Go here to see the most recent update of this expansion!:
http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=20619Hello! If you're like me and have always wondered what dominion would look like with a little technological advancement, this is the expansion for you! It's a large expansion that's a mix of prosperity and dark ages: 15 strong, expensive cards that puts prosperity to shame, and 15 cheap, simple, mostly trashing cards that shine in certain situations. I'm looking for help with balancing the cards and getting general feedback before I go off and print them out.
The themes for this set include new spins on the vanilla bonuses (including combinations missing from the game) and filling up the 1 and 7 coin gaps, something Don X. actually supports. This set is great for making powerful engines (it is the industrial revolution after all), and for truly massive decks. It is strongly recommended to play with colonies and plats.
With no further ado, here are the expensive cards:
Cathedral:
Continuing the theme of chapel and bishop, this card trashes and rewards your tithe in the form of coin and victory tokens. Who doesn't love tokens? Adding cantrip to watered-down bishop warrants +$2 (see bridge -> highway).
[Edit]: Changed so that you only get the VP if you trash a card. Much harder to make golden decks now. Less likely to have the game go on forever.
Town Hall:
Lots of decisions need to be made with this duration card. Gives 9 options with a mix of useful and potentially harmful. Usually nets out to a market with a discarded card so I put this at $6. $7 May be reasonable.
[Edit]: No longer forces you to choose what you didn't pick on your next turn. Now each turn is independent and tracking should be much easier.
Hospital:
One step above doctor, but one step below donate in terms of quickly getting rid of unwanted cards. Useless if drawn in your first hand, but incredibly strong in your last. $6 may be too cheap.
[Edit]: Added coppers to the list.
Observatory:
Take a look at what's coming up and set up the perfect next turn. The reverse of hospital, useless if drawn in your last and easily the strongest deck inspector in the game if drawn in your first. $7 seems balanced but I'm not sure.
Steel Foundry:
A smithy on steroids, this terminal draw is a great way to use up actions. A hunting grounds with +$1 but no trash bonus. Might need to be at $8.
Infantry:
Infiltrate your opponents hands with this attack card. A +3 card attack like torturer or rabble, where you can place unwanted cards from your hand into an opponent's. Can attack repeatedly but keeps opponent's decks at 5.
[Edit]: Changed cost to $7. Thinking about forcing the cards given to be identical to reduce the targeted nature.
Artillery:
This second attack card lets you load, aim, and fire a card out of your enemy's hand. The only discard attack that lets the attacker choose the card to discard is pillage, and such a powerful ability forces it to be a one-off. To make this balanced without having to trash itself, you must pay a vanilla bonus. You cannot give up action if you're at zero. If you choose buy and have no more +buys, you cant buy a card this turn, etc. Has the problem of targeted attack but then again so does pillage.
[Edit]: Changed to not allow gaining of victory cards. I had intended this, but just forgot to put it in.
Police Station:
Need some defense against those harsh attacks? Need to protect you stuff from criminals? Hire a police station! This reaction card discourages attack cards. Forcing a trash of the attack/reflecting the attack is considered bad design, so this gives the choice to the attacker to take a gold hit and keep their attack (The police catch the criminals and either jail them or release them on bail). Also works as an expand on any attack cards you may have. Clears attacks from both sides!
[Edit]: Changed so the reaction effect is not strictly harmful. Also a moat reaction is an option available to them. The opponents are less likely to be disincentivised to buy attack cards.
Stock Exchange:
An action-treasure like crown. This lets you trade virtual gold for any vanilla bonus you need during your action phase, and trade in any unused actions/cards for gold in your buy phase. The buy phase ability is strictly superior to both diadem and vault, thus the $9 cost. May need to be higher. For your action phase ability, you need gold from action cards in order to trade in for a vanilla bonus, no using treasures or coin tokens. The card comes with $2, so you can make a cantrip or village, but then you can't use the buy phase ability. Really strong when combined with gold from markets or peddlers.
[Edit] Reduced cost to $7 based off suggestions.
Oil Refinery:
All your action cards too complicated with all their "mechanics" and "words" and what not? Well refine them into plain ol' vanilla cards instead! Turn your 10 native villages into regular, normal, not-a-novel-of-a-description villages! Or peddler variants, or even labs (easily the strongest option)! This card is unique in giving a choice that doesn't need to be unique. Choose +3 cards, or $3, or +1 action and +2 buys if that's your thing. This is probably the most likely to be broken. It was too weak to have effect on only one card, and having the choices be different is restrictive when you pick 3 out of 4. I may just have to go with the latter though if it's too strong.
[Edit]: Reduced cost to $8 as per suggested.
Factory:
The next advancement on Laboratory, this "power card of epic proportions that probably shouldn't exist at any cost" should be balanced at $9. I find it hard to believe that this card is not possible to be balanced, especially with things like kings court smithy and city quarter.
[Edit]: Changed from $7 to $9.
Supermarket:
The next logical step up from grand market. The +$1 combined with +1 buy warrants an increase of $4 from grand market, but the drawback of no silvers brings the total down to $9.
[Edit] Changed +1 Card to +1 Buy.
