Young Angler - $4
Action
+1 Card
+1 Action
You may discard a card. If it is an...
Action card, +1 Card
Fish card, +1 Card
Treasure card, gain 2 Fish
Victory card, +$1
(Heritage: Fishing Hole) | 
Fishing Hole - $3
Victory - Reaction - Heritage
1VP
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When you discard this other than during Clean-up, you may reveal it to reveal the top 3 cards of the Fish pile. Gain 1 and trash the rest.
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Wow. There is a lot going on here. While I can't be mad about the giant fish pile as it is exactly the kind of the I'd do (and have done), from a judging perspective having all of these different cards (which are not intuitive or simple variants of one another) goes pretty strongly against the simplicity category.
Young Angler is a cantrip that allows the player to discard a card for a benefit. This turns Victory cards into Coppers, most Action cards into cantrips (potentially helping deal with terminal collision or triggering an on-discard ability), Fish from the Fish pile (other than Freshwater Eel, which is a Night so will only be a cantrip) into Labs, and Treasures into double-gainers (getting you two Fish). Right away that's kind of nuts. If you only ever hit Victory cards this would be pretty close to a $4 peddler. If you don't have one available, you have the choice of (1) doing nothing, or (2) turn 1 of the Treasure cards in your hand into 2 Fish, which in addition to being themselves somewhat useful can turn into Labs if YA gets ahold of them.
Fishing Hole is an Estate that, when discarded (presumably, but not necessarily, via Young Angler) gives the player their choice of the top 3 Fish in the fish pile (along with the +$1 from YA, if that is what was used.
Then there are the 7 Fish cards. All but are (or at least can be) a non-terminal source of +1 Coffers (like Candlestick Maker without the +1 Buy); each also has an optional bonus ability if the card is trashed, and each has below-the-line text saying "When you trash this, shuffle this into the Fish pile."
I don't know why these cards have that below-the-line text and be trashed as part of their built-in effect (either through their self-trashing abilities or through Fishing Hole's reaction). As Timinou pointed out, this creates interactions with official cards that seem unnecessarily broken. Tomb is the most obvious example, but Market Square is a close runner-up. A Young Angler / Market Square opening seems all but mandatory, as Market Square would trigger anytime a fish was used and its self-trashing power triggered. For both the Fishing Hole reaction and each Fish card's bonus ability, you could just as easily have had the effects shuffle them back into the deck directly (or put them on the bottom of the deck, to save so much shuffling in IRL games). The only disadvantage that would have would be that if the fish were trashed by other effects, the pile might start to deplete. But as $2 cards they have little appeal with tfb cards (which could be trashing Estates instead). Also, with 4 copies each of 7 cards, there are 28 of them, almost as many as there are Horses. I have played games where there was good incentive to trash Horses using tfb, and I never got anywhere close to emptying the pile. In addition to preventing the issues with Tomb and MS, it makes these already overly complicated cards less complicated, both conceptually and in terms of amount of text (it would add a little bit of additional text to Fishing Hole, but the text there is already tiny).
Even with that fix, there is way too much going on. I get the desire to combine a lot of mechanics (and again, have done so), but doing that, especially in this context, multiplies complexity on itself. It is conceivable that a player might spend several minutes choosing which of which of three Fish to take after discarding FH with YA, something that could happen on Turn 3 and several turns thereafter. They also feel pretty unbalanced. Trade tokens can often have extremely powerful effects, making the ability to get one non-terminally (along with a Coffers) potentially incredibly powerful. Route tokens are similarly quite potent, although at least Atlantic Salmon is terminal. The other cards also seem pretty powerful for how easy it is to get multiple copies. That is somewhat mitigated by the fact that I think players would prefer to keep the Fish around to turn into Labs, but that is only because that ability is even more crazy powerful. There is also a wording issue with European Perch. The sentence "You may trash this to play it again." is ambiguous. I think you mean play the action card played from the player's hand again, but I think the plain reading of this is to play European Perch again (because "it" generally refers to the last noun, which in that sentence is "this").
I appreciate the effort, but ultimately I think this is a little too strong has way too much going on.
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| | Fish Pile: 4 of each, total of 28 cards
   
  
Freshwater Eel -$2*
Night - Attack - Fish
+1 Coffers
You may trash this. If you do, choose one: Each other player gains a Curse; or +3 Villagers.
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When you trash this, shuffle this into the Fish pile.
(This is not in the Supply.) | Northern Pike - $2*
Action - Attack - Fish
+1 Action
+1 Coffers
You may trash this for +1 Card. If you do, each other player discards down to 3 cards in hand.
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When you trash this, shuffle this into the Fish pile.
(This is not in the Supply.) | European Perch - $2*
Dawn - Action -Fish
+1 Buy
+1 Coffers
You may play an Action card from your hand. You may trash this to play it again.
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When you trash this, shuffle this into the Fish pile.
(This is not in the Supply.) | Brown Trout - $2*
Action - Fish
+1 Trade
Choose one: +1 Action and +1 Coffers; or +2 Cards; or pay 2 Trade and trash this for +1 Card, +1 Action, and gain 2 Spoils.
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When you trash this, shuffle this into the Fish pile.
(This is not in the Supply.) |
Atlantic Cod - $2*
Action - Fish
+1 Action
+1 Coffers
You may trash this for +1 Card. If you do, gain a non-Victory
card costing up to $5, Freezing it 2 times.
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When you trash this, shuffle this into the Fish pile.
(This is not in the Supply.) | Atlantic Salmon - $2*
Action - Fish
+2 Routes
+1 Coffers
You may trash this. If you do, +1 Card and +1 Action.
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When you trash this, shuffle this into the Fish pile.
(This is not in the Supply.) | Common Carp - $2*
Action - Fish
+2 Actions
Queue the top card of your deck.
You may trash this. If you do, trash 2 cards from your hand
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When you trash this, shuffle this into the Fish pile.
(This is not in the Supply.) | |
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Author
Topic: Fan Card Mechanics Week 24: Heritage Cards (Read 3307 times)