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[AJL828]

Weekly Design Contest #185: It Takes A Village

Dominion has quite a lot of $4 Villages. Why is that anyways?

It mostly boils down to the fact that the original Village is actually a pretty decent card, and that the difference between $3 and $4 isn't a lot in many cases. Villages are essential to make engines run well, so oftentimes you'd be happy paying $4 for one.
This means that $4 Villages fit very comfortably into a mold: take the standard Village and give it a slight extra bonus. Even if that bonus isn't always utilized, the fact that it's a $4 Village will still make it useful quite often.

That brings us to the contest for this week.

Design me a Village that does not cost $4.

A couple other points about exactly what I'm looking for:
- Your card should provide +2 Actions or more without any real difficulty. See the Villages with no restrictions section on the Dominion Strategy Wiki for a list of examples.
- This means no Throne Room variants (as normal Throne Room already costs $4, that would be a bit too easy) or cards that need some condition to be fulfilled (for instance, Ironmonger, Herald, or Conclave).

I'll close this contest at 8 PM EST on May 2, and until then I'll keep an eye on the submissions to let you know if something doesn't qualify (and I'll try to be lenient about that).

Thanks Gubump for putting this suggestion in the suggestions thread.

[Augie279]

A card that gives +3 Cards, +2 Actions!... Maybe. Kinda. Not really.

<Clarifications: You can only discard revealed Victory cards. All cards revealed and not discarded, Victory or otherwise, are shuffled back in.>

[JW]

Granary
$5 - Action
+1 Card and +2 Actions
You may discard up to two cards, revealed. For each Action or Gold discarded, +2 Cards.

Notes: You can use your Actions or Gold to fuel your draw, but (as with "Shy" trait cards) it's not clear that you always want to. I like that it lets you use Gold as way to fuel your draw, but with lower stakes about not finding a Gold than, say, Encampment.

[BryGuy]

Town Crazy
$5 Action
+2 Actions,
Choose one: discard a card for +2 Cards; or discard two same named cards, not costing $0, to gain a Madman.

The first choice while similar to Village allows some filtering. The second choice offers an alternate path to Madman.

[xyz123]

Gentrified Village
Treasure-Duration
$5

$1
+1 Coffer
_______________________________________
At the start of your next turn +2 Actions

[majiponi]

Poor Village
cost $3 - Action
+2 Actions
Reveal your hand.  If you don't have any Trasures, +2 Cards.

[NoMoreFun]

Outskirts
Action - $2
+1 Card
+2 Actions
_______
When you gain this, trash it if you have an Outskirts in play

[czzzz]

At the Thrifty Village, they strive to live without waste. They feel happy when they do exactly enough work.
Unfortunately it doesn't draw, but it can swap a card between your hand and discard pile, which makes it more realistic to fulfill its condition. It still won't always be possible though.
Also I guess they really like Tunnels at the Thrifty Village, for some reason? 

A wording note: I wanted to say "If you revealed exactly 2 Action cards, +$2" but I thought that might sound like if you revealed 2 Actions and a Treasure that you wouldn't meet the condition, which wasn't what I wanted.

[4est]

Ever wish your Village came with a Remake stapled to it? Wish granted.

Nice for thinning Coppers and upgrading Estates into $3s, but you can also do fancy things with it in the mid-game. And be careful: the on-gain is mandatory.

*Edit: Added restriction on Remaking copies of itself to prevent Fortress shenanigans (thanks JW for pointing that out!).

[faust]

Pirate's Lair - $2
Action

+1 Card
+2 Actions

Gain a non-Victory card costing exactly $1 per card you've gained this turn.

As a neat little unintended flavor tie-in, this combos with Pirate.

[fika monster]

A mixture of Port and Lost city

v2

Welcoming Village , $3 Action

+1 Card, +2 Villagers
-
When you gain this during your turn, you get +1 Buy, +2 Villagers, and all other players get a copy of Welcoming Village.

The pile has 12 16 Cards in it, since its very attractive and will probably run out fast.

