with trashing) and henceforth be immune from Interdict. However, I realized that this would be a nightmare in 3-player or more, and there would need to be some sort of marker to demonstrate who did and didn't have Interdict immunity. The final issue with Interdict was that I didn't have a good mechanic for upgrading Excommunication into Interdict

Textile Mill was fun during playtesting, and you are quite right in your realization that milling a Gold made it much harder to connect with Gold later down the line.

I think setting Monastery to trigger at the exact moment when the opponent plays the 3rd action card is perfect. It's actually what I originally intended, but I thought (naively) that the other wording would be easier to work with due to the chance of a player losing attention or the opponent playing super quickly. Your points about the ambiguous timing were 100% on track. I am surprised that silverspawn considers it a $5 effect. Certainly, it's good at what it does, but the fact remains that as far as the village aspect goes, it's still basically a Necropolis. During the one game I played with Monastery, it was definitely not equipped to serve in the game's draw engine. For now, I intend to have it at $3. It will likely be very strong in draw-to-X engines, but so are all villages that don't increase handsize.

Glad that Major Domus compared favorably to Count. Obviously, any changes in the Loyalty Mat mechanic will require a re-evaluation of Major Domus, but for now, I like it. I would prefer that its effect be used to "build up" to an amazing turn, rather than simply work as an easy-to-use Island. eHalcyon, thank you for your suggestions on how to fix the mat. I'll keep brainstorming over this one.

[scott_pilgrim]

A single Town Commons is pretty weak.  It's barely better than Secret Chamber.

It's a lot better than SC, it gives $1 more and it's non-terminal, those are both pretty big.

I think I agree with silverspawn on Monastery, even without the reaction it's probably a strong $3.  But the reaction will probably trigger very often in games with, well, a village and strong trasher, both of which it is.  So it's basically an already very strong card for $3, combined with a less reliable Workshop.

I think I like Excommunication a lot, except I agree with others that it's weak.  You can probably start testing with +$2.  You might also want to consider "If he did," before "he may trash a card from his hand", so you're not helping your opponent(s) to undo all the damage you did to them when the curses run out.  OTOH, Donald has talked about regretting the "If he did" on Soothsayer.

[Fragasnap]

$4 Action: Manor

+1 Card
+2 Actions
When you buy this card, place it on your Loyalty Mat.

This is a nice use of the Loyalty Mat (certainly my favorite of those seen so far, though I would use an on-gain rather than on-buy). I will raise issue with this complicating $4/$3 openings since players can choose to get a 6-card hand on turn 2.  *Edit: Misreading on my part. This costs $4, so no problem.*

$2 Treasure: Ore.

+1$, +1 Buy.
When this card is in play, all Treasure cards cost $1 less, to a minimum of $0.

I understand this card, but do not understand the appeal of it. Buying lots of Treasures is a generically useful thing and playing decks filled with Treasures is honestly kind of boring. Trader and Masterpiece make the Silver-flood more interesting because it comes from one buy all at once. Ore asks that players spend a lot of time building up Treasures.

$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.

Because decks start with mostly Treasures, this will most commonly set aside Treasures to draw. In that case, it is a bad idea to add more Actions to a Crop Rotation deck because it dilutes the Treasure density and makes its overall draw-ability weaker. What I am saying is, Crop Rotation seems like it works best with Big Money and that is not terribly interesting.

$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.

This is a huge analysis paralysis trap here. Looking through multiple players' whole decks and deciding what the best two cards are in each-- and even ignoring that each player now has to shuffle his deck-- take a whole lot of time. I do not think it adds much to the game anyway: It just means that players will not get to play the fun cards that they have added to their decks.
Furthermore, because of the sheer accuracy of Assassin, it is entirely possible that it can keep cards pinned for the entire game. That is not much fun for other players. You might consider that other Attacks are not much fun for other players, but there is something they can actually do about them: Swindler swindles random cards, Pillage trashes itself and has limited access to cards, and Knights encourage building a deck with more Silvers\low-priority-targets for them to trash. Assassin does no such thing, it just kills cards with no recourse or nuance besides "also buy Assassin."

