Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[LastFootnote]

So probably if these work out I will put them in Enterprise, but they seem like they should be in their own thread, at least at first.

I'm trying to make some cards that change the rules in Dominion in minor ways, much like twists in Nefarious. Like Events, they'd be landscape cards. But you don't buy them; they're just always active for everybody. Basically they're like the bottom half of Duchess or a lot of the cards in Fragasnap's Greed expansion. Ideally they're things that either wouldn't work as Events, or at least wouldn't work nearly as well if they were Events. It's possible that Donald will do stuff like this one day, but probably that day is pretty far off if it ever arrives at all.

As much as possible I'm sticking to optional bonuses for these cards, so that you're not cheating if you forget them. It's easy to forget stuff like "Silver costs $1 less this game" for the purposes of Remodel, etc. I'm not totally ruling things like that out, but for now I'm shying away from them.

Apologies that none of these have been tested yet. I'm posting them here partly to get a general reaction (you like/dislike the idea) and also so others can point out if some of these have game-ruining combinations with existing cards (e.g. Fortress). Of course I'm also happy to discuss individual Edicts.


Charity: Edict
At the start of your Buy phase, you may reveal a hand with no Treasures. If you did, gain a Gold, putting it into your hand.

Commerce: Edict
When you shuffle during your Clean-up phase, you may add a Silver from the Supply to your deck (shuffling it in).

Coordination: Edict
At the start of each of your turns: +1 Action

Industry: Edict
Once per turn, when you play an Action card, you may draw 3 cards instead of following its instructions.

Prudence: Edict
At the start of Clean-up, you may put any number of cards from your hand on top of your deck.

Tyranny: Edict
Once per turn, after you resolve a non-Duration Action card, if it's still in play, you may play it again. If you did, trash it.

[LibraryAdventurer]

Personally, I don't like the idea. I'd rather change rules with cards or events (there are cards or events that have similar effects to most of these edicts), than straight rule changes. There might be a couple of these that might be interesting to use occationally (maybe Commerce or Tyranny or one that gives you two buys each turn instead of one like the bottom half of one of Fragasnap's cards), but for the most part I think stuff like this is better to do on a card or event.
Actually the most interesting 'edict' I can think of would be to just play with an extra kingdom card pile. Then you have a possibility of adding a card like procession, fishing village, CotR, smithy, silver gainers, etc, that do the things that these edicts do in a more interesting way.

[Fragasnap]

I agree with LibraryAdventurer which is why Greed doesn't have Edicts, but the idea is fine in theory.

Charity: Edict
At the start of your Buy phase, you may reveal a hand with no Treasures. If you did, gain a Gold, putting it into your hand.

I don't like how much this buffs discard cards. Count lets me trash my hand and gain a Gold. Secret Chamber and Vault get all the benefit of discarding cards AND gain an additional Gold. Tactician gets a permanent Gold on its down turn and a minimum $3 buy.

Commerce: Edict
When you shuffle during your Clean-up phase, you may add a Silver from the Supply to your deck (shuffling it in).

I like this one, but it is dull without a card that makes the Silver matter more than simply being plain old Silvers.

Coordination: Edict
At the start of each of your turns: +1 Action

I played around with some cards for Greed that had +1 Action per turn, but they all died because there wasn't a very good way to make the additional +action each turn particularly compelling on a Kingdom card. The effect itself is solid enough.

Industry: Edict
Once per turn, when you play an Action card, you may draw 3 cards instead of following its instructions.

Quite nearly destroys the functionality of Ruins, but there are only 3 Looters, so that's probably not such a big deal. ...or maybe that's a bigger deal since there are so few games with Ruins that they should be left alone.
I don't like the amount of flexibility this gives literally every non-terminal Action in the game. I think it lets players build efficient decks in really brainless ways.

Prudence: Edict
At the start of Clean-up, you may put any number of cards from your hand on top of your deck.

This is a big game changer. I would need to play some games with it to see if it was fun to use.

Tyranny: Edict
Once per turn, after you resolve a non-Duration Action card, if it's still in play, you may play it again. If you did, trash it.

This would be incredibly effective later in the game. Suddenly you go about trashing just about every Action from your deck with little to no downside. The flexibility this lends Actions probably makes Treasures nearly useless in any Tyranny Kingdom.