I don't think there has been a card that is put into OTHER PLAYERS hands, and in a good way: and so i wanted to play with that. Since its essentially a +1 Card effect, i wanted to make it feel good for the giving player, so therefore gaining it during your turn would give you a village effect.
This should be the first kind of card that GIVES other players a genuilly good card. Games with this should be plentiful with actions and draw, becoming unusual and different, maybe too quick.

The card shouldnt have a infinite loop that runs out immideatly with the "gain during your turn" clause: it would be very awkward if giving this card away once would immideatly empty its pile.

[faust]

A mixture of Port and Lost city

Welcoming Village , $3 Action

+1 Card, +2 Villagers
-
When you gain this during your turn, you get +2 Villagers, and all other players get a copy of Welcoming Village to their hand.

The pile has 16 Cards in it, since its very attractive and will probably run out fast.

I don't think there has been a card that is put into OTHER PLAYERS hands, and in a good way: and so i wanted to play with that. Since its essentially a +1 Card effect, i wanted to make it feel good for the giving player, so therefore gaining it during your turn would give you a village effect. Games with this should be plentiful with actions and draw, becoming unusual and different.

The card shouldnt have a infinite loop that runs out immideatly with the "gain during your turn" clause: it would be very awkward if giving this card away once would immideatly empty its pile.

I feel like maybe you want this pile to have 12 cards, since that is divisible by 2,3 and 4. With 16 cards, it means that in a 3-player setting the last Welcoming Village can be gained without giving copies to others.

Overall, I'm not sure I would want to get this, the benefit to other players is just too big, and usually they will be able to benefit before me (if this is bought, I can only make use of the Villagers the turn after, but my opponents can immediately play their WV). I would at least get rid of the gaining to hand to make it a bit more attractive.

[fika monster]

A mixture of Port and Lost city

v2

Welcoming Village , $3 Action

+1 Card, +2 Villagers
-
When you gain this during your turn, you get +1 Buy, +2 Villagers, and all other players get a copy of Welcoming Village.

The pile has 12 16 Cards in it, since its very attractive and will probably run out fast.

I don't think there has been a card that is put into OTHER PLAYERS hands, and in a good way: and so i wanted to play with that. Since its essentially a +1 Card effect, i wanted to make it feel good for the giving player, so therefore gaining it during your turn would give you a village effect.
This should be the first kind of card that GIVES other players a genuilly good card. Games with this should be plentiful with actions and draw, becoming unusual and different, maybe too quick.

The card shouldnt have a infinite loop that runs out immideatly with the "gain during your turn" clause: it would be very awkward if giving this card away once would immideatly empty its pile.

Updated per suggestion: added +1 Buy when you buy it, but if you buy this you will give a lot of free villages to other players

[X-tra]

Moo.



To follow in last week's footsteps, this is also a pile of 20 cards.

You can always milk your many Cows for a nice bucket of mil- I mean Silvers.


Edit: This is a conditional village, and thus, it doesn't fit the guidelines of this week's contest. Withdrawn.

[majiponi]

Moo.



To follow in last week's footsteps, this is also a pile of 20 cards.

You can always milk your many Cows for a nice bucket of mil- I mean Silvers.

It does not always give us +2 Actions.

[X-tra]

Oops, is this a strike against it? In my experience, it's not too difficult to get the village. But if the judge thinks that it's too unorthodox, I will withdraw it and submit something else.

[Gubump]

The prompt doesn't say that being a Village has to be unconditional.

[faust]

The prompt doesn't say that being a Village has to be unconditional.

I think it does:

A couple other points about exactly what I'm looking for:
- Your card should provide +2 Actions or more without any real difficulty. See the Villages with no restrictions section on the Dominion Strategy Wiki for a list of examples.
- This means no [...] cards that need some condition to be fulfilled (for instance, Ironmonger, Herald, or Conclave).

[AJL828]

Oops, is this a strike against it? In my experience, it's not too difficult to get the village. But if the judge thinks that it's too unorthodox, I will withdraw it and submit something else.

Yeah, needing to collide it with a Silver would count as fulfilling an extra condition in my opinion. Sorry :/

[nyxfulloftricks]

Village Well - Action
+2 Actions
+1 Coffer
You may play an Heirloom from your hand to gain +1%.