$5 Action: Quest
+2 Cards
Set a card in your hand aside on the Loyalty Mat.

Putting cards onto your Loyalty Mat is very strong. It affords flexibility of pseudo-trashing and reliability when needed. Quest is so able and so flexible that it limits other card's abilities to put cards onto the Loyalty Mat. Think about how many Peddler variants there are despite that there is no plain Peddler given a flat cost: That is because putting a simple cost onto the effect would limit the design space that other cards could explore since their costs and abilities would have to be balanced around that number.
Quest is a powerful card that uses your concept in an intuitive way, but I think it is far too limiting on your design space. Consider putting some kind of qualifiers on the cards Quest allows players to place onto their Loyalty Mats.

$6 Action: Major Domus

Discard your hand and place your deck in your discard pile. If any cards were discarded this way, choose three cards in your discard pile and add them to your Loyalty Mat.

Needs to give permission to look through discard pile. See wording of Hermit or Scavenger.

This card is big and silly, especially after the changes to the Loyalty Mat have made this a sort-of Tactician thing. I would reduce the numbers of this card, maybe discard some number of cards and put 2 cards onto a Loyalty Mat. That would help even out its power in average games.

$4 Treasure/Victory: Town Commons

+$?, +1 vp

This card is worth a $ amount equal to the number of Victory cards in play and in your hand.

This is significantly better than Fool's Gold in a monolithic and unfun way. Fool's Gold is still an interesting problem because players need to acquire them quickly and keep them colliding for the strategy to work. Town Commons does not care: having green cards or Town Commons is the difference between having money and having even more money.

$5 Action: Textile Mill

+2 Cards, +1 Buy

Trash a treasure card from your hand. Gain 3 treasures costing less than the trashed treasure to your hand.

So long as the trash is mandatory (which needs an accountability clause, by the by), Textile Mill will only ever be a card purchased in the mid-late portion of the game to opportunistically trash a Gold to swing-up to a needed Province. Players likely cannot afford to buy Textile Mill and flood themselves with Silvers or Coppers until the end of the game, and trashing Coppers probably costs too much momentum from a $5 card. If the trashing was optional, I do not think the card would be much more interesting or much different as players would still rather buy it later unless it was the only source of a needed draw or +buy.
I also worry about its interaction with Platinum.

$3 Action/Reaction: Monastary

+2 Actions

You may trash a card from your hand
If your opponent has three or more actions in play, you may reveal this card and set it aside. Gain a card costing up to $4. Return it to your hand at the start of your turn.

I hate this card because its reaction discourages Action based decks.

$4 Action/Attack: Excommunication

+$1

Each other player gains a Curse. Each other player may trash a card in their hand.

I do not like this card. This card is terrible in comparison to Bishop. Each other player will basically get to trash the Curses from their hand for free and Excommunication becomes totally dead once the Curse pile is out.

Besides that, why not make a curser that puts a Curse onto each other player's Loyalty Mat? It is a simple and obvious effect that would make the cursing unique to other sets.

[JacquesTheBard]

Here’s the final round of card unveiling. After this, I’ll heavily turn my attention to the tweaking process.

This one may never be bought outside of the opening, but will still seriously affect the game.

$2 Action: Donation

+1 Card, +1 Action
Discard a card.
When you gain this card, trash a card in hand or in play.

Remember the thread on the Hovel/Great Hall opening? That’s the main inspiration for this one. Until a short while ago, the top half simply read +1 Card, +1 Action. However, given my tendency to make the cards a little too strong, I think this will balance things somewhat. Obviously, its main purpose is to aid the cycling of your deck. Your other opening purchases will almost never miss the shuffle, making 2/5 splits particularly nice. This is $2 for the same reason Chapel is $2: not opening with it will create a large disadvantage, and this balances things out somewhat. Trashing cards in play as well as in hand gives you a nice way to get rid of copper, but might not be fully necessary given the small cost, and could interact with Dark Ages cards in weird ways. If you get one against your will from Ambassador or Swindler, that could be a serious drawback. For now, though, I believe it will work. At the very least, it’s better at thinning out your deck than Bomb.

