Art Gallery by Cutepelican126
Action $5
+1 Card +1 Action If any supply piles are empty, +1 Action +1$, Otherwise +1 card. | I think there's a cool concept in here of a strong card that gets weaker, opposite of city. Something you want a lot of early on but then your deck is damaged because of it. As such, a cheap lab that becomes terminal is interesting, a lab that becomes a cantrip also could be interesting. I think this design is missing something. Bazaar is a card you really want because of its village properties, if you had a cheaper village, you'd rather get that and a terminal draw or stronger terminal $. Also, it's pretty awkward to flood villages into the deck, since buy the time a 10-size pile of 5-cost cards is empty, you're well into the mid-game. So you either (1) already had to either have a balance of villages in your deck (so the new bazaars don't help), or (2) built a deck without villages, at which point the addition of 3-7 villages isn't all that helpful. In niche cases with villagers it becomes interesting, specifically acting troupe which might sustain you to piling out the Art Galleries (and a fun synergy of name), but that's a rare case. Labs are fun because of their high-drawing potential. In most cases this is just a lab minus the high-drawing potential later. It just doesn't look favorable compared to other labs right now (like lab, lost city, etc). The one place this shines is in the lab-deck. Against beginners, I'm able to crush them without trying just by piling out the labs (or even cities) before they realize how good it can be to have a ton in deck. This card does solve the problem that if I pile-them out, I end up with a weaker card. That is actually really cool design, and solves some problems with lab, I just think transforming to a bazaar is a not-very compelling answer. I think the simplest fix to make this more compelling is costing it 4 and transforming it into village. The $4-cost solves the village problem (now we can pile them out before the mid-late game). You could also consider transforming it into something terminal and costing 4, or even a terminal curser and costing it 5. Those ideas feel more compelling to me than a 5-cost weaker lab.
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Musician by NoMoreFun
Action $5
Choose one: Gain a Musician;
or +1 Card for every 2 cards (rounded down) in the Musician pile, and you may return this to its pile for +2 Actions. | The first two Musicians could be a one-shot +4cards +2actions for 5. So, that's kind of like playing a Madman. Which is similarly priced to Musician pile, the difference is Madman costs 1 extra buy and hermit is a lot cheaper. The problem is that that's only the first two musicians. After that, it's a slightly impressive one-shot of 3 cards two actions.
It's a little hard to reason about one-shots since there are fewer of them, but we could kind of interpret it as a duration if we squint, thinking this turn we gain a new musician, and next turn we return that musician to its pile. The duration equivalent would be "at the start of next turn +Xcards +1 action," where X would be "1 Card for every 2 cards (rounded down) in the Musician pile - 1" (-1 because we didn't have to play it this turn).
This is kind of like last turn you bought expedition and played a ghost town. Which seems okay for a 5. But that's the best this duration equivalent of a Musician could be.
More often it would be like Caravan + Ghost Town, or just a Ghost Town, with all the drawbacks of having to play a terminal the previous turn.
Looking through these scenarios, we can see that Musician is too weak for a $5.
Aside from that, I love the concept your are exploring. Tying the card to the count in its pile is super interesting, and I love the mechanism to easily manipulate the size of the pile (via gaining and returning). That's elegant, awesome design.
I think it also adds some fun dynamics, I can't let you have the only Musician, so I need to buy one. But then if I just one-shot it, I lose it! So I have to gain another. I don't think I'm explanining my point well here, I just like that the card really invites you to play it.
I think it needs to be stronger. If you want to keep it a $5, a slight boost would be returning to pile before counting the Musician pile, but not sure if that is enough.
Alternatively, I think it could potentially be priced at $4 and only give +1 action when returned.
My last note here is that this doesn't scale well to multiplayer, the pile quickly drains it becomes weaker even faster.
Interesting design space! I just think it's not quite balanced. I could be wrong though, it would require extensive playtesting to be sure.
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Keg by X-tra
Action - Reserve - Victory $3
Put this on on your Tavern mat, then +1 Card per Keg on your Tavern mat. | 1VP | This is simple card, and I mean that as a compliment. It's hard to find new design space and be straight-forward, so kudos to that.
