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[NoMoreFun]

Design a card (shaped thing) with an effect that can only be used once per game

I'm looking for more effects like Seize the Day. Where you think about the whole game and when to deploy the "once per game" effect. These kinds of decisions are in every dominion game (e.g. when to start greening), but a good "once per game" effect will provide even more opportunities.

I'll be judging on the basis of cards where the "once per game" looms large in the player's mind and isn't a trivial or obvious decision. It doesn't have to be game warping - it could be minor and only matter for players who choose a strategy involving the card. But I want players to think about when to pull the trigger.

Most Projects aren't what I really have in mind as they're largely positive and don't feel all that different from buying a card.  However I'm not going to make hard and fast "rules" about it as for example something like Inheritance has "once per game" in its text but it functions more like a Project.

The only rule is something technically that means the effect once per game, per player at most. So all Projects would "qualify". Something like Mountain Pass that's once per game across all players is also acceptable. Supply piles of one card are acceptable, but try keep it within the spirit of the contest - it shouldn't be bought many times in most games due to a "return to the supply" effect.

Once per game was an option for last week but it wasn't explored that often. Additionally, this week it need not relate to buying/gaining.  A Village, no buy restrictions, with a once per game additional effect would be a great entrant.

Edit: Oneshot Heirlooms do qualify, as long as they can't be gained back most of the time (e.g. if the card the Heirloom is paired with can gain from the trash). If you want to submit an heirloom you must also pair it with a card (shaped thing), which may or may not also have a "once per game" effect.

[Commodore Chuckles]

Rig The System
Event - $5
Once per game: The next time you would shuffle, instead arrange your deck in any order.

[AJL828]

Supernova
Event ($3)

Once per game: +1 Buy and at end of turn, put all cards from your deck and discard pile into your hand, then put all but 5 of these cards into your discard pile.

A superpowered version of Star Chart that lets you set up the perfect next hand, but only once. I made it cost $3 so that way a player with a lucky 5/2 (in that order) opening doesn't quickly pull ahead of their opponent by getting this right after a strong $5. I'm not 100% sure if this is the best wording for this idea (I took Donate's wording and modified it based on how I figured its new errata would change it), so suggestions for that are welcome.

EDIT: Changed the wording because I messed up before and it made your next hand empty. Thanks go to Gubump for the new wording.
Old Version:

[JW]

Prospecting Village
$4
Action
+1 Card and +2 Actions
Once per game: +1 Card and, until the end of turn, when you play a Prospecting Village, you may gain a Gold.
 
The first one doesn't give you a Gold so that it isn't a strong one-of in a money deck. Hopefully it is tricky to decide A) whether it’s worth over-villaging earlier on to get more of the once per game "Gold rush" effect, and B) when to use it.

I think that it's clear that the once per game effect is not automatic the first time you play a Prospecting Village. If not, open to suggestions on how to clarify.

[Gubump]

Supernova
Event ($3)

Once per game: +1 Buy. At the end of this turn, put all non-Duration cards you have in play, and all cards from your deck and discard pile into your hand. Put 5 of them onto your deck in any order and discard the rest.

A superpowered version of Star Chart that lets you set up the perfect next hand, but only once. I made it cost $3 so that way a player with a lucky 5/2 (in that order) opening doesn't quickly pull ahead of their opponent by getting this right after a strong $5. I'm not 100% sure if this is the best wording for this idea (I took Donate's wording and modified it based on how I figured its new errata would change it), so suggestions for that are welcome.

Since this happens at the end of turn, it occurs after drawing your next hand so you have an empty hand next turn. Is that intentional?

[emtzalex]

My Submission:
 

Demonologist • $4 • Action
+3 Cards
If you have Dark Pact, +1 Action. Otherwise, discard a card. If you discarded an Action card, you may trash it to take Dark Pact.

Dark Pact • State
At the start of your turn, you may gain a Curse. If you didn't, discard 4 cards, then +1 Card.

Rather than using a once-per-game Event or a landscape that triggers once per game, I decided to use a State that can only be taken, not returned. Thus, my submission is Demonologist, along with a Dark Pact, a State with a copy for each player.

Demonologist is a Smithy variant, which starts out with a 1 card discarding penalty. However, if a player is willing to discard and then trash an Action card, it turns into a very powerful double-lab, but at a substantial cost. This is the once-per-game choice that players have to decide if and when to make. Do they take multiple Demonologists first? If so, their deck is loaded up with relatively weak terminal draw cards. On the other hand, after the take Dark Pact they'll need Demonologists to mitigate its penalty. And, of course, they need an Action to trash (and need it when they want to pull the trigger, which might not happen if they buy too many other cards).