[LastFootnote]

Personally, I don't like the idea. I'd rather change rules with cards or events (there are cards or events that have similar effects to most of these edicts), than straight rule changes. There might be a couple of these that might be interesting to use occationally (maybe Commerce or Tyranny or one that gives you two buys each turn instead of one like the bottom half of one of Fragasnap's cards), but for the most part I think stuff like this is better to do on a card or event.
Actually the most interesting 'edict' I can think of would be to just play with an extra kingdom card pile. Then you have a possibility of adding a card like procession, fishing village, CotR, smithy, silver gainers, etc, that do the things that these edicts do in a more interesting way.

Hmm, well certainly it's possible this idea is a bust. I'm going to try my best to turn each of these into a card or event and compare them.

Charity: Event, $0
+1 Buy. Once per turn, reveal your hand, and if you have no Treasures in your hand or in play, gain a Gold, putting it into your hand.

That's wordier and less elegant, but it's mostly the same, bar cases with Black Market or Storyteller.

Commerce: Action, $3
+1 Card. +1 Action. Gain a Silver.

Yeah, that's probably much cleaner as a card. Although the fact that you have to buy it and play it makes it different than if it's just handed to you.

Coordination: Action – Duration, $5
At the start of each of your turns for the rest of the game: +1 Action

A solid card, but again it's different when you have to buy and play it. You can't safely open with two terminal Actions, for instance, which might be a fun experience to have from time to time. And as a card you could play multiple, whereas there might be some games with the Edict where you're limited to two terminal Actions each turn.

Prudence: Event, $0
+1 Buy. Put any number of cards from your hand on top of your deck.

I think this might sometimes end up different, but mostly it's the same. As an Event it's close to Save, although different in very important ways.

I don't know how you'd do Industry or Tyranny as cards. I guess you could do them as Reserves that went back on your mat at the end of each turn, but that's a lot of text.

[Asper]

I think i suggested a similar thing in the Greed thread, because i thought felt it would make remembering the effects easier. I still think believe it does, and i think expect it opens a lot of potential, similarly to how Events expanded on "when you buy this" cards. In that respect, i think reckon this should be explored further.

Edit: Wow, i said variants of "think" 5 times in that paragraph... In my defense, it's been 3:00 in the night where i am... 

About specific Edicts, i like Commerce, Coordination, Industry and Tyranny (which doesn't work that good on a card). Undecided on Prudence, but i think it's okay. The only one i don't really like is Charity, but i can't lay a finger on why exactly that is. Also not sure whether Tyranny really needs that "no-Duration"-thing, but i understand why it's there.

[Seprix]

So probably if these work out I will put them in Enterprise, but they seem like they should be in their own thread, at least at first.

I'm trying to make some cards that change the rules in Dominion in minor ways, much like twists in Nefarious. Like Events, they'd be landscape cards. But you don't buy them; they're just always active for everybody. Basically they're like the bottom half of Duchess or a lot of the cards in Fragasnap's Greed expansion. Ideally they're things that either wouldn't work as Events, or at least wouldn't work nearly as well if they were Events. It's possible that Donald will do stuff like this one day, but probably that day is pretty far off if it ever arrives at all.

As much as possible I'm sticking to optional bonuses for these cards, so that you're not cheating if you forget them. It's easy to forget stuff like "Silver costs $1 less this game" for the purposes of Remodel, etc. I'm not totally ruling things like that out, but for now I'm shying away from them.

Apologies that none of these have been tested yet. I'm posting them here partly to get a general reaction (you like/dislike the idea) and also so others can point out if some of these have game-ruining combinations with existing cards (e.g. Fortress). Of course I'm also happy to discuss individual Edicts.

This is a good idea, and you should feel good. A nice concept that I feel should not be that powerful, but instead be more subtle in usage. I will read some of these ideas and then offer my opinions on them, afterwards giving a few ideas of my own.

Charity: Edict
At the start of your Buy phase, you may reveal a hand with no Treasures. If you did, gain a Gold, putting it into your hand.

I very much like this one. There are some neat combos you can do with say, Warehouse for example to discard all your treasures, gaining a Gold, and it gets harder to get more Gold as time goes on, because it pretty much balances itself.

Commerce: Edict
When you shuffle during your Clean-up phase, you may add a Silver from the Supply to your deck (shuffling it in).

This can easily be very strong in the beginning of the game, speeding up development and making it easier to it $7 and $6, let alone getting multiple $5 costs, all by simply opening Silver/Silver. I think this Edict can kind of ruins the magic of openings, though it's not a terrible idea in itself. I mean, I could get used to it. Opening double terminal with silver gain is very strong, and anyone can do it, and it's not every game either, because it's an Edict. It might very well be fine.