This is kind of like a Great Hall/Distant Lands at first -- let me explain. A Great Hall proxies a VP token by being a cantrip "disappearing" card.
After playing it, Keg is also a "disappearing" card, at the cost of one more terminal action than Great Hall.
Of course, Great Hall isn't a great card -- it got removed. Your second play of Keg is a one-shot +2 cards, which isn't that much better. If your deck has the terminals to support Distant Lands, it's certainly happy to get those terminal draw attached to Key instead.
It keeps scaling up. But the problem is they each cost a buy, which is really expensive. Distant Lands are worth it because one buy and an action sorta gives you 4vp tokens.
Keg costs a lot more than that to get 4vp (4 actions, 4 buys, and $12), and the cumulative +10 cards is not even that impressive, distributed over the 4 plays.
I think this needs to be stronger. The only way I can think of doing it is making it non-terminal sometimes. For example "If you have less than 8 cards in hand +1 action." All the sudden, you don't have to worry about it costing an action at first, and it encourages you to buy the first few kegs, knowing you get a cheap lab. Once it gets up to a one-shot 4, it's fine to become terminal.
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A ghostly Traveller line with terminal draw and silver trashing by silverspawn
Whimsical Wisp | Action - Traveller $3*
+2 Cards Each other player may trash a Silver from their hand, to gain a card costing up to $6.
-------------------- When you discard this from play, you may exchange it for a Bargaining Banshee.
Bargaining Banshee | Action - Traveller $4*
+3 Cards Each other player may trash a Silver from their hand, for +3 Cards
-------------------- When you discard this from play, you may exchange it for a Malevolent Phantom. (This is not in the Supply.)
Malevolent Phantom | Action - Attack - Traveller $5*
+4 Cards Each other player may trash a Silver from their hand. If they don't, they gain 2 Curses.
-------------------- When you discard this from play, you may pay $2 to exchange it for a Tyrant Specter. Otherwise, trash it. (This is not in the Supply.)
Tyrant Specter | Action $8*
+8 Cards You may trash a Gold from your hand. If you don't, discard 8 cards. (This is not in the Supply.) |
You're free to design cards however you see fit. One of the judgement guidelines I put is "how well it fits in existing Dominion design-practices," and there's a lot here that doesn't fit. There's a general concept of negative-for-positive in Dominion, where you do something negative to yourself to get something positive. So, trash for benefit is a big example of this. Or cursed gold. Or Count. And it's interesting because on your turns, you have full control of your deck and the situation to try and minimize the negative and maximimize the positive, and that challenge is interesting. You don't have as much control when your opponents trigger it, so you'll notice Dominion is very light on opponent-triggered negative-for-positive. Vault is one of the only examples I can think of. You have a lot of it, which doesn't fit so well in existing Dominion paradigms. You also have silver-trashing, without any easy way to gain silvers. Seems kind of random and strange that Silver is thrown in there, which also doesn't fit well with Dominion paradigms. You even have pay to traveller upgrade to tyrant specter, which is confusing and goes against all the other traveller upgrades that exist. You also have a card that gives two curses, which just doesn't fit.
To me, I want my dominion fan-cards to feel like they could hypothetically have been printed in a real expansion, and these just don't seem to fit for me.
Lastly, each card is sort of a stronger version of the previous one, and you'll notice the existing traveller cards don't do that. It's more fun to have variety in the traveller-line, and it makes it more reasonable you might want to have different levels of the same-line in your deck at the same time.
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Tranquil Village by 4est
Action-Victory $4
If the Tranquil Village pile isn't empty, +1 Card and +1 Action
-------------------- Worth 2VP if the Tranquil Village pile is empty (Otherwise worth 0VP). | I can imagine village idiots piling these early, and peacefully frolicking in their victory cards, with a dead deck.
You say the tricky thing is timing of piling it out, but I think that timing is largely out of your control. Which in
this case, makes it slightly less interesting, but still interesting.
In games where this is the only village it is most interesting. Can you build an engine in time to make it worth your while before the pile empties? I wish there were more than 8 of them in two player though, since that really doesn't give much time before they run out.