Dark Pact imposes a huge penalty, a much more severe version of Torturer (either giving Curses or discards). Even when the Curse pile empties, the player is still impacted, forced to take the strong discarding option. Initially I had it discard 2, but then I realized that those cards could be replaced with a single play of the enhanced Demonologist. I considered discarding 3, but was worried that in a game with both Cursers and a down-to-3 handsize Attack (Militia, Margrave, Ghost Ship), there was a risk of having no cards in hand. The discard 4, +1 Card solves that, since players will never end up with fewer than 1 card, yet it is actually more severe than just discarding 3.

[AJL828]

Supernova
Event ($3)

Once per game: +1 Buy. At the end of this turn, put all non-Duration cards you have in play, and all cards from your deck and discard pile into your hand. Put 5 of them onto your deck in any order and discard the rest.

A superpowered version of Star Chart that lets you set up the perfect next hand, but only once. I made it cost $3 so that way a player with a lucky 5/2 (in that order) opening doesn't quickly pull ahead of their opponent by getting this right after a strong $5. I'm not 100% sure if this is the best wording for this idea (I took Donate's wording and modified it based on how I figured its new errata would change it), so suggestions for that are welcome.

Since this happens at the end of turn, it occurs after drawing your next hand so you have an empty hand next turn. Is that intentional?

Oh… yeah that’s not what I wanted it to do lol. It’s supposed to let you set up your 5 best cards (of your choosing) onto your deck and then immediately draw them for your next hand. When would be the timing of getting the player to do this so it works like I intend it to?

[faust]

Mass Migration - 12D
Event

Once per game: Gain one card from each Supply pile.

[spineflu]

Entrust • $1 • Event
Once per game: if you've taken 2 or more turns this game, gain a card.

Design notes:
The "if you've taken 2 or more turns this game," is meant to keep it out of the opening.
Designed with the "not if, but when and how" criteria from the prompt in mind. Maybe that always means province but i think more commonly it will mean turning a stray Buy into a critical engine component.

Gain whatever. Need this to double province on $9 with 2 buys? Wanna spike that prince early? Or win a pile split? Or salvage an extremely dud turn in a game with no +buys?

[Meta]

Supernova
Event ($3)

Once per game: +1 Buy. At the end of this turn, put all non-Duration cards you have in play, and all cards from your deck and discard pile into your hand. Put 5 of them onto your deck in any order and discard the rest.

A superpowered version of Star Chart that lets you set up the perfect next hand, but only once. I made it cost $3 so that way a player with a lucky 5/2 (in that order) opening doesn't quickly pull ahead of their opponent by getting this right after a strong $5. I'm not 100% sure if this is the best wording for this idea (I took Donate's wording and modified it based on how I figured its new errata would change it), so suggestions for that are welcome.

Since this happens at the end of turn, it occurs after drawing your next hand so you have an empty hand next turn. Is that intentional?

Oh… yeah that’s not what I wanted it to do lol. It’s supposed to let you set up your 5 best cards (of your choosing) onto your deck and then immediately draw them for your next hand. When would be the timing of getting the player to do this so it works like I intend it to?

You couly change the last sentence to: Put 5 of them into your hand and discard the rest.

[Timinou]

My Submission:
 

Demonologist • $4 • Action
+3 Cards
If you have Dark Pact, +1 Action. Otherwise, discard a card. If you discarded an Action card, you may trash it to take Dark Pact.

Dark Pact • State
At the start of your turn, you may gain a Curse. If you didn't, discard 4 cards, then +1 Card.

Rather than using a once-per-game Event or a landscape that triggers once per game, I decided to use a State that can only be taken, not returned. Thus, my submission is Demonologist, along with a Dark Pact, a State with a copy for each player.

Demonologist is a Smithy variant, which starts out with a 1 card discarding penalty. However, if a player is willing to discard and then trash an Action card, it turns into a very powerful double-lab, but at a substantial cost. This is the once-per-game choice that players have to decide if and when to make. Do they take multiple Demonologists first? If so, their deck is loaded up with relatively weak terminal draw cards. On the other hand, after the take Dark Pact they'll need Demonologists to mitigate its penalty. And, of course, they need an Action to trash (and need it when they want to pull the trigger, which might not happen if they buy too many other cards).

Dark Pact imposes a huge penalty, a much more severe version of Torturer (either giving Curses or discards). Even when the Curse pile empties, the player is still impacted, forced to take the strong discarding option. Initially I had it discard 2, but then I realized that those cards could be replaced with a single play of the enhanced Demonologist. I considered discarding 3, but was worried that in a game with both Cursers and a down-to-3 handsize Attack (Militia, Margrave, Ghost Ship), there was a risk of having no cards in hand. The discard 4, +1 Card solves that, since players will never end up with fewer than 1 card, yet it is actually more severe than just discarding 3.

