I might say Clerk's Action is a bit too good for $2. You get the best of 3 cards and an extra $1 on the side. I might remove the $1 or lower the number of cards that are revealed.
I agree that the Action effect might be a touch too powerful. I might nerf it back down to looking at the top 2 cards of your deck rather than the top 3. The thing is that the reaction effect is useful, but slow. I wanted to give the action effect a bit more kick to compensate. At one time the reaction effect trashed down to 3 cards in hand, but I thought that would be too constricting. If there were some concise way to word Clerk such that upon revealing it you were allowed to trash any number of cards from your hand as long as you didn't dip below 3 cards in hand, I would go for that.
I like Gambler-- though would probably prefer the name refer to the Gambling Hall rather than the man doing the gambling. That's semantics though. Mechanically, its effect is cute as a trasher, but it sucks as a drawer since it is a one-shot. I probably wouldn't buy it unless I wanted its trashing effects or had an extra buy and didn't need more Silver.
Yeah, the drawing effect is definitely meant to be the consolation prize. A one-shot Laboratory is a terrible investment. Gambler is first and foremost a deck thinner. To say that you probably wouldn't buy it unless you wanted its trashing effects is completely reasonable, but I'd argue that you'd want its trashing effects in most decks.
I'm a big fan of this one, but Mill Town might run faster if you "reveal 3 or more Coppers from your hand and gain a card costing up to the number of Coppers revealed" since we wouldn't be stuck in the awkward analysis-paralysis of trying not to reveal too many or too few Coppers. Why can't Mill Town gain a card that costs $2, anyway?
Well, the reason that Mill Town can't gain $2 cards is that I was afraid that it would be too easy to run out piles with it. A hand with 3 Mill Towns and 2 Coppers could gain 4 Estates, after all. Now that I think about it, I see no real problem with the gaining being 'up to' the number of Coppers revealed as long as you still have to reveal at least 3 Coppers. I'll change the wording. I think I actually have to reword the card anyway, because as it's currently written, I think you could gain, say, a Familiar by revealing 3 Coppers.
Surveyer is okay. +2 Cards I've always found to be a weak, nearly useless effect thrown onto cards with stronger alternate effects-- and that seems to be the case here. I'm pretty unimpressed by this card overall though. I wouldn't usually buy it-- even with a spare $3 unless there was a really good $6 Action in play that I wanted more than one of.
Yeah, it's a situational card to be sure. They can't all be power cards! I think with a little playtesting, though, you'd find it to be more useful that it seems at first glance. That +2 Cards really does help in the early game and it's a decent opener in the absence of powerful $3 and $4 Attack cards. Then in the midgame, you can trash it for a more powerful $5 or $6 terminal without increasing the density of terminal Action cards in your deck. Or you can trash it for a useful non-terminal that you've drawn dead, like Bazaar. If you get $9 in the early midgame, including a Gold, you can trash your Surveyor and pick up 2 Golds that turn.
I'll continue to test it, and if it turns out to be too weak, I'll buff it in some way. Perhaps in order to gain a copy of the revealed card, you have to put it on your deck instead of discarding it?
The price decerement supplied by Fund would rarely be worth anything. The best thing about Bridge is decreasing the price of what you want to buy to nothing so that you are limited by your buys rather than your coins, but Fund can only decrease prices by $1 on its own (which is to say, it would only be worthwhile if Bridges and Highways were in play). I'd only maybe buy one if I needed a Silver and had $4, but I can't think of any scenarios that Fund's effect would be anywhere near as useful as Bridge's or Highway's.
Well, in the absence of Bridge or Highway, the price-lowering ability of Fund is basically useful in a few situations. First, you trash it early in order to pick up a Gold or other $6 card on turn 3 or 4. Second, if you have $8, $9, or $10 to spend, including a fund, you can trash it to pick up two $5 cards, a $5 and $6 card, or two $6 cards, respectively. Or you can trash it late-game to bump yourself from $7 to $8 for a Province. A one-shot Gold for $4 isn't bad. The price-lowering is there because it's more flexible, and in some ways easier to track, than just giving an extra $1 to spend.
That being said, I'm considering bumping its cost to $5 and removing the hand-discarding penalty. That would completely change the way the card plays and the situations it would be useful in, but I'm open to the possibility.
Monopoly sounds like one of those luck-based Kingdom Cards I would veto constantly. Its ability to trash cards from the Supply is something I'd like to play with though...
Well, the card has three effects: the Supply-trashing, the +$2, and the Gold-gaining. Only one of those three is luck-based. Putting a Gold on your deck is good, but not immediately game-winning.
The card is basically meant to fight decks that load up on a single card without discouraging the buying of Kingdom cards in general. If more playtesting reveals that it leads to boring games, I may have to change which cards can be chosen for each effect.
Barracks might be more useful if Conscripts wasn't gained, but could be purchased while Barracks was in play (and perhaps Conscripts are returned to their Supply instead of being trashed). As it is, I wouldn't pay $5 for Barracks unless a different, better Attack was in play. And now that I think about it, adding a +$1 to it might not be all that bad. Imagine a Market without a +Card... yeah, it has +$2 instead and is called Festival.
Yes, I might add that +$1 back. I just don't want it to be too powerful in games with other Attacks. Curses are bad enough that even in some games without other Attacks, you'd be willing to pick up a Barracks or two. It depends on what's available. As long as it's never completely useless, it's OK with me if it's a poor buy in some games. That's what Dominion is all about!
Well, he says [Mercenary]'s a powerful $4 card. That's different from saying it's a powerful card.
Spy is also $4 and this seems a lot better than Spy to me.
Spy can affect the top of your deck which I usually found to be the most beneficial thing it can do (especially with other cantrips in play). Affecting others was just a little bonus. Mercenary only affects other's decks and is trashed if you don't discard one of those Treasures that you could otherwise use.
It looks to me like a weaker Stables with a Spy-like effect thrown on top.
That's more or less what it is. Keep in mind, though, that while Spy can cycle through the top 2 cards of your deck, Mercenary
always does. I originally had the attack effect on Mercenary be identical to Spy (meaning that it could discard the top card and affected you too). That version was stupid powerful with chaining cards like Conspirator. Being able to non-terminally cycle through 3 cards at a time is no joke.
Thanks for your constructive criticism!