$5 Action: Rival

+1 Action

Choose an action card in your hand. This card gains the effect of that card, and is that card until it leaves play.

I’d call this a Throne Room variant, but that would be misleading. This is vastly more reliable in an engine than Throne Room, and also works much better with cards like Highway or Goons that benefit more from being in play than being played. The fact that actions played with Throne Room must be back-to-back increases the likelihood of terminal collision. Rival is vastly more precise. In decks with high action density, though, the gap will lesson, and the price difference between $4 and $5 looks like a good justification for increase in power and versatility. What do you think?

$5 Treasure: Dowry

+$1
When you gain a card with this in play, place it on your Loyalty Mat

This is pretty much the last of the Loyalty Mat cards currently planned, and is pretty easy to understand. It wasn’t nearly as gamebreaking as I expected during the playtest, though. $1 isn’t much buying power, so Dowry really only comes into its own when the rest of the economy is in place. It’s interesting to compare this one to Royal Seal. The Seal is much better at providing the cash to actually buy something good, but cards in the Loyalty Mat are substantially more useful than cards on top of the deck. On the whole, Dowry needs to cost at least $5 for this reason. And if you can consistently pick up multiple engine pieces per turn, Dowry will let you do some crazy things.

$3 Action: Quid Pro Quo

Reveal the top 3 cards of your deck. Your opponent chooses one and trashes it. You may gain a card costing up to $3 more than the trashed card. Return the other two cards to your deck in either order.

I brought this one up a few weeks ago when I first started thinking about Dominion: Fealty. It seems less exciting now, but I still have it in here for completeness’ sake.

I’d like to add some kind of $4 draw, but I was pretty unsatisfied with what I wound up with. This is all for now. I’m starting to get some ideas for how to fix the cards previously discussed. Until then, I look forward to your feedback.

[GendoIkari]

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.

You seem to be implying that cards on your Loyalty mat aren't in your deck at the end of the game. That wouldn't be the case; they would be in your deck for scoring. Just like set-aside Durations and cards set aside with Haven.

*Edit* Ok, I see now that this has been addressed. But I don't think that's a good way to handle Loyalty mat at all, because it's too unintuitive; being different than every other set-aside card in the game. The only thing I can really think of is that in the rules for Loyalty mat, it specifies that all cards on the Loyalty mat are trashed when the game ends. But better to just balance it in other ways and make them part of your deck like normal.

[GendoIkari]

$6 Action: Major Domus

Discard your hand and place your deck in your discard pile. If any cards were discarded this way, choose three cards in your discard pile and add them to your Loyalty Mat.

Is the conditional clause really necessary?  If no cards were discarded, you've either drawn your entire deck and Major Domus won't work anyway, or everything is already in the discard already and there's no reason to randomly neuter Major Domus in that scenario.

You're forgetting TR/KC/Procession. The conditional clause here is just the same as Tactician, though it should probably be slightly reworded to match Tactician exactly for consistency.

[faust]

$2 Action: Donation

+1 Card, +1 Action
Discard a card.
When you gain this card, trash a card in hand or in play.

This should really say "You may trash a card in hand or in play", to avoid silly scenarios where I ambassador you 5 donations and you have to trash your hand. Either that, or make it on-buy.
As for the card itself, I think the discard effect is a bit harsh. It's hardly better to have than Estate/Copper, which is what you're replacing. The trade-off for buying this is actually rather similar to playing Rats - gain a bad card, trash a bad card. But I think this card is worse than Rats. If you're worried that it might be too strong as a pure cantrip (that's definitely possible), I'd prefer making it terminal and actually be somewhat useful (something like +2$... maybe a bit more exciting though).