I feel like Dark Pact may be too harsh. Sure, having double-Labs in your deck would be great, but you’re going to be pretty sad if you don’t see any Demonologists in your starting hand.  I think discard 2 might be OK (or discard 3, +1 Card). 

If you’re building towards having activated Demonologists, you probably don’t want to take Dark Pact until you have a decent number of Demonologists in your deck, so there is also the inherent trade-off of having to support terminals in your deck until you can activate them (not to mention the fact that it will cost you an Action card to do so).

[Gubump]

Supernova
Event ($3)

Once per game: +1 Buy. At the end of this turn, put all non-Duration cards you have in play, and all cards from your deck and discard pile into your hand. Put 5 of them onto your deck in any order and discard the rest.

A superpowered version of Star Chart that lets you set up the perfect next hand, but only once. I made it cost $3 so that way a player with a lucky 5/2 (in that order) opening doesn't quickly pull ahead of their opponent by getting this right after a strong $5. I'm not 100% sure if this is the best wording for this idea (I took Donate's wording and modified it based on how I figured its new errata would change it), so suggestions for that are welcome.

Since this happens at the end of turn, it occurs after drawing your next hand so you have an empty hand next turn. Is that intentional?

Oh… yeah that’s not what I wanted it to do lol. It’s supposed to let you set up your 5 best cards (of your choosing) onto your deck and then immediately draw them for your next hand. When would be the timing of getting the player to do this so it works like I intend it to?

Just noticed that since it's at the end of turn, you've already cleaned up all your played cards, so the putting cards you have in play into your hand part does nothing. So this is my suggested wording:

Once per game: +1 Buy and at end of turn, put all cards from your deck and discard pile into your hand, then put all but 5 of these cards into your discard pile.

[Augie279]

Throne Room with a once-per-game King's Court-Disciple fusion. Theoretically you could use it to gain itself, but with its heavy cost making it hard to gain multiples of, do you really want to do that?

[mxdata]

Mass Migration - 12D
Event

Once per game: Gain one card from each Supply pile.

Is it intentional that the cards gained would include a Curse?

[faust]

Mass Migration - 12D
Event

Once per game: Gain one card from each Supply pile.

Is it intentional that the cards gained would include a Curse?

Yep. You gotta take the good and the bad.

[Gubump]

My Submission:
 

Demonologist • $4 • Action
+3 Cards
If you have Dark Pact, +1 Action. Otherwise, discard a card. If you discarded an Action card, you may trash it to take Dark Pact.

Dark Pact • State
At the start of your turn, you may gain a Curse. If you didn't, discard 4 cards, then +1 Card.

Rather than using a once-per-game Event or a landscape that triggers once per game, I decided to use a State that can only be taken, not returned. Thus, my submission is Demonologist, along with a Dark Pact, a State with a copy for each player.

Demonologist is a Smithy variant, which starts out with a 1 card discarding penalty. However, if a player is willing to discard and then trash an Action card, it turns into a very powerful double-lab, but at a substantial cost. This is the once-per-game choice that players have to decide if and when to make. Do they take multiple Demonologists first? If so, their deck is loaded up with relatively weak terminal draw cards. On the other hand, after the take Dark Pact they'll need Demonologists to mitigate its penalty. And, of course, they need an Action to trash (and need it when they want to pull the trigger, which might not happen if they buy too many other cards).

Dark Pact imposes a huge penalty, a much more severe version of Torturer (either giving Curses or discards). Even when the Curse pile empties, the player is still impacted, forced to take the strong discarding option. Initially I had it discard 2, but then I realized that those cards could be replaced with a single play of the enhanced Demonologist. I considered discarding 3, but was worried that in a game with both Cursers and a down-to-3 handsize Attack (Militia, Margrave, Ghost Ship), there was a risk of having no cards in hand. The discard 4, +1 Card solves that, since players will never end up with fewer than 1 card, yet it is actually more severe than just discarding 3.

I feel like Dark Pact may be too harsh. Sure, having double-Labs in your deck would be great, but you’re going to be pretty sad if you don’t see any Demonologists in your starting hand.  I think discard 2 might be OK (or discard 3, +1 Card). 

If you’re building towards having activated Demonologists, you probably don’t want to take Dark Pact until you have a decent number of Demonologists in your deck, so there is also the inherent trade-off of having to support terminals in your deck until you can activate them (not to mention the fact that it will cost you an Action card to do so).

