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[LastFootnote]

Personally, i don't even like engines that much. I prefer me some alt-VP. Either way, i think that this card harms engines, and felt it was worth pointing out.

Thanks! I tentatively agree with you, though I wonder how often it will really shift the best strategy away from engine altogether.

Another problem with this attack is that often you will not be able to tell whether you want to play a card that gives +Buy beforehand. Woodcutter is fine, but what about Storeroom, Market, Grand Market, Worker's Village, Margrave etc, where you don't know exactly how much money you will have at the end of your turn? You have to guess whether that additional buy will be good for you or harm you, and if you guess wrong you are double-hurt. The only simple solution to this is to not get any +Buy cards at all, and maybe get this attack to harm people who do. If they need their buys, they will use them either way, so it never helps them. If they don't, sad for them. So i do think that it does in fact encourage boring strategies.

Well it will all come out in testing. Certainly there is that danger. Here's my guess/hope as to how it will play out.

• Players will buy fewer +Buy cards, but won't stop buying them altogether. It might stop you from building an engine when your only village option is Worker's Village, but mostly it'll just keep you from spamming Markets, etc. It is more fun to buy Markets than Silvers, but in a lot of games you'll have another option, e.g. Laboratory.
• Strong trashing will be weaker. If you use a Chapel to trash 4 cards, you have to buy a Copper afterward. This seems like a good interaction, and I'm guessing it doesn't stop you from trashing altogether. It might push you toward weak trashing instead.
• Cheaper cards will be important. It's easy to think about this attack as a sort of Copper junker, which it is to an extent. But if you have e.g. $5 and two buys, you don't have to buy Lab and Copper. You can buy Village/Cellar that turn instead.

Also, the attack doesn't harm those who are doing good, but worsens the situations for those who are allready producing too little money. Hey, i got $2, guess i'll have to buy another Copper, because buying Copper helps you to get more money.

This kick-em-while-they're-down angle is a good point. Possibly it will be a problem.

[eHalcyon]

FWIW, my "Silvers get +Buy" suggestion would cause this card to weaken BM against this card too.

Edit: striking out extra words, oops

[NoMoreFun]

A few other ideas off the same concept

Squatter
Action/Duration/Attack - $4
Until your next turn, when any other player has any Actions remaining at the end of his Action phase, he gains a Curse.
At the start of your next turn, +$1, +1 Card, +1 Buy

Pretty much just a Curser, but some interesting side effects; do you risk gaining a curse to see if there's another worthwhile action behind that village?

Barrel Room
Action/Duration - $3
Put your deck in your discard pile 
At the start of your next turn, gain a Gold
---
While this is in play, at the end of each other player's turn, draw a number of cards equal to their remaining $, and put that many cards back from your hand.

The chancellor effect is a penalty making it less frequently playable. It's top decking so it isn't much better with multiple players

Haunted Woods has "too many cards" covered.

[Asper]

To me, all this reads as "If somebody hasn't a certain ressource in exactly the amount he needs, which is allready bad, punish him further".

I don't hit the amount of coins i want. Now not only can't i buy what i want/wasted potential, no, you punish me even further. With Swamp Hag or Haunted Woods, i can choose between something good at the cost of something bad, or simply nothing. With this, if i have something bad, no choice, i get something bad. It's like punishing people for triggering a reshuffle or having unplayed actions in hand. Hey, you lack terminal space? Take this curse. Hey, you have too few terminals? Take this curse. Hey, you have less buys than you need or more than you can use? Take that!

I think this entire type of attack is arbitrary, luck dependant and harms those who were allready harmed. Haunted Woods attacks "draw your deck" engines. You know that and can either go for one, taking the risk (good for bad trade), or not. Here you have no interesting decisions, and the best defense is just going for a more simple strategy so you will halfway be able to control things. Or hope that you are lucky.

[Accatitippi]

To me, all this reads as "If somebody hasn't a certain ressource in exactly the amount he needs, which is allready bad, punish him further".

