Hello! As of right now, almost all of these ideas I came up with in the past week, so probably most of them are bad! I have not done any playtesting, nor have I read too much of this subforum or designed cards before so many of my ideas may have been already tried. Many cards do not have names, and I haven't put too much thought into the wording yet. The wording I will fix later, so I'd prefer feedback on the actual ideas unless it is ambiguous.
This expansion is vaguely intend to replace alchemy. No, this is not a parody or redo of that one fan set, but it might be just as bad. I would obviously only ever play with these IRL, and honestly I'm not sure how much of that I will be doing either. I do not own alchemy IRL and I do not plan to, because P-stone and Scrying pool are a pain to play with and I don't think Dominion needs possession or transmute, and so the expansion is by far the worst investment for me. But if you like alchemy, you could totally play with this and Alchemy.
Oh, and the variant bit. That's just house rules which could make the game a fair bit different, hopefully for the better. That is:
-Tweaks to a few existing cards, such as making TR optional.
-Use 5 curses/ruins per player instead of the normal 10 for every player after the first
-Use 16 of the victory cards when possible with 4 players
-Play with a 4-pile rule in 3P and 5-pile rule in 4P.
And finally the biggest change: Curses cost -1. Wow, so thematic, it fits with the VP and all. But how does this work? If you buy a curse, you actually gain a coin; so a bit like borrow, except you still lose a buy. Further, with TfB it's cost is treated as -1. If you salvage it you lose a coin, if you upgrade you gain a copper, if you apprentice it (alchemy!) you have to discard a card. With cost-reduction in play, curses cost 0.
Okay, now to the cards. The expansion, right now unnamed, I think should have 150 cards (that's standard for a small expansion, right?). It doesn't now, but fitting it to 150 I'll do later.
First, there are new base cards in every game, costing 1, 4, 7, and 10. Wow! Surely this messes something up, so please point it out.
Penny Collector - action - $1
+1 card
+1 action
Numismatist - action - $4
Reveal your hand and gain a treasure costing up to twice the number of treasures in your hand, putting it on top of your deck.
Exchange - action - $7
Do this any number of times: Return a card from your hand to the supply and take a card from the supply whose cost in coins is at most that of the returned card and put it into your hand.
Blacksmith - action - $10
+5 cards
(this is only in the game when platinum and colony are in the game)
There are a lot of tweaks to be considered to these. Numismatist doesn't have to topdeck, Exchange could be too crazy. I am thinking that the first should have 20 copies, the second 10, then 6, then 4. They are intended to be generally weak. They probably change the game in a lot of unpleasant ways I haven't anticipated yet. But now there is a base card of every price -1 to 11, with none duplicated!
Now some more random cards, without much of a theme:
Snake Chamber - Snake: see posted in Haddock's thread, idea credit to him. Link and text later.
Alloy - Victory - $6
Worth 1 point at the end of the game for every two different costs which appear in your deck.
^^kind of thematic, but dull as it is almost always worth 4, 5 with just a little work with a curse.
Liquifier - Action - $4
Trash a card from your hand. If it's an...
Action card, gain two victory cards each costing at most one more than the cost of the action.
Treasure card, +1 card, +2 actions
Victory card, +1 buy, +2 coins
^^Intended to replace transmute
Unnamed1 - Action - $3
+2 actions
Reveal the top 3 cards of your deck, put the revealed coppers into your hand and put the rest back on top.
^^I don't really like this card, something will need to change about it.
Unnamed2 - Action - $3
+2 actions
Do this any number of times: Spend an action and draw a card
^^I like this card. I think it's pretty well balanced and interesting enough.
Unnamed3 - Action - $2
Reveal your hand, for each action card, +1 action
--------------
When you gain this card, trash your hand.
^^may be too crazy.
Electrician - Action - $5
+2 cards
+1 buy
+1 coin
You may discard any number of cards. For each card discarded this way, take an electricity token.
You may spend any number of electricty tokens. For every two tokens spent (rounded down), draw a card.
^^I doubt this works as-is, but hopefully it can be made to work.
I think I want a treasure, maybe another attack, and something else that uses electricty tokens, maybe for something else.
Anyway, I anticipate editting this post a lot, hopefully it will eventually look nicer and have nicer cards in it!