In games where there are multiple villages, this becomes also pretty interesting, especially in the case of 5 villages. You might grab a couple of these for cheap, then try to pile towards end game to get some points in.
This doesn't really do anything in games where there's no need for this 4-cost village (ie you already have village green and fishing village on the board, or you have a slog), in those games, you won't have time to pile this to make them worth VP, so they will sit around and never be bought, really.
Not every card has to be useful in each situation, but it's a slight mark against it. Plus, in those situations, any weak village would not be bought as well.
I think this is an interesting card for sure. I'm wondering if it could do with some more pile manipulation, like, "you may return this to its pile for +2 cards"
Finalist
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Shapeshifting by grrgrrgrr
Shapeshifting | Trait
When you discard a Shapeshifting card from play, exchange it for a Shapeshifting card of the other pile.
-------------------- Setup: Set aside an unused Kingdom Supply pile costing the same as the Shapeshifting pile. These are also Shapeshifting cards. |
I think I'm, at least initially, more drawn to your original submission, although I would have made it "If a supply pile is empty: when you discard a Shapeshifting card from play, exchange it for a card from the set aside pile."
I like the originally idea because it adds a lot of strategy about when the switchover happens, which can make some cards viable or not. It also would allow you to get one play of the old card if you gained it late.
This turns a card into a vampire/bat sort of thing. Which is interesting, but highly pair dependent and it's hard to analyze. And at the any of the day, traits aren't really about balance, they're about fun and variety.
This does introduce some fun and variety. I think a little less than the original version -- what made you swap to your second version?
You do have a problem in your phrasing -- what if there is no unused Kingdom Supply pile costing the same as the Shapeshifting pile? Engineer, Golem, Peddlers (assuming you don't own Prince) all present big problems.
Almost all of those is solveable by this phrasing "Set aside an unused Kingdom Supply pile costing the same in $ as the Shapeshifting pile. These are also Shapeshifting cards."
But Peddlers doesn't work, still. There's no elegant way to do it with having it be the same cost. You could try "Set aside an unused Kingdom Supply pile. These are also Shapeshifting cards."
or "Set aside an unused Kingdom Supply pile costing $5. These are also Shapeshifting cards." The last one is kind of nice as it will be an upgrade for almost all cards, but it's temporary since it switches back.
So, I think there's ways to make this better, but the general concept is interesting for sure
Finalist
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A 7 card Traveller line with mandatory exchanging that loops, using themes from a variety of expansions by Zoyarox
 | I'm not sure how to provide critique here as there are 7 different cards to look at, plus how they work together in a line. It's a little bit too much for me to give you thorough feedback.
The fact that they are mandatory exchanges doesn't fit in with existing traveller paradigms and it removes the ability to keep a particular card in your deck, which is a super interesting aspect of the traveller lines.
You have sort of addressed with Nimmersatt going back down to Intrigant; however, it becomes out of the player's control which cards in the line to keep in their deck, and removes an interesting choice.
You also costed them at $0 which is strange.
One of the judgement guidelines I put is "how well it fits in existing Dominion design-practices," and due to a lot of those aspects, it does not fit.
Some individual notes:
- Aspirant -- it was already done with Mission, which is an event for good reason. Some times you have nothing to do besides buying cards. This traveller line sort of fixes the problem by providing things to do (trashing, exiling, etc), but still this feels like not the best design here
- Praetor -- This is missing the attack card type. I don't like the unconditional debt for VP gaining, it seems kind of harmful at many points of the game.
- Nimmersatt -- it does not say what to do with the loot pile later. Normally you'd want to shuffle it. It also seems unconventional to pick which loot you gain.
I like that you fully embraced evolution, but I think the design has some gaps.
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Explosion by Will(ow|iam)
Event $3
Once per game: +10 Cards, +4 Actions, +3 Buys, and return to your Action phase. | I'm curious about the 3 cost. It seems like no matter what you cost this card, it would be worth it, so then you want to cost it for one of three conditions:
1. Cost it low so it can be bought whenever ($0-$4)
2. Cost it high-ish so it can be bought mid-game ($5-$7)
3. Cost it very high so it's debatable whether it's worth it, or whether you'd rather just get a province ($8+. Although probably it'd have to be 10+)
Seems like you chose to cost it low. In that case, $3 is hardly a penalty, and I think it would be fine at $1 or $0. $3 seems strange since it's so low it hardly affects things. I actually like $0 because it could enable a cost-reducer gainer pile out.