I don't hit the amount of coins i want. Now not only can't i buy what i want/wasted potential, no, you punish me even further. With Swamp Hag or Haunted Woods, i can choose between something good at the cost of something bad, or simply nothing. With this, if i have something bad, no choice, i get something bad. It's like punishing people for triggering a reshuffle or having unplayed actions in hand. Hey, you lack terminal space? Take this curse. Hey, you have too few terminals? Take this curse. Hey, you have less buys than you need or more than you can use? Take that!

I think this entire type of attack is arbitrary, luck dependant and harms those who were allready harmed. Haunted Woods attacks "draw your deck" engines. You know that and can either go for one, taking the risk (good for bad trade), or not. Here you have no interesting decisions, and the best defense is just going for a more simple strategy so you will halfway be able to control things. Or hope that you are lucky.

As you said, haunted woods gives you the choice to go for a "draw deck" strategy, or not. As you also said, Charlatan gives you the choice to go for +Buys/heavy trashing, or not. I don't see much difference.
If anything, HW hurts much more than Charlatan, which will normally gain you a 2-3 coppers if you don't choose a punishable strategy (compare with Embargo for how much that can hurt a strategy).

Oh wait you were referring to NMF's ideas. Sorry. I think punishing +Actions is a pretty bad idea, yes.

[Asper]

To me, all this reads as "If somebody hasn't a certain ressource in exactly the amount he needs, which is allready bad, punish him further".

I don't hit the amount of coins i want. Now not only can't i buy what i want/wasted potential, no, you punish me even further. With Swamp Hag or Haunted Woods, i can choose between something good at the cost of something bad, or simply nothing. With this, if i have something bad, no choice, i get something bad. It's like punishing people for triggering a reshuffle or having unplayed actions in hand. Hey, you lack terminal space? Take this curse. Hey, you have too few terminals? Take this curse. Hey, you have less buys than you need or more than you can use? Take that!

I think this entire type of attack is arbitrary, luck dependant and harms those who were allready harmed. Haunted Woods attacks "draw your deck" engines. You know that and can either go for one, taking the risk (good for bad trade), or not. Here you have no interesting decisions, and the best defense is just going for a more simple strategy so you will halfway be able to control things. Or hope that you are lucky.

As you said, haunted woods gives you the choice to go for a "draw deck" strategy, or not. As you also said, Charlatan gives you the choice to go for +Buys/heavy trashing, or not. I don't see much difference.
If anything, HW hurts much more than Charlatan, which will normally gain you a 2-3 coppers if you don't choose a punishable strategy (compare with Embargo for how much that can hurt a strategy).

Oh wait you were referring to NMF's ideas. Sorry. I think punishing +Actions is a pretty bad idea, yes.

Yes, i said that, and it isn't quite accurate. Haunted Woods does give you a choice, but it doesn't only when deciding for a strategy. In fact, Haunted Woods gives you a choice on every time it's played. You can buy a card or leave it. Charlatan doesn't do that. But Charlatan doesn't even give the other kind of choice, and i didn't say that (or did i? I didn't mean to). It punishes you for something that isn't a strategy. Yes, the trashing example is nice, but on a board with strong trashing the Copper is nothing. Instaed, it punishes dead turns. Now we may have different concepts of fun, but getting punished for a dead turn sounds super-unfun to me. But it doesn't have to be a completely dead turn, actually. We all know how bad it is to have fewer buys than you'd need. Well, now it's also bad to have more than you need. You now need to hit exactly that amount of buys that goes perfectly with the amount of money you are going to draw and with what you want to buy. That's complicated and basically a game of luck. As i said before, when you have too many buys, you allready wasted potential of your deck. Buys are not for free. You paid for those cards, and now part of their effect was useless. So, when you have too many buys, you allready didn't get what you want. And you punish that.

