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[4est]

WDC #190: Nintendominion

As I'm sure is true for many on this forum, my interest in gaming includes both board/card games like Dominion, but also video games. Some of my perennial favorites include Hollow Knight, Celeste, Hades, the Mario and Zelda franchises, Rocket League, Smash, Portal, Half Life, Roller Coaster Tycoon, Stardew Valley, and Animal Crossing. And unsurprisingly, my past month has been utterly consumed by the mind-blowing masterpiece, Tears of the Kingdom.

For this week's contest:

Design a card or card-shaped-thing that is inspired by a video game.

Contest Guidelines:

• Your submission should either mechanically or thematically (or both) pay homage to a video game and its gameplay, characters, story, or world.
• If not immediately obvious, please indicate which game(s) your entry is inspired by.
• For our purposes, any game on console, PC, or mobile is acceptable. And despite this contest's name, any game publisher is acceptable.
• I encourage freedom to pull from a broad range of game genres, though I also recommend trying to find thematic overlap with Dominion where possible. For example, a Treasure titled "Plasma Pistol" (from Halo) would feel distractingly out of place.
  
• Your submission may be part of a split pile or involve additional cards.
• Don't make me squint. Eliminate unnecessary words and complexity where possible.

Judgement Details:

• Entries and revisions must be submitted by 5:00 PM CDT (10:00 PM UTC) on Tuesday, June 20. I'll have results posted on or before Thursday, June 22.
• Entries will be judged on ingenuity, balance, simplicity, and creative mechanical or thematic homage to their respective video game.

Have fun! Looking forward to seeing y'all's designs and favorite video games!


Entries:

Zonai Constructs by Will(ow|iam) (The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom)
Baba by NoMoreFun (Baba is You)
Digger by grep (Digger)
Enforcer by sumrex (XCOM)
Attuned by AJL828 (Heroes of Hammerwatch)
Titan by silverspawn (Heroes of Might and Magic II)
Vampire Lord by JW (Heroes of Might and Magic III)
Celeste Mountain and Winged Strawberry by faust (Celeste)
Dragonborn by LibraryAdventurer (The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim)
Tiberium Crystal and Tiberium Spore by xyz123 (Command & Conquer)
Franklin Badge by X-tra (Mother)
Pelt Trader by Shael (Inscryption)
Donkey Breeder and Donkey by segura (Settlers 2)
Literature Club and Just Monika by Violet CLM (Doki Doki Literature Club)
Etrian Odyssey by fika monster (Etrian Odyssey)
Runner line by RovingBear (The Last of Us)
Coalition by LTaco (Crusader Kings)
Final Smash Ball by Augie279 (Super Smash Brothers)
Worm Rider by BryGuy (Dune)

[Will(ow|iam)]

Zonai Constructs
Ally
When you gain a card costing up to $6 other than with this, you may spend 2 favors to gain a copy of it.

[Augie279]

Based off Town of Salem 2's Ritualist, a role that tries to guess another player's role and gets to kill them if they succeed.

EDIT: Retracted. I think I can do better than this.

[NoMoreFun]

Baba
Action/Gold - $6
+2 Cards
+1 Buy
This turn, you may spend Buys instead of Actions to play Action cards.

Rules clarification: When a card (e.g. Leprechaun) says Gain a Gold, you choose whether to gain a card named Gold, or a card with the type "Gold". Same with "reveal a gold" etc.

(Inspired by "Baba is you")

[grep]

Digger
Action - $4
+1 Card
+1 Action
+1 Coffers
Discard a card.
You may pay 3 Coffers to gain a Gold into your hand.

[Will(ow|iam)]

Digger
Action - $4
+1 Card
+1 Action
+1 Coffers
Discard a card.
You may pay 3 Coffers to gain a Gold into your hand.

I think this is too strong for $4

[segura]

It is to Baker what Oasis is to Peddler. So it is probably fine, unless you wanna argue that it is a $4.5.

[silverspawn]

I think it's an example where "too strong" doesn't super make sense as a critique. Digger is card disadvantage, so even if it were super strong, you wouldn't just buy them mindlessly, which means it's unclear why power level is a problem. Playing three $4s to reach a 3 card hand with an extra gold is not very good; you need to be discarding junk, making it non-spammable.

And fwiw I also don't think it's super strong anyway.

[segura]

Based off Town of Salem 2's Ritualist, a role that tries to guess another player's role and gets to kill them if they succeed.

This is weaker than Witch and needs stronger vanillas. Also, terminal +1 Card is awkward.

[sumrex]

Enforcer 5$ Action-Command
+1 buy
The player to your left reveals their hand, you choose a non-command, non-duration action or treasure among those and play it, leaving it there.

Based off the X-Com games, a turn based strategy game series. In the game you take the abilities of your alien opponents to make your squad better and more versiltile. Just like that, enforcer is very weak by itself but gains strenght form the opponent. 5 is ok i think because band of misfits gives you choices of more cards, but they will maybe be less powerful.

[AJL828]

Attuned
Trait
After you finish playing an Attuned card, you may discard 2 differently named cards to replay it.

Ever since I discovered it back in early 2018, the Hammerwatch series has been one of my favourites on PC, with the second game, Heroes of Hammerwatch being my most played game on Steam.

In HoH a significant part of character progression is being able to attune items you find blueprints for. When picking up an attuned item in future runs, the item will act as if there are 2 copies of it in your inventory. This is where the idea for my design comes in, Throne effects are one of my favourite things in Dominion and I also loved the introduction of Traits in Plunder. I made it require differently named cards to make receiving the effect on draw cards a little trickier to decide.