I also think this event would be interesting at $10
As of right now, you have to buy it, it's a matter of when. I think most events are priced in a way that you don't have to go for it, so this is strange design. The notable exception is Donate, but it has such high strategic choice on how and when you buy it, that it makes up for it. Because this card gives you extra buys, it's sort of like saying take two turns in a row (and each turn gets an extra action and half a buy). So basically, you buy this card as soon as you have a deck that is bloated enough that it would take advantage of two turns simultaneously, or, if you're building an engine that will soon draw-deck, as soon as you can handle one more turn. This decision is a little less interesting than donate, so I think more of the strategic fun of this card could and should come from a higher price point.
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Ringleader by faust
Action - Command $6
+1 Card +1 Action Play the card with the Ringleader token on it, leaving it there.
-------------------- When you gain this, place the Ringleader token on a non-Command Action supply pile. | I like player interaction like this! Really interesting to have the Ringleader token keep moving around.
One issue I have with this is that it's very strong and could create a compounding effect that isn't balanced. Grand Market has the same issue where Grand Markets make it a lot easier to buy Grand Markets, and so on. If someone gets a lucky shuffle they can quickly get a majority and win. Ring leader has the same problem, because it's essentially +2Cards +2Actions and one of the two cards you draw is almost guaranteed to be very good. It's like a super lost city! And Lost City has a huge drawback when you gain it.
I'm imagining using the token on a card like Grand Market, or Hunting Grounds, Margave, Old Witch. Any of those easily allows you to afford more Ringleaders and creates that compound effect. But I think costing this $7 is prohibitive and $5 makes it real tough for a 2/5 vs 3/4 start. I'm wondering if you could investigate adding a penalty to the gain. You could try Lost City's penalty, you could try a "gain a curse, if you do place the Ringleader token..." which adds additional strategy about piling out curses to "freeze" the ringleader pile, though a self-cursing might be too prohibitive of a cost and would have to drag it to a $5.
I do like this card a lot, and I will take a more in-depth look at Kingdoms to think about its power level later. I love that the token could move around a lot. Early on it wants to be on Witch, but then you switch it over to a "weaker" card like Smithy. Very cool.
Finalist
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Outcast/Wilderness Throne by SignError
Outcast
Action $2
+1 Action Exile a card from your hand. If its an Action, +2 Cards. Otherwise, gain an Outcast.
Wilderness Throne
Action $5
You may play an Action from your Exile or hand. Play it again.
| There's a lot of very nuanced and complicated design behind this simply-phrased cards, and I applaud you for that. I was thinking about how Wilderness Throne was far too powerful since it throne rooms your card of choice, but then I realized the card goes into play and you no longer can throne that card with subsequent Wilderness Thrones. And now you are stuck with that card out of Exile for next turn (though if you get it in hand you can throne it). So there's a great balancing there.
I think both cards are well-designed and would be worth buying as single-piles (although Wilderness Throne would need an exiling mechanic, but that's what Outcast is for).
Since there are only 5 Outcasts, they will run extremely quickly. It's a cheap non-terminal single-card thinner, so absent of stronger trashing, you probably would buy more than one anyway, making the pile effectively run low to uncover wilderness thrones. I don't know if it needs to run its own pile out so quickly with the self-gains. I actually think I like the design a lot more if you dropped the self-gaining clause, or else made the self-gaining clause not hit as often ("if it costs $2 or more" or "if it's a treasure")
But overall, this looks novel, balanced, and fits well with existing Dominion paradigms. Very well done.
Finalist
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A traveller line with sifting and trash for benefit by BryGuy
Field Mouse | Action - Traveller $3
+1 Action Reveal your Deck's top card. If it ... costs $1 or less exchange it for a Field Mouse;
otherwise you may discard it.
-------------------- At Clean-up, you may exchange this for a House Cat.
House Cat | Action - Traveller $4*
+2 Actions Reveal cards from your Deck until you reveal a Rats or a card costing $2 or less, trash it.