Lucky Copper - Treasure - Heirloom
$1
Name a card. Reveal the top card of your deck. If it's the named card, put it into your hand.

With this week's contest being about one of my favorite mechanics, villages, I wanted to make a card that combined my favorites together. I wanted to make a bit of an homage to Wishing Well while using an heirloom and additionally get to use some nice tactile tokens. The heirloom for Village Well allows for some variation with the starts while also allowing the possibility of continuing that action chain if you set up your deck well. I thought it would also be interesting to have Village Well in a Kingdom with other heirlooms to see how that would play out.

[anordinaryman]

Ransacked Village | Action | $2
+1 Card
+2 Actions
When you gain a Victory card, trash this.
-
When you gain this from the supply, you may gain a non-Victory card from the trash.

There are 16 copies of Ransacked Village in the Supply

A village for $2 with no vanilla downside! Wow, let's get a bunch! Careful though, gaining land (victory cards) cause all of your villages to get ransacked and go away. Just when you got your engine going it falls on its face with a single victory card. There are of course ways around this -- you can build a more stable engine by buying a victory card and then buying a few ransacked villages to get more back each turn. There's 16 in supply to make this a little more viable, Of course eventually this plan fails when the supply runs out. And maybe you just need some of these villages temporarily, once they are ransacked maybe you have a more expensive City or Bazaar to flee to instead. Lastly, you can try to do a mega turn, who cares if your villages are ransacked if you have plenty of other land and the game ends?

Then there's those of you who will spot the on gain as a fun combo with remodel/trash for benefit variants.

I'm open to suggestions -- I considered a mandatory "gain an Action card from the Trash" to simplify it. a mandatory "gain a non-Victory card from the trash" seems to bad as what do you do with those Coppers? I like the cost at $2 -- as a village it is strictly worse than the original $3 Village, and there's no harm in this cheaper cost because most of the time I prefer Village over this, unless I'm doing the fun trash-gain combo which doesn't apply until mid-game anyway. I could be convinced to cost it $3 though, but I think $2 is better. "Gain from the supply" prevents a single purchase from getting all from the trash, which made it too easy to do the gradual engine approach.

[Gubump]

The prompt doesn't say that being a Village has to be unconditional.

I think it does:

A couple other points about exactly what I'm looking for:
- Your card should provide +2 Actions or more without any real difficulty. See the Villages with no restrictions section on the Dominion Strategy Wiki for a list of examples.
- This means no [...] cards that need some condition to be fulfilled (for instance, Ironmonger, Herald, or Conclave).

I stand corrected.

[Gubump]

This needs to say "when you gain a Victory card this turn, trash this."

[fika monster]

Village Well - Action
+2 Actions
+1 Coffer
You may play an Heirloom from your hand to gain +1%.

Lucky Copper - Treasure - Heirloom
$1
Name a card. Reveal the top card of your deck. If it's the named card, put it into your hand.

With this week's contest being about one of my favorite mechanics, villages, I wanted to make a card that combined my favorites together. I wanted to make a bit of an homage to Wishing Well while using an heirloom and additionally get to use some nice tactile tokens. The heirloom for Village Well allows for some variation with the starts while also allowing the possibility of continuing that action chain if you set up your deck well. I thought it would also be interesting to have Village Well in a Kingdom with other heirlooms to see how that would play out.

I like the card and the heirloom, but why not just make the village have "play a treasure from your hand" and ditch the Vp tokens? I feel that the heirloom play is too specific.

Alternatively, if you want to keep the VP aspect, you could have it be "If all card you have in play are unique". That way you could have a fun minigame with it that requires a bit more then just finding the heirloom in the end.

[silverspawn]

Village Well/Lucky Copper looks cool but I don't think it would play well. Both cards are super luck dependent, especially the heirloom. If you draw it on T1, you probably have to name copper, then getting it right means +1$ and your next 4 cards all miss the shuffle, so you get to play whatever you bought super fast (and that may be a 5$). If one person gets this and the other reveals an estate,  the game is almost over.