$5 Action: Rival

+1 Action

Choose an action card in your hand. This card gains the effect of that card, and is that card until it leaves play.

Yes, the obvious comparison is Throne Room. I'm not sure it is strong enough to justify the additional cost. Yes, it's better with cards that have "while in play"-effects, but there are not many of these. IT can also be a one-shot, I guess, though I don't know how it would interact with e.g. Prince (when you set it aside, it "leaves play"; does that mean the Princed card does not get set aside again?). I guess it is much better with terminal draw (Throne Room-Smithy ends your action phase, Rival-Smithy doesn't). I guess that would justify the cost increase. Overall, I'm not sure it's sufficently different from TR to be interesting. Oh, and confusion arises when you Rival a Band of Misfits

$5 Treasure: Dowry

+$1
When you gain a card with this in play, place it on your Loyalty Mat

I don't think proper evaluation of this is possible as long as the Loyalty mat isn't fixed.

$3 Action: Quid Pro Quo

Reveal the top 3 cards of your deck. Your opponent chooses one and trashes it. You may gain a card costing up to $3 more than the trashed card. Return the other two cards to your deck in either order.

Not sure how useful that is. Either you flip three bad cards, and can replace Copper by Silver, in which case it's a worse (though more flexible) Mine; or you hit one of the cards in your deck you want; you'll replace it with the same card again, that card misses the reshuffle. Man, that's awful. And it's gonna happen a lot. I guess this card is not for engines. It also lacks the endgame control other TfB cards give: You can't just turn Province -> Province while ahead; on the other hand, the opponent can turn your Province into a Province while he's ahead.
BM profits a bit as you can always turn Money into better money, and it's nice in slogs, I guess. Overall, I think it can cost $2 without problem. I also recommend discarding the other cards, so it at least clears junk from the top of your deck.

[JacquesTheBard]

Donation was +1 Card +1 Action until very recently. I was concerned about excessive card power after some of the prior feedback, and figured that the discard would correct it. I fully intend to keep it a cantrip, however. The main point of the card is the cycling it provides, and the benefit you gain from the extra trashing can, if you open Donation/Silver, guarantee you at least one $5 before the next shuffle. And that's just Donation/Silver.

Quid Pro Quo can definitely receive a power boost. One option is to raise the expansion from $3 more to $4 more. Copper to a workshop effect, Estate to Gold or a $5, and anything $4 or above into Province. You are absolutely right about the endgame liability of Province->Province at the wrong time, but there's always the option to not play it.

Fixing the Loyalty Mat won't be easy, but is crucial before I can fix the Loyalty Mat cards. Manor seems to work fine, and has gotten the best reception so far, but that's about it. I'll get a post up soon with ideas for reworking the cards. Hopefully, we'll see some improvement.

[faust]

I fear that increasing the cap on Quid Pro Quo to $4 or more might lead to silly Rebuild-like games. Copper -> 4-cost -> Province might be too fast. I guess it needs playtesting to really find out how good it would be.

[JacquesTheBard]

It's very unlikely that the opponent will choose to trash a $4 cost for that very reason.

[JacquesTheBard]

Okay, here's a new attempt at the Loyalty Mat:

When a card is marked for the Loyalty Mat, set it aside. When a player shuffles, they add all cards set aside in this way to their Loyalty Mat. Cards on the Loyalty Mat may be added to the player's hand at the start of their turn with no action required. At the end of the game, Loyalty Mat cards are returned to the players' decks.

Several cards will specify adding actions or treasures to the Loyalty Mat. Only a few will be able to set aside victory cards.

I've got some tweaks in mind already for individual cards. This will be very exciting.

[GendoIkari]

It's arguable that Quid Pro Quo might be almost as strong as Expand. True, having your opponent get the choice of cards to Expand is a HUGE drawback, but you also have to consider that Expand leaves you with a 3-card hand; this leaves you with a 4-card hand. And that's a BIG pro over Expand! Imagine if Expand simply had "+1 card" tacked on. So when you consider that this is comparing to a $7 cost card, $3 might be way too low.