[silverspawn]

Titan is a unit from the turn-based game Heroes of Might and Magic II, which I believe no one in the world ever played except me. Anyway, two of its defining characteristics are (1) it's expensive af and (2) it's stronger "range" than "meele". So the dominion version is expensive not just to buy but even to play, and it's stronger if you can use it for next turn. Note that you can't play this at all if you don't have two actions, so it's not that simple; the floor here is a dead card.

Very strong with throne room variants, but what can you do.

[segura]

I don’t get it. Ignoring Thrones, the present turn effect is weaker than Lab (you first gotta play a splitter) and the next turn effect is not that impressive either (I would rather draw one less with Hunting Grounds than having to use an extra village).

[JW]

I suggest that you just remove the “takes 2 actions to play” requirement. $7 already counts as very expensive, and currently it is both too weak and cannot be played without +Action in the kingdom.

[JW]

Vampire Lord
- Night Attack
If you have another Vampire Lord in play, each other player with 4 or more cards in hand discards a card.
Choose one: Gain a card costing up to $5; or trash up to two cards from your hand.

Notes: Super fun prompt! Inspired by Heroes of Might and Magic III (which I have seen Donald X mention he is also a fan of).

I don’t see a simple and balanced way to do the Vampire Lord’s iconic and overpowered self-resurrecting life-drain attack. But Dominion's Vampire could certainly be simplified, and that’s what I’ve done here. The card attacks when you have more than one, like how Vampire Lords in Heroes III were more powerful when you had a bunch of them. Once you trigger it, the discard attack mirrors Soldier.

Edit: weakened the card a bit. Original:

Vampire Lord
- Night Attack
Each other player with 4 or more cards in hand discards a card.
Choose one: Gain a card costing up to $5 (or you may instead gain two cards costing up to $4 if you have another Vampire Lord in play); or trash up to two cards from your hand.

[silverspawn]

I suggest that you just remove the “takes 2 actions to play” requirement. $7 already counts as very expensive, and currently it is both too weak and cannot be played without +Action in the kingdom.

disagree, alas; I think +5 cards next turn is strong enough to go jump through a bunch of hoops. Compare Tactician. And a lab is obviously not good at 7$, but an optional lab when you need it is a different story. You can't just look at options on a modal card and go "well this option is weaker than a card that only does this thing, and this other option is also weaker than a card that only does this thing, so the card is too weak!". +2 Actions is terrible on a 6$ but how would Nobels change if it didn't have that as an option? Actually it would maybe be a buff in practice because people use +2 Actions way too often, but you get the point.

And it's okay to not be strong in absolute terms. Is this weaker than Expand? Doubt it.

Def unplayable without villages, but that's inherent to the mechanic. And while other action cards are technically playable on a board without villages, plenty of them are practically not playable either.

[segura]

About the supposed strength of Titan's draw: two Villages and two Monkeys often net delayed draw 4. Yet 2 Monkeys are easier to gain than a Titan and also more granular.

Second, no official card is unplayable in some Kingdoms.

Third, there is a reason no official $7 does vanilla. Not even as a sidedish, yet Titan is pure vanilla.

[faust]

Celeste Mountain
Landmark

When scoring, 12VP if you have at least 3 Winged Strawberries.
-
During your Buy phase, if all cards you have in play share a type, the Winged Strawberry pile is in the Supply.

Winged Strawberry - $4*

+$1. You may return this to its pile, for +$3.
-
1 VP
(This is not in the Supply.)

Note: There are 12 Winged Strawberries.

[grep]

Enforcer 5$ Action
+1 buy
Each opponent reveals their hand, you choose a non-command action among those and play it, leaving it there.

Based off the X-Com games, a turn based strategy game series. In the game you take the abilities of your alien opponents to make your squad better and more versiltile. Just like that, enforcer is very weak by itself but gains strenght form the opponent. 5 is ok i think because band of misfits gives you choices of more cards, but they will maybe be less powerful.

I suggest to add Command type to avoid weird loops

[LibraryAdventurer]

Somebody has to do Skyrim. It still hasn't gotten old for me.

Dragonborn
$5 - Action - Command
+2 Cards.
+$1 per empty supply pile.
You may trash a card from your hand costing at least $3 to replay a non-duration, non-command Action card you have in play.

Once in a while the dragonborn can imitate the effect of something powerful. (canonnically a dragon obvs, but there aren't any dragons in Dominion.) They also tend to get overpowered in the later parts of a game...
EDIT: added "from your hand" to the trashing part. (and fixed the spelling of Skyrim)

Considering changing the +coin to an additional +1 Card per empty supply pile. Would that be too OP?

[JW]

Somebody has to do Scyrim. It still hasn't gotten old for me.

Dragonborn
$5 - Action - Command
+2 Cards.
+$1 per empty supply pile.
You may trash a card costing at least $3 to replay a non-duration, non-command Action card you have in play.

Where do you trash the card from? Your hand?

[xyz123]

Tiberium Crystal
$6
Treasure

$2

Gain a Tiberium Spore and a card costing up to 4. You may play this card immediately.

Tiberium Spore
$0*
Action

Discard a card.

When you play this, return it to the Tiberium Spore pile.

(This is not in the supply).


- Clarification in response to a question. It is the gained card that can be played immediately, not the Tiberium Spore.

[X-tra]

Mother series.

[Shael]

My take for this WDC; may change it if I have a better idea

Pelt trader
3$ Event
Do this any number of time: Trash a Treasure from your hand to gain a non-Treasure card costing up to $2 more than it.

(Inscryption)

Help you trash Coppers if there is a decent enough 2$ in the kingdom.
Give you Provinces in the late game if you've get some Gold previously.
Can have other combo (Masterpiece, Treasure map, Trader...) but I don't have them all...
(bc of my lack of talent at this game '-.-)


I have no idea how many cards we can make for a WDC.
I usually only post one, but do we really have a limit?

[SignError]

Mother series.

“The next time another player plays …”