I made a handful of other cards.
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Little Fish • $2 • Action - Duration You may play a card with "Little Fish" in its name from your hand. If you have more than one Little Fish in play that you didn't play this turn, combine them. At the start of your next turn, +1 Card.
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Fish swim in schools, so they seemed like an ideal card to self-combine. Little Fish will chain, but is otherwise a dead card the turn you play it, and on the following turn only gives you +1 Card. But, if you can put more than one into play, and manage to play another one on your next turn, all the ones you played will combine into a single card, which will draw you more cards on following turns. Once combined, they will continue to chain, but will not re-combine.
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Pandora's Box • $5 • Treasure Gain a Curse. Reveal cards from the Pandora deck until their total cost, ignoring discounts, in $ is greater than $6. Combine the revealed cards.
Setup: Make a Pandora deck out of different unused Action cards costing less than $5.
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This is one of my favorites, if a bit out there. Each time you open Pandora's Box, you get a Curse (until they run out; it keeps working like Cursed Gold) and a creature which is a combination of unused, inexpensive Action cards. You get them at random, which prevents intentionally combining them in dangerous ways, but you have the potential for a Moat + Vagrant + Chapel + Smithy.
I had to add the "undiscounted" language because otherwise if you play 2 Quarries and a Pandora's Box, you would combine the entire pile. As with Black Market, there is the potential for discretion / house rules as to what gets included. It's worth noting that if you don't use non-Supply cards, in an IRL game you could make the Pandora deck with randomizers, as they never go into a player's deck (which could make them easier to put away).
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Island of Doctor Moreau • $4 • Event If you have more than one Action card in Exile, combine two of them. Otherwise, Exile an Action card costing up to $4 from the Supply.
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This one's only half-serious (and doesn't quite fit thematically), but I think the balance is about right. Requiring 3 buys and limiting it to up-to-$4 Actions is fairly balanced, although when there are ideal combos (see above) or other ways to Exile Actions (especially from the Supply), it could get a lot stronger (but probably not Collection - Stampede strong). It also mostly prevents player from re-combining, unless they have a way to Exile cards from their hand.
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Coppersmith • $5 • Action - Night If it's your Night phase, trash up to three Coppers you have in play. Otherwise, combine up to 3 Coppers from the trash. |
Another thing I like to do is remake cards that were dropped from 1Es. This Coppersmith is completely different from the original. It's an Action - Night card which lets you trash your Coppers from play at Night, or let's you combine them from the trash (effectively gaining you a Gold).
Since the inspiration for the mechanic was faust's upcoming wedding (congratulations again), I made a number of cards that were marriage themed (which also fits the mechanic):
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Circle of Matchmakers • Ally After playing a Liaison, you may spend 3 Favors to combine it with a non-Liaison Action card you have in play.
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By limiting it to combining the Liaison, it significantly restricts what can actually get combined, while still (in some cases), allowing for the potential for a very strong combo (e.g. Underling with a terminal draw or Emissary/Guildmaster with non-terminal/cantrip). The non-Liaison restriction prevents re-combining.
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Wedding Bands • $5 • Treasure - Duration $2 At the start of your next turn, you may trash this to combine two Action cards from your hand.
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Wedding Bands is a rare example of a card that lets you combine any 2 Actions (and even to recombine them). But there are still some important restrictions: they have to be in your hand at the start of the turn after you play WB, and you have to give up a $5 Treasure.
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Wedding Chapel • $2 • Action - Reaction Trash up to 2 cards from your hand.
When you trash more than one card, you may discard this from your hand to combine two of them.
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Wedding Chapel is a simple trasher which also has a reaction allowing you to combine 2 trashed cards, but not if they are trashed by that copy. Originally it combined all of the trashed cards, but that would be quite ridiculous with Donate (and create a mandatory WC+Donate opening, which would leave each player with at Duchy that gives +$7).
FAQ/note: the cards have to be trashed as part of 1 effect. So even if you (for example) play Kings Court on a Forager (and thus trash 3 cards while resolving KC), each was trashed by a separate effect. Remake also does not work (since each time through you trash a single card).
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Family Matchmaker • $4 • Action - Kin Combine an Action - Kin card (other than Family Matchmaker) and a non-Kin Action card from your hand.
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Family Matchmaker uses the Kin mechanic from
Week 7. By limiting it to combining a Kin and a non-Kin, there are fewer combining options--only 2 for the Kin, and fewer if one is not an Action (although I would probably suggest a version of the rule that required Kin cards to be Actions)--and you also can't recombine. Thus, a $4 card can permit combining 2 Actions on-play.
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Elopement • $4 • Action - Night If it's your Night phase, Queue any number of differently-named Action cards you have in play other than Elopement. Otherwise, combine two Action cards in your Queue. |
Another Action - Night card, this one using
Week 19's Queue mechanic, and "set-up at Night, combine during the day" effect. This might be on the strong side, but the need to play it twice (and to have at least one card come off before you play Elopement again) does offer at least some balance.
One last angle, which is that the recently-used Equipment mechanic from
Week 34 offers another interesting use for the combine mechanic. With the combine mechanic, the "Equipment" can be equipped to other cards:
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Young Swordsman • $2 • Action Trash a card from your hand. If it was a Sword, combine it with a Young Swordsman you have in play.
Equipment: Sword
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Sword • $4 • Action - Equipment +3 Cards
When you trash a card costing $3 or more, you may Equip this. |
Young Swordsman is basically Student without the Recursion, Liaison, or pile-rotating. However, if you trash a Silver (or something costing as much or more), you can discard Sword, which is just a Smithy, but if you trash Sword, it can combine with YS to form a double-Lab trasher (but you can only get one copy).
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Wandering Soul • $4 • Action Reveal the top 4 Cards in your deck. If you reveal a Locket, combine it with this. Put the Action cards back in any order and discard the rest. +2 Cards.
Equipment: Locket |
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Locket • $0 • Treasure - Equipment If it's your Action phase, +1 Action; otherwise, +$1.
When you reveal a Victory card (using the word "reveal"), you may Equip this.
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Wandering Soul is a painfully terminal drawer, which makes sure you have Action cards when you get the +2 Cards. If you have plenty of +Actions that is not a problem, but will otherwise be terminal more often than most drawers. Locket lets you turn one copy of WS into a non-terminal version of itself.