Finally, it's done. Sorry about the delay; turns out judging two contests in a short span of time is a significant effort. There were some thought-provoking cards in here, which is cool but doesn't help with getting the judging done quickly.
4est: Sunken CityThis is interesting, but it might be too good. If you have this in hand, and draw into another one on discard, You get double Lost City + discarding the worst card of your first hand. From there, all you need is some mid-turn gaining to make the rest of your turn absolutely insane. The effect is fun, but it needs a nerf. I might you as far as to just drop it to $3 and have it pull only a single card; maybe that's too close to Mountain Village though. Alternatively it could be raised to $5.
6/10arowdok: Kale CliffsI think "discard your hand for X" needs some clarification on what what happens if my hand is 0 cards; did I successfully discard my hand then? It's clear that the intention here is yes, but intuitively I would say no when reading this, so the wording could be improved.
This quite cool I think. But I'm not the biggest fan of the guaranteed Province next turn if you play two of these, just seems a bit automatic. On the other hand, I don't know whether this would be strong enough if it required discarding at least one card. But that would still be a potential +$6 on a single card, so probably fine.
8/10Augie279: Hillside VillageFirst I have rules issues. The way this is worded, technically, if I play a Stockpile with this and later on that same turn discard it from exile and play it again, the second play would still give me +Actions, but of course there's no way to track this. There's probably some wording fix for this but I can't think of one immediately.
Most often you'll probably use Coppers, but occasionally not. I have trashed Gold with Broker for +Actions before, and occasionally you'll want to play Gold for Actions here. Though Silver may be more of a sweet spot. Anyways, it's cute, fun and good. For extra fun, play a Diadem with this.
8/10BryGuy: Secret MarketSo this is... fine I guess. The trashing is a bit like Forager, but it can't trash Estates. The sifting is underwhelming. This seems like a pretty weak card. Also in terms of the challenge, if you choose to ignore both "you may"s, you just end up with Ruined Village, I don't think you want this too often. I feel like this a a case where you overreacted to criticism that your card is too strong and nerfed it into oblivion.
4/10Chappy77: HoarderSo Hoarder. Can I hoard sheep please? I want this with my Shepherd. Also a beast with Inheritance. Yes these are are just two combos, but these are some of the major other cards that interact with Estates. Other than that, it's probably alright. Maybe you could switch from Estate to Curse to make the insane combos go away and also to make pileouts with this a bit less profitable?
7/10czzzz: NarcolepticOn the face of it, this is not super exciting. But that's in keeping with the flavor, I guess? You get some scaled down Cellar/Candlestick Maker hybrid. What can I say? If you need +buy, you need +buy, and at least it's nonterminal. Ending your Action phase doesn't really seem a like decision on this; you will do it if and only if you have nothing else to do. It feels like we might as well get rid of the potential confusion of switching phases in the middle of resolving a Crown stack, like so "you may reveal a hand without Actions for +$1". Has the added benefit that it's thronable.
6/10emtzalex: FoxfireFoxfire is a twist on Hamlet, kind of, offering similar choices. However it would play very differently, being much more expensive and at the same time more restrictive. It can just be used for draw like Witch Hut. If you use the Village effect, its power level is probably not far off from regular Village, but the choices are what really push this ahead.
Minor pet peeve: I feel like the Treasure discarding might award +2 Buys. It is more aesthetically pleasing and memorable if all the numbers are multiples of 2, and it would make it a bit more unique.
9/10fika monster: King's FeastI worry that this gives excessive pileout control. If you go for a meagturn, King's Feast's downside compared to King's Court actually becomes an upside.
And outside of that, usually it just isn't worth it to give other players an Action if you just get to play an Action as a reward. An exception might be Cursers when the Curses run out with the extra play, but that's pretty narrow. So I don't like the megaturn enabling, and otherwise the card just doesn't seem very useful.
5/10Gubump: DivinerThis is kind of just nonterminal Scavenger? I mean, it seems alright, maybe a bit underpriced when compared to Scavenger. But it got a lot of upvotes, which I don't quite get because it's not like this is a novel idea.
6/10JW: GranarySo mostly this is a Village with a VP. I mean, any village in a storm, right? Losing the village split will be even worse than usual here, I'm not a fan of that. It's not exactly exciting. Then we have the discarding bit, which is just a bit gimmicky for my taste. There are some combos, though it doesn't help that both Trail and Village Green would combo here, both they are already villages, who needs that many villages? Ultimately... this isn't broken or anything but it's just a bit underwhelming.
5/10LTaco: CotillionThis seems rather niche. How often do I really want to get rid of my hand (not even discarding it mind you, just putting it back) just to turn each card into a Copper? It's good it I can then reliably draw my deck from a random hand of 3 cards. It can also act as payload if I have drawn my deck. So really this is like payload for overdraw. Which is kind of fine, but it doesn't excite me.