Haunted Woods is completely on the other side. It punishes you for having good turns. If i draw badly and can't afford anything decent, Haunted Woods doesn't harm me, because i can skip buying stuff alltogether. If i draw badly and can afford something, i still can choose. In several of those cases, HW won't even be an attack, as it will allow me to topdeck dead actions. On the other hand, if i draw my deck and then double-Province, HW will hit me the hardest, because it means topdecking all those VP cards.

So the huge difference is that HW will attack players doing good, while Charlatan will attack players doing suboptimally. An i think this trait makes it very un-fun.

[eHalcyon]

I don't think Charlatan would be that bad.  It needs testing to be sure, but I think it would just pass out a few Copper over the course of the game, no big deal.  You do have a choice when it's played.  You can opt not to play a +Buy card.  When you do have extra buys, you can choose to buy (for example) two Villages instead of Gold and Copper. 

You're talking about it like it's this devastating attack that destroys everything, but to me it just looks like a Copper junker that gives the victim a lot of control to mitigate it.

[Asper]

Well, i don't think it's devastating or anything. Maybe i got a bit carried away here. It's not like a card is automatically bad because i don't like it. It's more that Charlatan goes against my design guidelines, but obviously those are just personal preference. It's not "bad" in the sense that it's too harsh/weak/political. I do think it has some issues, but maybe those can be solved.

[tristan]

So, dominator, on a scale of 1 to 10, how OK are you with me co-opting this idea for Enterprise?

Anyway, I tested this version today:

Charlatan: Action–Duration, $3
Now and at the start of your next turn: +$1. Until your next turn, each other player must use all of his Buys during his Buy phase.

As it happens, we played it on a board without any +Buy and it was a dud. Which is a shame because we had just finished playing another +Buy-less game in which we passed on buying cards pretty often. But that game had no $2 Kingdom cards and had harsher attacks, whereas this one had two options at $2 and attacks that were easier to work with.

But! I am not ready to give up on the concept altogether. Now I am still not so interested it adding +Buy to this card itself, either for you or for your opponents. If it gives you +1 Buy, it's less attractive because you might be shooting yourself in the foot. But if it gives your opponents +Buy, it stacks to a potentially devastating degree, which I'd also rather not have. My current plan is to give it +1 Action (just on the turn you play it). That way you are more likely to pick one up on boards where it's marginal, and you might get it over Silver in cases where it combos with cards that care about Actions.

I like the card as it is pretty unique. It might be worthwhile to point out that it could be a good (further) attack in junking-intensive games where people frequently (mainly during the middle game) might not wanna buy something (because they have less than 3$ respectively, in the absence of decent 2$ cards, less than 2$).

[enfynet]

This "must use all buys" may be difficult to track in IRL engine games. I do like the concept that unused buys punish you, but I worry about tracking.

[eHalcyon]

This "must use all buys" may be difficult to track in IRL engine games. I do like the concept that unused buys punish you, but I worry about tracking.

How is it difficult to track?  Buys remaining?  If you know how many buys you have, you can just put your newly bought cards horizontal on the discard pile or slightly off of it or something until you're done.  Or just count down.  It should be easier than tracking how many actions you have remaining, since that fluctuates a lot more.  With buys, they just go up as you play cards and then down afterwards.

[enfynet]

I'm thinking about tracking while playing/planning out a midgame "megaturn" where you are very likely to either run out of coin, or run out of buys while building an engine. That could really hinder that engine execution.

[ehunt]

Code: [Select]

$30
Event
X
Game ends, you win.

I actually think this would be a fun card. I can see Rock-Paper-Scissors boards where

garden rush > X > normal province-buying strategy > garden rush

[Awaclus]

Code: [Select]

$30
Event
X
Game ends, you win.

I actually think this would be a fun card. I can see Rock-Paper-Scissors boards where

garden rush > X > normal province-buying strategy > garden rush

I don't think that would be the case. Those boards would just be X boards, since you have to commit to Gardens rush very early, while you can start building your deck normally and start buying Provinces if your opponent went for the Gardens rush or keep building for the X megaturn if he didn't.