[LastFootnote]

Okay, here's a new attempt at the Loyalty Mat:

When a card is marked for the Loyalty Mat, set it aside. When a player shuffles, they add all cards set aside in this way to their Loyalty Mat. Cards on the Loyalty Mat may be added to the player's hand at the start of their turn with no action required. At the end of the game, Loyalty Mat cards are returned to the players' decks.

This is too complex. I strongly recommend reverting to cards going directly to your Loyalty mat and being able to put them into your hand at the start of any turn. You should just balance the other cards around that.

I have re-worded your cards. Here are my opinions.

$4 Action: Manor
+1 Card. +2 Actions.
When you gain this, put it on your Loyalty Mat.

Very cool. Might be too strong, but might be fine.

$2 Treasure: Ore
+1 Buy. +$1.
When this is in play, Treasures cost $1 less, but not less than $0.

Not a fan. I think discounting Treasures makes for a less interesting game. Same with discounting Victory cards. Discounting Actions or all cards is really where it's at. Discounting Attack cards might be a thing, but probably the card would have to do something else too.

$5 Action: Crop Rotation
Choose a type (Action, Attack, etc.) and set aside all cards with that type from your hand. Draw until you have 5 cards in your hand, then return the set aside cards to your hand.

Cool idea. Might need some tweaking, but I hope it works out in some fashion.

$6 Action-Attack: Assassin
+$2. Each other player puts his deck into his discard pile, then reveals his discard pile. Choose two cards from his discard pile. He sets those cards aside, shuffles, then returns the set-aside cards to his discard pile.

This requires way too much shuffling, creates even more AP on top of that by browsing discard piles, and probably has a really high un-fun factor as players never get to see their best two cards. I don't think it can be saved.

$5 Action: Quest
+2 Cards. Put a card in your hand on your Loyalty Mat.

So, assuming you change to the simpler Loyalty Mat, I would suggest limiting this to either a Treasure or an Action.

$6 Action: Major Domus
Put your deck into your discard pile. Discard your hand; if any cards were discarded this way, choose three cards in your discard pile and add them to your Loyalty Mat.

Hm. It's certainly compelling. I would nix the discarding your deck. You're discarding your hand anyway, so you'll likely have something in your discard pile. I think the ability to forever set aside Victory cards is problematic, but maybe this one is worth testing.

$4 Treasure/Victory: Town Commons
When you play this, reveal your hand. Worth $1 per Victory card you have in your hand or in play.
Worth 1 VP.

I would change this so that it only counts Victory cards in your hand and balance it around that.

$5 Action: Textile Mill
+2 Cards. +1 Buy. You may trash a Treasure from your hand. Gain 3 treasures each costing less than the trashed card, putting them into your hand.

I think the difference between when this is awful and great is too big. With Kingdom Treasures, this is potentially awesome. Without them, it seems pretty weak. It's a pretty poor Copper trasher, though I guess if you have several, that could be fine? Wait, that's +2 Cards, not +2 Actions. Man, I really don't know what to think of this. I guess just test it and see if it plays well.

$3 Action/Reaction: Monastary
+2 Actions. You may trash a card from your hand.
When another player plays his third Action in a turn, you may set this aside from your hand If you do, gain a card costing up to $4 and return this to your hand at the start of your next turn.

Oof, not a fan of this at all. Encourages players to play with few Action cards, since the reaction is normally quite strong.

$4 Action/Attack: Excommunication
+$1. Each other player gains a Curse. Each other player may trash a card in their hand.

I can't see the appeal here. Why would I buy a Curse-giver that lets my opponents trash Curses (and Estates and Coppers for that matter)? Seems like a fancy terminal Copper. Yeah it slows them down a little, but I think it slows me down more (relative to e.g. the Silver I could have bought instead).