Coordination: Edict
At the start of each of your turns: +1 Action

Another simple Edict that I like in theory, but in practice, I think it might not work as well. I like being forced to play one of two terminals, it makes things interesting.

Industry: Edict
Once per turn, when you play an Action card, you may draw 3 cards instead of following its instructions.

Buy mass Hamlet, game over. This is ludicrously broken, and should not exist in it's current state.

Prudence: Edict
At the start of Clean-up, you may put any number of cards from your hand on top of your deck.

Cute, like a Haunted Woods attack on yourself, with no chance of collisions hurting you at all. Again, it's a bit brokenly good. I'd maybe put a limit on how much you can top deck, and maybe put a spending limit on it, saying you should spend $1 for a top deck, but then it's Dominion Adventures events.

Tyranny: Edict
Once per turn, after you resolve a non-Duration Action card, if it's still in play, you may play it again. If you did, trash it.

[/quote]

Mixed feelings on this card, honestly. On one hand, the tradeoff might be discouraging. On the other hand, it can be crazy good, like in a Torturer game for example, especially if there's plus buy so you can build up a net gain while screwing your opponent to the floor. But I think it could be nice, it rewards overbuilding.

Okay, a couple suggestions of my own.

Pauper: Edict

When in your buy phase, any action card in your hand may be played. Per action card played, $.

This makes some interesting decisions, on whether to play your Smithy now and hope for more money or cash it in now, for example. And sure, it makes Vineyards that much better, but it is brokenly good to begin with, so eh. I guess this card knocks BM further along into obscurity, which is sad because I like BM.

Epicurian: Edict

All action cards cost $ more for the duration of this game.

I doubt this would make it to any sort of second round, but it does make some interesting decisions viable here. It makes engines harder to build.

[scott_pilgrim]

Whoa, at first I read Pauper as "pay $1 to play an action card (in your buy phase)".  So basically if you run out of actions, you can keep going, but at a cost.  I'm sure it breaks something though.


Anyway, I think I agree with LibraryAdventurer for the most part.  I think for the idea to be worth doing, you'd have to come up with a lot of solid ideas that just don't work as cards or events, and that also don't benefit players who forget about them, and that really add something to the game, and I think it will be very hard to come up with a lot of ideas like that.  Like, Tyranny is pretty cool idea, but you could just do it as a Reserve card (I just remembered Royal Carriage...so maybe that territory is already covered).

Coordination is probably the best, and you could do one for +1 Card, +$1, and +1 Buy too, so that's 4 ideas right there.  (Though you can benefit from forgetting the card, so maybe make it optional (and just because someone's going to point it out, yes you can also benefit from forgetting the +$1 or +1 action, but those are edge cases).)  You could have some that change your starting decks, or trash a card every turn.  So yeah, maybe there are some nice things you can do.  I'm skeptical though.  Most board games really benefit from this sort of thing in my opinion, but for Dominion, the benefit will be much much smaller, since you already have plenty of variety from game to game, so it's likely to not be worth the extra complexity (and people complaining when they forget, which I imagine will happen a lot).

[shmeur]

Redistribution: Edict
At the beginning of the game, all players may trash their deck and pick any 10 cards from the supply whose total is 6 or less.

---

Maybe it'd need a cap, because a Gold and 9 Coppers might be too strong but idk.  Just thought of it now, so it's probably not balanced at all tbh.

[Asper]

As everybody is throwing in their own ideas either way, here are a few more:

Taxing:
When you buy a Victory card, you may gain a Silver.

Progress:
When you discard an attack card from play, you may put your deck in your discard pile.

Prohibition:
At the start of your Action phase, you may skip it to trash a card from your hand.

[Asper]

Seprix, did you notice that Industry is "once per turn"? I don't see how you could think of it as "broken" if you did.

[Haddock]

Seprix, did you notice that Industry is "once per turn"? I don't see how you could think of it as "broken" if you did.

I was gonna jump in with that. Its not at all broken at once per turn. The mass hamlet thing in particular is definitely just not at all a thing, given that.

[Seprix]

Seprix, did you notice that Industry is "once per turn"? I don't see how you could think of it as "broken" if you did.

I didn't read that. Sorry. Industry is probably not good though, it's very strong on every board.

[Asper]

Seprix, did you notice that Industry is "once per turn"? I don't see how you could think of it as "broken" if you did.

I didn't read that. Sorry. Industry is probably not good though, it's very strong on every board.