[ehunt]

I don't think that would be the case. Those boards would just be X boards, since you have to commit to Gardens rush very early, while you can start building your deck normally and start buying Provinces if your opponent went for the Gardens rush or keep building for the X megaturn if he didn't.

but.... dammit you're right.

i still wanna play with X though.

[Co0kieL0rd]

I like Charlatan because it uses a simple mechanic to do something new. I don't share the concerns for stale games and difficult tracking. Gaining a Copper occasionally isn't what you'd call a devastating attack so I don't see the need for other players to break a leg in order to avoid this effect.

Charalatan would only be meaningful on some boards and weak to useless on most, I think. But that's okay, a lot of cards are like that.

[Asper]

I'd like to explain why i used the word "arbitrary" before. Charlatan is an arbitrary attack because it doesn't attack strategies, but cards. Can i play an engine on a Charlatan board? Well, if the engine is Village/Torturer, yes, i can. If the engine is Village, Margrave, oops, maybe not. Farming Village/Smithy? Yes, please. Worker's Village/Smithy? Uh, rather not. Suddenly some engine parts will become a liability. You have to balance Charlatan to be good enough without engine pieces that will be played a lot. If you do, those engines become unplayable. Or you can balance Charlatan to become good only if there are necessary engine pieces that provide +Buy. In that case it's going to be a wasted slot in every other game.

[eHalcyon]

I'd like to explain why i used the word "arbitrary" before. Charlatan is an arbitrary attack because it doesn't attack strategies, but cards. Can i play an engine on a Charlatan board? Well, if the engine is Village/Torturer, yes, i can. If the engine is Village, Margrave, oops, maybe not. Farming Village/Smithy? Yes, please. Worker's Village/Smithy? Uh, rather not. Suddenly some engine parts will become a liability. You have to balance Charlatan to be good enough without engine pieces that will be played a lot. If you do, those engines become unplayable. Or you can balance Charlatan to become good only if there are necessary engine pieces that provide +Buy. In that case it's going to be a wasted slot in every other game.

It doesn't have to be good every game to be interesting.  Being a "wasted slot" in every other game can be perfectly acceptable.  Your description of its arbitrariness is actually a feature IMO.  The presence of the card doesn't just mean engines are out, plain and simple.  You have to make some other considerations.  And again, the penalty isn't that bad, so you might load up on +Buy anyway because the reward is still worthwhile.

[XerxesPraelor]

The problem is that it could end up terribroken, where it's normally terrible, except on boards where the engine is worker's village, where it's just too good. Since it's a copper junker, the number of players also comes into play.

[Asper]

The problem is that it could end up terribroken, where it's normally terrible, except on boards where the engine is worker's village, where it's just too good. Since it's a copper junker, the number of players also comes into play.

This is pretty much my point. I do not really worry about the cases where somebody plays a single +Buy card and can either afford something good or two mediocre things. I do worry about cases where +Buy is a side product of an engine, and about the case where you can't afford anything. Actually, the case where you have a choice other than gaining an additional Copper seems kind of neat. For this to happen, there need to be cheap cards. Without $2s (or cheap Events/Poor Houses), any amount below $6 will (usually) gain just be a Copper gain in addition to what i wanted to buy. At $6 i can have an actual decision. Just, the Copper gain doesn't really help me getting $6,  and you start out producing less. So, this is interesting in kingdoms that provide at least one relevant, +Buy card, that is at the same time not an irreplaceable engine component, and at least one $2. Funny enough, Squire and Hamlet are both, but optional.

I'd say you should playtest it. I don't think it's going to be fun, but i have been wrong before. And maybe just have different opinions on fun.

[eHalcyon]

Yeah, playtest.  I'm mostly just surprised at how much ado there is over something that seems totally reasonable to me.  I mean, I'm not saying it's going to be great or even fun (no way to know for sure), I just don't see it ever being terribroken.