3rd: Trading Docks
Basically a Black Market, referring to the Foreign Market. Well yeah, there are some extras like the trashing and the extra buy, but in it's core nothing what makes me very excited. Which doesn't mean it's bad, but a little bit to basic for me.
Now it's more complicated:
World-traveling merchant crew:
Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of the Journey-Token. But in this case I really like it. It feels right from a thematic point of view, you're going on a journey to get some excotic stuff, but while this you're not able to get any cards from your "home"-kingdom. When playing you have to "plan" your trip, so you don't waste to many buy (phases) in the limited "three-pile kingdom", but depending from what's there it adds something to your game and planning when to get thoose cards if you want them.
League of Explorers
Ahh, nice - something which doesn't just say "you may buy them when xy".
The Foreign Market as a choice between different effects you can add to a Liason, if you have the favors to play it. There is not that much I have to say here. Simple, straight, but it adds something you can work on.
My winner for this one is
League of Explorers
fika monsterBeacause it's Command-Mechanic is more likely to be used multiple times in a game, instead of one or two buy phases. And it's sonething else than "just buying" them. This being said, I like the other ally and it's implementation of the Journey-Token very much, so it was a very close one.
Finally, I'm a bit surprised there wasn't more which cared about the different classes. I may excpected something like, I don't know, maybe a trait which says "When you gain this gain a C1, when discard this other than during Clean-Up, gain a C2, when you trash this, gain a C3" or so. But well. Still interesting to see different approaches to deal with this.