Your use of the word "strong" confuses me. It's not like it's a card you buy and play. Industry's influence may be big, but that doesn't mean it's unbalanced or bad. It works for all players equally, and i think most decks can make good use of this. Heck, even Big Money can practically play Smithy-BM on every board using this (and it's still usually going to be a bad idea, i assume).

To be honest, i like how it encourages taking the risk of including a few weaker cards in your deck, as you can still play them as Smithy once a turn. That Chancellor i got early on to speed up my deck? Bam! It draws! The more i think about this, the more i like it.

[NoMoreFun]

They're mostly events that require something else instead of money and a buy. "Option of something bad to do something good", which is the same as every other kingdom card. You could afford to be less conservative, but I like what you have here.

[Ghacob]

I feel like I'd rather explore the design space that Events offer.

Which I'm going to do now. someone remind me tomorrow

[Haddock]

Seprix, did you notice that Industry is "once per turn"? I don't see how you could think of it as "broken" if you did.

I didn't read that. Sorry. Industry is probably not good though, it's very strong on every board.

To be honest, i like how it encourages taking the risk of including a few weaker cards in your deck, as you can still play them as Smithy once a turn. That Chancellor i got early on to speed up my deck? Bam! It draws! The more i think about this, the more i like it.

Me too. Besides, if it's too game-warping it can be tweaked so easily! Too game warping at +3 cards? Make it +2! Easy.

[iguanaiguana]

I like edicts quite a bit. Sure, the design space for events can be explored much further, but really edicts are an extension of the idea of events, and so saying that you would rather explore one design space than another doesn't make a lot of sense to me; it is very similar design space.

Lots of people are commenting on power level. I think the question here is not whether or not an edict is powerful or weak (it could be either, and the only change is that you would either frequently use its effect of infrequently) but whether it can lead to degenerate, mindless games with certain cards.

Here are a few defenses:

Tyranny:

I don't think even in the context of a torturer game, that tyranny is broken. You get to throne your torturer, and at best you get to give out the last two curses that way, but even if its not going to be a curser anymore you lose a smithy in your deck. Toward the end of the game, you can only axe one of your actions per turn, so the effect would be even less dramatic than, say, turning in six mining villages for twelve coin on one turn, which we have had in dominion since intrigue.

Industry:

Sure, this is going to be powerful. I can see a lot of situations where you are going to want to play a non-smithy card for that effect, but if you are building a sensible deck, its always at a cost. I don't think this destroys the functionality of ruins at all. If your opponent snowballs you with cultists and you end up with seven ruins in your deck on turn 7, you are no less screwed now that once per turn you can play one of them to draw some coppers and ruins into your hand. The best strategy on a board is still to try to build a good deck with these edict out, but interesting payoff decisions can occur. If you already played two villages and your hand is VCCCC, do you play the last village as a smithy to stop a dud, knowing that you don't actually have enough villages to draw your deck that way? It makes weak cards like pearl diver more attractive also, which I like.

Coordination

Essentially, everyone gets a princed ruined village at the beginning of their turn. I don't see how this can possibly be considered broken if "having a prince of ruined villages" isn't considered broken.

And finally I'll question one of them:

Commerce

I don't like how this would likely play with rebuild. In a rebuild game, you are frequently shuffling your deck, and you are trying to hit 5 every turn instead of 8, so you really just want as much silver as you can get most of the time. With commerce on the board, rebuild is just that much more powerful, and whatever other strategy was there looks that much worse by comparison. It has a similar effect for any other strategy where hitting 8 is not important (gardens, silk road, duke, feodum), but since many of those strategies are not often strong, it's not as much of an issue as what it does for a rebuild deck. Its neat how it buffs cards in the chancellor family, but certainly that isn't worth the cost.

[LastFootnote]

Thanks for the feedback, everybody. Forgive me for not responding to each post with a quote. I'm tired today and there are a lot of posts.

Charity: The idea here is that it's something you can "go for", and I still like that. Fragasnap makes a good point that some cards make this trivial to achieve, though; not sure how I missed that when designing it. Maybe that's not so bad; the number of cards that let you discard your hand is relatively small. Maybe I can make that number smaller by excluding cards that always discard (or trash) your whole hand. "You may reveal your hand. If it has at least one card and no Treasures…"

Commerce: I'm not sold on this one either, although the Rebuild synergy alone certainly isn't killing it. I'll eventually test it and see if it's worth doing, but I wouldn't be surprised if this one were a dud.