Even with decent trashing, it makes no sense to go for this until the Curses are out. Then the game is arguably in its late stages such that DoubleLab is not too crazy anymore.

Uh, having the Dark Pact while the Curses are out means you start each turn with a two card hand. The Curse pile being empty makes Dark Pact strictly more harmful. It's not like Torturer where it does nothing once the Curses are gone.

[jakav]

There are a lot of interesting things possible with this contest. My submission is Colonization.

Colonization Project - 5 At the start of your turn, if you have any coin tokens on this, remove one for +2 Cards and +$1.                                                   When you buy this, put three coin tokens on this.

Colonization is a three-turn boost you can only use once. You will probably use it if it is in the game, but when should you buy it? Should you buy it the moment you get $5? Mid-game, or to get some of the last provinces? There is a lot of strategy involved especially because you cannot save it for later after you buy it. It uses coin tokens to keep track of how many boosted turns you have left.

Feedback is appreciated.

[spheremonk]

"Can buy" language based on Deluded. Theoretically, this prevents the player who buys it from buying Victory cards, but practically, that should rarely matter.

[xyz123]

Carnival
Action - Reserve
$5

+2 Actions
$1
____________________________________________________________________________________
At the start of your turn you may call this. On this turn when you play an action +1 Action
____________________________________________________________________________________
When you gain this, if this is the first Carnival you have gained this game put it on your tavern mat.



- My idea for this week was to borrow Champion's ability of making all action cards non-terminal for one turn only. I wanted the player to have the choice of when to use it at the start of their turn. Would you use it to smooth out a dud draw? Could you use it to set up a megaturn, potentially gaining additional payload cards you wouldn't normally have the terminal space for on the previous turn? I think the tactical decisions it introduces are interesting.

[faust]

There are a lot of interesting things possible with this contest. My submission is Colonization.

Colonization Project - 5 At the start of your turn, if you have any coin tokens on this, remove one for +2 Cards and +$1.                                                   When you buy this, put three coin tokens on this.

Colonization is a three-turn boost you can only use once. You will probably use it if it is in the game, but when should you buy it? Should you buy it the moment you get $5? Mid-game, or to get some of the last provinces? There is a lot of strategy involved especially because you cannot save it for later after you buy it. It uses coin tokens to keep track of how many boosted turns you have left.

Feedback is appreciated.

Technically, this does not distinguish between the coin tokens you put on it and the coin tokens your opponent put on it, so it would allow you to use your opponent's tokens, which I assume is not intended. I can't think of a good rewording that fixes the issue at the moment.

[spineflu]

There are a lot of interesting things possible with this contest. My submission is Colonization.

Colonization Project - 5 At the start of your turn, if you have any coin tokens on this, remove one for +2 Cards and +$1.                                                   When you buy this, put three coin tokens on this.

Colonization is a three-turn boost you can only use once. You will probably use it if it is in the game, but when should you buy it? Should you buy it the moment you get $5? Mid-game, or to get some of the last provinces? There is a lot of strategy involved especially because you cannot save it for later after you buy it. It uses coin tokens to keep track of how many boosted turns you have left.

Feedback is appreciated.

Technically, this does not distinguish between the coin tokens you put on it and the coin tokens your opponent put on it, so it would allow you to use your opponent's tokens, which I assume is not intended. I can't think of a good rewording that fixes the issue at the moment.

Sinister Plot would like to have a word with you; you simply put your coin tokens on/by your project cube.

[Chappy7]

Pretty much a beggar, but one time only you can trash all the crap you've amassed (provided you can get most of it in your hand or discard pile) The decision comes from wondering how long to keep using the easy $3 early in the game, and when to cleanse the deck.  Or maybe you never want to gain coppers and you just want to use it to scrap your starting coppers. 

[fika monster]

(not a serious entry)

[nyxfulloftricks]

Costumer Event $2 Once per game: Choose one: +1 Card token, +1 Action token, +$1 token, +1 Buy token; move the chosen tokens of all players that are not on supply piles to an Action supply pile of an action card you have in play.

Costumer $6 Action +1 Card +1 Action - Once per game, when you gain this, choose two: +1 Card token, +1 Action token, +$1 token, +1 Buy token; move the chosen tokens to the Costumer action supply pile. For the rest of the game, when you play this, you first get those tokens.

I wanted to expand on the tokens from Adventures in a sort of dress up your card the way you want kind of way. I acknowledge that if other cards mess with those specific tokens, there is no way to put them back, but you do not have to move those specific tokens if you don't want. Due to that, I think the interaction shouldn't mess with the card design much.

I have updated my entry based on feedback from others about my first design being a bit too strong.

[X-tra]