congratulations! your prize is humans!
a lot of people have a distaste for this card. ah, dang, he got a province first. oh, but i got mine with a tournament first, so i win. that's life. (that's liiiiiiiiiife)
i think that in terms of the game it's pretty not really cool. it has the same problem that market grande has which is that you'll just do a bunch of dumb stuff like buy silvers to try to get it and then once you do, you can't do the fun engine stuff that it would in theory allow. it also doesn't really appreciate fairgrounds because, well, provinces are already a good portion of the way to empty, let's just do those.
but, for the other reasons that dominion is fun, tournament is sehr gut. your newbie friend asks if there's a card that rewards you for having provinces and you say "no, there tends to not be things that.. oh wait, yeah there is, it's tournament."
and, as donx put it i think, some of these couldn't have existed anywhere else; you draw a hand full of trusty steeds and then think for a few years; being able to buy followers would mean the game never ends; princess just gets out of hand too quickly (the other ones are scary enough); bag of gold is stupidly good in the early game and in bm and stupidly bad towards the end (whoops that's the only time you can get it, alas); diadem is just not good too many times.
-how big of a deal is the first province,
real talk?
-trusty steed or followers?
-when do you stop buying tournament?