$2 Action: Donation
+1 Card. +1 Action. Discard a card.
When you gain this, trash a card you have in your hand or in play.

Well, I can see its utility, but it's almost the definition of unexciting. I mean, you can trash Curses and "gain" VP that way, but it's still basically a dead card in your deck, right? Or sort of. It's kind of like having no card, but it lowers your hand size, which is often bad.

$5 Action: Rival
As you play this, +1 Action and you may reveal an Action card from your hand. Play this as if it were that card. It is that card until it leaves play.

I think this is too complicated to be worth it.

$5 Treasure: Dowry
Worth $1.
While this is in play, when you gain a card, put it on your Loyalty Mat

I suggest making it worth $2 and making the ability a optional one-shot. The most powerful way to use this is to put away Victory cards forever, but even with Actions and Treasures it seems pretty crazy. I guess you could keep it as-is but have it only work on Action cards.

$3 Action: Quid Pro Quo
Reveal the top 3 cards of your deck and the player to your left chooses one. Trash it and you may gain a card costing up to $3 more than it. Put the rest back on your deck in either order.

First, I would make the gain mandatory. Worst case scenario you're gaining a Silver, and screw all the whiners that claim Silvers are "junk". Second, I would have the rest of the cards discarded rather than topdecked for simplicity and expediency.

[JacquesTheBard]

LastFootnote, thank you for the feedback. I quite like your fixes for most of the cards, especially on Quest, Town Commons, Quid Pro Quo, and Dowry. Assassin is simply not going to work, and I am ready to let it go. I do believe, however, that Excommunication, Donation and Monastery can be salvaged with a little work. Removing the "discard a card" from Donation would do a lot to make it more useful, and I actually find that it adds a lot to the opening. I can also tweak the reaction on Monastery to a "discard," which is pretty costly if it's the only village in your hand. Excommunication will upgrade into Interdict like one of the Dark Ages cards, and will be rebalanced with that in mind.
 
Your approach of keeping the Loyalty Mat but changing the cards that use it is certainly a good one, and I'll keep that philosophy in mind with the rest of them. I think it's a concept with plenty of room to explore, and I'll continue to experiment.

I wasn't too attached to Ore, but it struck me as a reasonable $2 cost and a good source for +buy, which my set is fairly short on. Part of the problem is brainstorming better cards to replace the ones I get rid of. You've done a very good job on Dominion: Enterprise, and clearly put a lot of work into it. How do you generate a wide pool of card ideas?

[TheOthin]

Ore is a $2 card that produces +$1 and +1 Buy without consuming an Action. That much seems very reminiscent of Candlestick Maker; the differences are card types leading to interactions such as the fact that Candlestick Maker can end up dead after terminal draw, the fact that Candlestick Maker's coin can be saved, and Ore's cost reduction on Treasures.

So it does seem like the core concept of a cheap treasure that gives +Buy and some other benefit is fine, just that this particular benefit might not be the most interesting one.

[Asper]

$3 Action/Reaction: Monastary
+2 Actions. You may trash a card from your hand.
When another player plays his third Action in a turn, you may set this aside from your hand If you do, gain a card costing up to $4 and return this to your hand at the start of your next turn.

Ignoring the gameplay implications of punishing engines, i'd still suggest to change the reaction so it happens when another player enters cleanup with 3 or more action cards in play. This way you don't interrupt his turn and cannot steal stuff away before him. Another problem with this card that i see is that several players might want to gain a card at the same time, and technically will have to resolve in turn order.

[LastFootnote]

LastFootnote, thank you for the feedback. I quite like your fixes for most of the cards, especially on Quest, Town Commons, Quid Pro Quo, and Dowry. Assassin is simply not going to work, and I am ready to let it go. I do believe, however, that Excommunication, Donation and Monastery can be salvaged with a little work. Removing the "discard a card" from Donation would do a lot to make it more useful, and I actually find that it adds a lot to the opening. I can also tweak the reaction on Monastery to a "discard," which is pretty costly if it's the only village in your hand. Excommunication will upgrade into Interdict like one of the Dark Ages cards, and will be rebalanced with that in mind.

