The Season mat has 20 spaces, 5 per Season, to reflect the typical phases of a game of Dominion:
- Spring is the opening
- Summer is buildup
- Fall is closing
- Winter (if it happens) is prolongued endgame.
While three of these can shift, Spring is certainly the one that pushes 5 turns as the standard the most, as this is the lowest number which guarantees that you will see every single one of your opening buys in Spring. Giving Spring only 3 or 4 turns means that you might see some of them randomly miss the Season. This also means that only on-buy and on-gain abilities can care for Spring - at least if you want something that is more than just random happenings.
It's also very relevant for the other Seasons, though. The way we (Co0kieL0rd and I) designed Seasons, one could make an attack that distributes Curses only in Fall, which still works but is too late to hurt players during buildup. We made a Village that you buy during Spring to trash a card, even though nobody needs several Villages early. We made a victory card that rewards you for buying it early, too, and a pile that disappears at the beginning of Fall, a card that you need to open with and play during Spring to max out what it can do, an attack that makes you discard in the middle of the game and topdeck during Spring and Winter, and so on, and so on.
Reducing the turn count ruins this model imo.
NoMoreFun's Wrangler would likely be my pick for winner considering this.
This makes sense; cards made by Co0kieL0rd and you followed the design of the 5-turn per season wheel. Because of that, changing the wheel turn would strangle the intricate design of these Season cards.
However, that’s not to say that other hypothetical cards couldn’t be made following a different type of wheel, such as the 3-turn per season one. I think as long as it’s stated before, then cards can be properly judged according to which wheel they use. The premise of the Season mechanic is, after all, very much kept at heart.
As for me, personally, I do prefer and advocate for a 3 turn per Season wheel. The Alchemist made a beautiful rendition of it on the first page of this thread. I like it better not only mechanically, but also thematically. For the theme, the most flavourful aspect, we have:
- A total of 12 spaces on the wheel, which is a perfect imitation of the Gregorian calendar.
- 3 turns per season, which is like 3 months per season in real life. Pretty accurate once again.
- The wheel starts in the middle of winter, just like the first month, January, starts in the middle of winter. The game starts at the beginning of a new year!
The matches are so well timed – my goopy brain couldn’t be happier!
Now, mechanically speaking, I think it too fills a nice niche:
- Winter is for the first 2 turns. This is kind of funny, as your 2 opening buys fill that winter gap. As if the harshness of winter is the start of it all, and it’s slow for you and your opponents to get your kingdom going in these blizzard storms.
- Spring ends on turn 5, just like it does with the 5 turn wheel. So turn 3, 4 and 5 is spring, which is exactly your first shuffle. You will see your 2 opening buys in Spring. Maybe you’ll even see them a second time with a nice turn 5 shuffle.
- Winter ends on turn 14, which is exactly the average number of turns in your typical Dominion game. With rushes probably ending in Fall, and slogs going for a second turn of the wheel. This is a good way to see how you fare in your game too. Going for a second Spring tells your group that oops, the game was played too slow.
- The game is also spliced in a nice way. Spring is for you to hit and to see your first two purchases. Summer is to build and get deck control. Fall is to build toward how you’re going to score, such as adding economy to your deck. Winter is to score, pile, and/or end the game. This isn’t always true for all games, but I think it’s a pretty good baseline.
Anyway, all in all, both systems work. If you design cards for either of them, then it needs to keep the length of the wheel/seasons in mind. I don’t think one can simply port a card from one system to the other, as there are fundamentals that are lost otherwise. For instance, the card I submitted for this contest actually would work way worse if it used the regular wheel with 20 spaces on it.