Public School:
Let your cards edumacate themselves and lern to be gooder. Give your baker a degree and turn them into a lab assistant! Or have your lowly herbalist follow their dreams and become a market or something. The natural extension to teacher. Exact same effect but without needed 5 reshuffles. Turning one of the two strongest cards in the came (along with champion) into a card you can buy right away rightly deserves the high cost of $10, maybe even more?
[Edit] Reduced cost to $9 based off suggestion. I felt that teacher was such a good card it was a shame no other cards besides events had the ability. I really like this card, even if only to increase the likelihood of getting to use +1 bonus tokens in a game.
Metropolis:
And lastly the pièce de résistance: metropolis. From lowly hamlet, to village, to city, then metropolis. Its vanilla bonuses are exactly that of a fully leveled up city, but with a duchy added in because why not? A metropolitan area is practically a duchy. The vanilla bonuses alone are worth $8, so it is probably undervalued at $10, but it didnt make sense to make it more than a colony at $12 or $13, but I'd like to hear your opinions.
[Edit] Changed from 3 VP to 1 VP as 10 was too cheap for 3.
Theatre:
Hate it when you have the perfect kingdom for an engine but there are no sticking +buys! Or when its a kingdom of 10 great cards but not a single non-terminal to be found. Or maybe you just really hate the sight of estates and hate that there aren't more trashing cards in the game? Well this is card for you. Alone it's worthless, a cantrip costing $2. But the worse the kingdom is, the better it gets. The actors play the part of whatever is you're missing to get your strategy off the ground. No handsize increasers? This cards is a basic lab costing $5. No villages? this card becomes a vanilla village at $3. It can be a worker's village at $4, and a junk dealer without the $1 at $4. Only when your kingdom is missing literally everything is this card an insanely strong $9 card.
Cheap cards:Salesman:
The buy equivalent of Hireling. Used the price difference of Seaway -> Pathfinder to price this at $3.
Worker:
When using pawn, usually the best bet is +1 card +$1. This card gives that for half the price, and is good in decks with excess actions. Just a reminder that this and the other $1 cards in this set are pretty weak on their own. But with the extra buys from other cards, these cheap cards help you to make really big decks of mostly actions. Great for gardens, scrying pool, or champion games. I know a lot of these cards are "boring vanilla cards", but I actually like vanilla cards and think there should be more in the game.
Market Stall:
Some extra buys to help ease off the burden of buying these cheap cards. This should technically be priced at $2 but more than one buy is rarely useful, except in this set.
Furnace:
Pretty self explanatory. Burn a card in the furnace to give you more cards to keep your engine going. This might be better of costing $2.
Landfill:
Put something in the dump, get something out. Really simple card to turn your curses into coppers or estates into lighthouses.
Plot of Land:
Yes, I wanted there to be a card that was just a cantrip. There are many instances where this could be useful. But if you change your mind you chapel 4 of these and deplete the Lab pile. I really don't like the picture on this one but it was the best I could find. Funnily enough, finding a good picture of nothing is harder than it sounds. If you have a better one in mind please send it my way.
Sewer:
The worst sifting card in the game, but hey it only costs $2. This is the Lab -> Smithy equivalent of warehouse.
[Edit]: This card was +2 cards, discard a card at $1, but I agree that was way too weak.
Bank Note:
This is just an action version of silver. It is cheaper because it can be terminally drawn unlike silver, plus delve already showed that getting a silver at $2 isn't game breaking. This is useful in scrying pool games, games with treasure attacks, or any other game where you just dont want your deck cluttered with treasures. It especially combos well with my Stock Exchange (coincidence? nope.)
Statue:
A weaker version of monument. While it can lead to endless games, some hard trashing is needed to pull this off, and even then a max of 5 of these can be played. Compare to the Bishop/Fortress golden deck where you can get 12 VP per turn.
Coal:
Modified version of Encampment from the Strife fan expansion:
http://www.nosro.net/games/dominion/strife/list.php#encampmentAs there's now a real card named encampment, and to fit in with the theme of this expansion, I changed the name and picture. The idea is the same, burn up this card for a temporary bonus.
Slums:
The next step up from Necropolis. I want this a card because it just works for thematic reasons, and because it kinda works with 3 workers. Thats a gold and +3 cards right there, albeit for 4 cards.
General Store:
Want to buy 3 workers? Or how about a market stall and two coppers? This card will help you hoard up on cheap cards for whatever strategy calls it (looking at you gardens).
[Edit]: I changed the wording to "up to 3 cards", so you aren't forced to buy $0 cards if you get a $3 one.
Reforge:
Gain 1 coin token for copper, 5 for plat, etc. Weaker version of moneylender on all treasures, except its coin tokens so that's nice. Potentially game changing if you trash up all your treasures and end with a megaturn.
The following are versions of cards from Auto-Destruct Sequence (
http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=3984). I really like his cards and they fit so well in my set I just had to include them.
Boom Town:
I really like this card, but it was too weak on its own. I think setting the price at 2 fixes it nicely. Also changed the wording to be more clear.
Demolish:
I just modified the formatting and image of this one.
These following ones I didn't modify, they were already perfect. I am just reposting them here because I intend to print them along with my own.