Those sound like good changes. I'm still not sure how interesting Donation is, but it's certainly more enticing without the "discard a card".

Even if it upgrades, perhaps Excommunication should have a better vanilla bonus. It junks you, but also lets you trash from your hand. That basically shakes out to a discard attack.

I wasn't too attached to Ore, but it struck me as a reasonable $2 cost and a good source for +buy, which my set is fairly short on. Part of the problem is brainstorming better cards to replace the ones I get rid of. You've done a very good job on Dominion: Enterprise, and clearly put a lot of work into it. How do you generate a wide pool of card ideas?

Several years of intermittent work. Obviously it's faster the more time you have to devote to thinking up card ideas. I think the best way to generate card ideas is to have a unique mechanic with unexplored space. I'm not sure how much space the Loyalty mat really has, but you get the idea.

[TheOthin]

If someone gets hit by Excommunication when they have a Curse in their hand, they end up with one fewer Curse in their hand and one more Curse in their discard pile. That's actually about the same direct impact Mountebank has in that scenario, with the disadvantages of draining the Curse pile and in fact helping them rather than hurting them once the Curse pile is out.

If it hits them when they don't have a Curse in hand, it still makes their deck worse, but by a much smaller amount, probably just turning a Copper or Estate into a Curse. And it also produces less money.

I feel like the concept itself is viable as an attack, but it's just a very weak attack that might not have enough merit to be worthwhile. And of course there's the part where it becomes counterproductive when there are no Curses left, which could maybe be addressed the same way as Soothsayer? Alternatively, it could let you trash a card too, working out to the sort of "everyone trash" impact of Bishop.

[eHalcyon]

If someone gets hit by Excommunication when they have a Curse in their hand, they end up with one fewer Curse in their hand and one more Curse in their discard pile. That's actually about the same direct impact Mountebank has in that scenario, with the disadvantages of draining the Curse pile and in fact helping them rather than hurting them once the Curse pile is out.

If it hits them when they don't have a Curse in hand, it still makes their deck worse, but by a much smaller amount, probably just turning a Copper or Estate into a Curse. And it also produces less money.

It's kind of similar to Mountebank when they are blocked, but why does that matter?  When you don't have a Curse in hand, Excommunication is still very weak because you can probably trash some other junk card, whereas with Mountebank you get hit with TWO junk cards.  That's a world of difference there.

[TheOthin]

If someone gets hit by Excommunication when they have a Curse in their hand, they end up with one fewer Curse in their hand and one more Curse in their discard pile. That's actually about the same direct impact Mountebank has in that scenario, with the disadvantages of draining the Curse pile and in fact helping them rather than hurting them once the Curse pile is out.

If it hits them when they don't have a Curse in hand, it still makes their deck worse, but by a much smaller amount, probably just turning a Copper or Estate into a Curse. And it also produces less money.

It's kind of similar to Mountebank when they are blocked, but why does that matter?  When you don't have a Curse in hand, Excommunication is still very weak because you can probably trash some other junk card, whereas with Mountebank you get hit with TWO junk cards.  That's a world of difference there.

Yeah that's the thing, it's basically not even a junking attack so much as a make-existing-junk-into-worse-junk attack. Kinda like an anti-Rats.

Full junking attacks are very powerful. Using Curses for a much weaker type of Attack doesn't strike me as necessarily unviable, as long as it's a card that's designed to be worthwhile with only a very weak attack rather than a strong one. A $4 terminal Copper doesn't fit the bill, but that doesn't make it unsalvageable.

[dondon151]

Mechanics suggestion to the Loyalty Mat: limit the number of cards that you can take from the Loyalty Mat at the beginning of your turn (to 1 or 2), and add a card effect that lets you take a card from the Loyalty Mat.