7/10majiponi: GravekeeperThis is a cute little effect, at its baseline it protects against trashing attacks but there are some neat tricks you can do with it. It's kind of sad that you need to trash it for the reaction, that limits its usefulness. I would rather see it with a discard (and potentially upping the price to $3 if it turns out that's too strong).
8/10NoMoreFun: BurrowI have to squint very hard for this to qualify for the contest. When I choose nothing with this, it's a Ruined Library.
Also, this feels a too powerful and swingy. +1 card, trash a card is already pretty decent at $3 (not Masquerade-level OP, but good). You can make it nonterminal in demand, even better. And then you have the option to... gain Provinces with this if there's Gold in the trash? Ok, at that point you lost me.
1/10nyxfulloftricks: BenefactorThis doesn't really qualify for the contest, as the rules stated the card needs to give the choice to you, not your opponent. I'll give my thoughts nonetheless.
I do think this is too strong. In the first couple of turns, taking 2 Debt is almost as bad as skipping your buy phase for +2VP. You can already do that with Baths, and you basically never do. So I don't think other players would use the +2 VP option until at least the third play of a Benefactor bought in the opening. Which means you get a lot of value out of it for no effective downside, and that seems too good for me.
4/10RovingBear: Merchant ShipThis also seems too good. Trash 2 cards is already a top-notch effect at $4. This lets you do that without hurting your economy on the turn you play it (since you get +$1, +1 card). And then it also conveniently either provides buy or gets rid of itself once done trashing. Too much.
And Merchant Ship is already an official card name.
4/10SignError: LocksmithEh, I'm not a fan of this. Donald X. already stated that he regrets putting +3 card, +1 buy and handsize attack together in one card in Margrave. This is that but worse. For one, the attack is swingier. Margrave could also help opponents, but this makes whether it will help or hurt much more random. And then I also dislike when Attacks are their own counter. So no, this design just doesn't do it for me
3/10silverspawn: ShrineThis certainly gave me something to think about. In general, I think the effect is quite cool and fun. The problem I'm getting to is if you use the trashing option, quite likely you'll use the gaining part to regain a Shrine (unless you don't want to trash/gain more cards). And that means the pile will run pretty quickly. And then it's just a bit swingy who will end up having trashed more before the pile is empty. Maybe this isn't as much as a problem as I anticipate, but it could easily be avoided altogether it this was just "choose one: gain or trash" (of course that would disqualify it from the contest, but it's never worth it making a design worse just to make it qualify).
8/10weretheruler: GoldsmithGoldsmith's effect is just kind of an insurance policy. At least you'll never do worse than $5. The problem is, I don't like insurance policies much, they're not fun.I would rather invest my money into something that actively makes my deck better than something that gives me recompense when my deck falls apart. Of course, a Smthy+ doesn't need to much to be viable, so balance-wise this is probably fine (if a bit on the weak side), but I feel like it's not very enjoyable.
6/10Will(ow|iam): Tour RouteTour Route gives you a crappy Guide each turn. This seems like a decent $4. I can see it leading to some frustration, as frequently you will regret the decision to discard; I don't mind that much, but for some it might take away from the "fun" factor. But otherwise I have nothing to complain about.
9/10Xen3k: War HoundsThis is definitely too strong at $2. The fact that it can always be nonterminal means it's not too hard to spam these, and then it might get to a point where playing attacks gets bad. It also suffers from having too many options, I think. First you choose whether to discard, then you choose a reward, and this on a card that you'll probably play multiples of makes that gameplay pretty slow. I would definitely cut the Villagers option, maybe also the +card one and just make it discard 2 for +1 Coffers.
5/10X-tra: SanctumI'm not entirely convinced we need to confusion that comes from playing Estates. I guess the major weird interaction is Inheritance, and you gave a ruling for that, so maybe not a huge issue? Of course a version of this that didn't play the Estates wouldn't need an FAQ, so there's that.
But more importantly, is this balanced? It seems alright. It has the potential to be strong but that takes some work. But we have to consider the challenge parameters, and I don't think this really qualifies here; seems to me that when you have an Estate in hand, you also want to use it, choosing not to play the Estate seems like a pretty fringe case if you've already invested in Sanctum. So some negative points for that.
6/10xyz123: DepotDepot is a neat card that sits in a nice niche. It's vanilla effect is just too strong for a $4 (being better than Conclave) and too weak for $5 (being worse than Festival), so it's a perfect candidate for a very situational added effect. And yeah, the effect is suitably situational. Delay an Action that you could be playing right now? Sometimes you choose such an option with Barge, but that's often when you worry about drawing stuff dead, and that's not happening with Depot. So you need a pretty specific reason to not want to play right now. I like this a lot. It could prove to be too situational, but I think Depoting another Depot is often enough a good move to not make it so.
10/10Winner: Depot by xyz123
Runner-up: Foxfire by emtzalex
Author
Topic: Weekly Design Contest #182: I Choose Nothing (Read 4850 times)