Coordination: I'm very optimistic about this one. I like the way it enables combo decks that might otherwise be impractical. Play Armory to gain an Ironmonger, then play an Ironmonger to draw the one you just gained.

I don't think the other three vanilla bonuses—+1 Card, +1 Buy, and +$1—are really worth doing as Edicts, at least not in their simplest form. +1 Card and +$1 are just massive power increases that will speed the game along, and not in the fun way that I'm hoping +1 Action will. They also mess with openings more than I'd like. +1 Buy meanwhile just doesn't seem interesting enough. I might consider hitching it to another related effect.

Industry: The "once per turn" is key to prevent players from just buying villages and having an instant draw engine. One thing that I would definitely clarify in a FAQ—but may have to put on Industry itself—is that you're just replacing the on-play instructions of the card. So if you used Industry to play a Highway, you'd get +3 Cards instead of +1 Card/+1 Action and the Highway would still reduce costs by $1 while it was in play.

Prudence: This just seemed like a simple rules change to try. I mean what would Dominion be like you always had this ability? Different, but maybe not too different.

Tyranny: The only reason this is "once per turn" is Fortress. Any wording that would preclude using it on Fortress would just be too complex, I think. I don't want to have "Trash it. If it's still in the trash…" That's just going to confuse people.

As everybody is throwing in their own ideas either way, here are a few more:

Taxing:
When you buy a Victory card, you may gain a Silver.

Progress:
When you discard an attack card from play, you may put your deck in your discard pile.

Prohibition:
At the start of your Action phase, you may skip it to trash a card from your hand.

I like Progress's idea of putting your deck into your discard pile, but I'm not sure I like the Attack card trigger.

Prohibition is something you can do in another deckbuilder, right? Anyway, seems promising for really sloggy games, and maybe even for openings.

Taxing reminds me of another Edict I came up with but didn't post. I had 8 and posted the 6 that looked the best to me. Here are the other 2.

Exploration: Edict
When you gain a Province, each player (including you) gains a Gold.

Tenacity: Edict
At the start of Clean-up, reveal any number of Curses from your hand. For each Curse revealed, put a non-Duration card you have in play on top of your deck.

[faust]

Charity: Edict
At the start of your Buy phase, you may reveal a hand with no Treasures. If you did, gain a Gold, putting it into your hand.

I reveal a hand with no treasure, gain a Gold, reveal Watchtower, put it on top of my deck. I reveal my hand again, gain another Gold, putting it on top of my deck...

This needs a "once per turn" clause.

[LastFootnote]

Charity: Edict
At the start of your Buy phase, you may reveal a hand with no Treasures. If you did, gain a Gold, putting it into your hand.

I reveal a hand with no treasure, gain a Gold, reveal Watchtower, put it on top of my deck. I reveal my hand again, gain another Gold, putting it on top of my deck...

This needs a "once per turn" clause.

No, it doesn't. This isn't a Reaction card that you might have any number of in your hand. It happens once per trigger, like all effects in Dominion. So unless you start your Buy phase multiple times, it happens only once per turn.

[GendoIkari]

Charity: Edict
At the start of your Buy phase, you may reveal a hand with no Treasures. If you did, gain a Gold, putting it into your hand.

I reveal a hand with no treasure, gain a Gold, reveal Watchtower, put it on top of my deck. I reveal my hand again, gain another Gold, putting it on top of my deck...

This needs a "once per turn" clause.

No, there doesn't. This isn't a Reaction card that you might have any number of in your hand. It happens once per trigger, like all effects in Dominion. So unless you start your Buy phase multiple times, it happens only once per turn.

Exactly. Whenever the game instructions tell you to do something, or that you may do something, you only get to do it once. See Duchess.

[Asper]

I like Progress's idea of putting your deck into your discard pile, but I'm not sure I like the Attack card trigger.

Prohibition is something you can do in another deckbuilder, right? Anyway, seems promising for really sloggy games, and maybe even for openings.

I used the attack thing because it was the first trigger that came to my mind. And i wanted a trigger to make sure it doesn't make certain cards totally useless.
It could also "react" to other players buying a certain kind of card or ending their turn with a certain kind of card in play.

Yes, i took Prohibition from a fantasy themed deckbuilder which must not be named. It also has Prudence, with a similar "skip your turn" restriction.

[Co0kieL0rd]

I like the general idea but I'm too tired to respond to each Edict individually. I just came up with this as you said, rightfully so, that plain +1 Card or + would be essentially broken:

Grandeur, Edict
At the start of each of your turns: +1 Card, discard a card.