Mining Village is a variation of Village. The cards posted here are fixes. Now if the fix actually messes up whatever it tries to fix, that should be pointed out. And yeah, I even dared to point out that perhaps, just perhaps, trying to understand why whatever you dislike about a particular card because your buddies suck at playing with it might actually be the best feature of it which, in consequence, might make you think twice about fixing it.
Again the beaten to death Thief example. If some beginners hate Thief, you make them play even more games with Thief until they actually get how super weak it is. The fix would never ever be to nerf Thief. Your notion that pure subjectivity, not analyzing your preferences in any way, is a sound basis for good card design is simply wrong.
For example I don’t like Graverobber and I suck at it. Yet I know that this is just me, my irrelevant issue with this card, and I would never suggest that the card is bad just because I cannot deal with it well.
Do you know what the definition of insanity is?Seriously dude, CTRL + F the word "fix" on this thread, and you'll see that you're the only one babbling about that (minus a comment made by the person who did their Adventurer variant - and Adventurer is not short of
actually needing a fix, hence it being dropped from the game altogether). If my least favourite card of the game is Fool, because I don't like how much of a setup hog it is; or if my least favourite card is Witch because I only play Base and ewww, the junk; or if my least favourite card is pre-errata Prince because look at how much text there is on it - then all of these reasons could explain why I'd submit a variant of these cards on this thread. Certainly not because they bear a balance issue.
Also, consider that maybe if people suck with a card (as you nicely put), it may be because they do not like the card and are not interested to learn to play with it? A lot of people do that already with prime candidates such as Possession.
The only thing I'll die on the hill for is defend one's right to submit any card for this contest, because people can have all the reasons in the world to hate the card they want to replace. It's a subjective truth that can't be demolished by objective analyses about balancing and what not.