-------------------- At Clean-up, you may exchange this for a White Wolf. (Not in the Supply)
White Wolf | Action - Traveller $5*
+1 Card +2 Actions +$1 You may trash a card from your Hand to gain a Field Mouse.
-------------------- At Clean-up, you may exchange this for a Wild Jaguar. (Not in the Supply)
Wild Jaguar | Action - Traveller $6*
+4 Cards +1 Action Discard two cards. You may trash a card for $2.
-------------------- At Clean-up, you may exchange this for a Brown Bear.
(Not in the Supply)
Brown Bear | Action - Traveller $7*
+3 Cards +2 Actions Review your deck's top five cards, discarding any. You may exchange a Brown Bear from your Hand for a Wish. (Not in the Supply) |
Before talking about the line overall some individual notes
Some individual notes:
- Field Mouse -- There's no need for the "..." I think that was with an earlier design. Also this card seems pretty weak. It discards estates and good cards from top of your deck? At the value of potentially gaining another Field Mouse? It is weak, of course it's the start of the line so it should be weak, but I think it should have some value. Page and Peasant both feel better. If the end of the line was super strong, maybe field mouse makes sense, but then it's a feel-bad card to play: either you rejoice at another Field Mouse, or you don't get one AND you discard a good card. Yikes!
- House Cat -- it's very weird for this to refer to a card "Rats" that is not even guaranteed to be in the game, and in most games, won't. Very anti-Dominion design patterns. I'm a big fan of loan as a trasher, and this seems even better, so I like it.
- White Wolf -- Bazaar is always welcome, and maybe some games you stop here if you need Villages. I think a strong Village is a very compelling design to put in a traveller line because it opens up the question of whether to stop or not. Unfortunately, you discredit this with Brown Bear also being a village and House cat being a village. Would be better if Brown Bear only gave 1 action. I still think this card is over-powered. Bazaar is already a $5, and this allows you to trash more? Also incorporating trashers later in the line make people less likely to hold onto their House Cats and Field Mouses, which makes it less interesting
- Wild Jaguar -- This is one of the strongest lab variants, on par with Sibyl. A little strong for my taste, but it's the 4th in a Traveller line so it can work.
- Brown Bear -- This is crazy strong. It's a double lab! AND it's a village? It does not need that extra action. Also "Review" is not a thing in Dominion. Did you mean "reveal?" And what happens to the rest you don't discard? I think you need "put the rest back in any order." But it'd be better if you killed that clause, super lab is strong enough. You can exchange other Brown Bear's for Wishes, but why would you? Super-lab is a super-lab. I think Brown bear could read "+3 Cards +1 Actions" with no other text and it'd be better designed.[/i]
Overall, you have too many cards in the traveller line that that are basically pure upgrades of cards earlier in the line. This is bad design because it takes away the choice of when to stay. I've noted some places to fix (multiple trashers, multiple villages), but I think you could overall rethink this to incorporate the design lessons from existing Traveller Lines.
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Okay for the finalists, let's look at a few randomly generated Kingdoms. I'll generate a Kingdom of 9, then add an additional card for shapeshifting, randomly select the shapeshift, then add a card with same cost.
Shapeshifter adds Golem. And the shapeshifter is Mandarin/Master Mind. (First time I rolled for the first shapeshifter card it hit Golem, so I had to re-roll)
General Thoughts: good non-terminal trashing, but no +buy and difficult drawing limits the engine. However you can get two Provinces a "turn" via consistent Island Folk usage and King's Court makes it viable, and interesting.
General Thoughts: Megatrashing with chapel, and hamlet and counterfeit gives the buy, but there is no draw engine here, you gotta buy a bunch of Hirelings and hope that's enough. With Mill and Harvest slightly pulling me to the Castles pile. There aren't that many terminals to play but I'm happy to keep a Coin or two to help me when I need them.
General Thoughts: Draw with Storyteller, Monkey, Menagerie. Trashing with Sentinel. No multiple gains, but there's fun alt VP with Temple and Rats Labyrinth. Those shenanigans might be worth it since you can otherwise only build up to a province a turn. You'll need treasures since that's the only source of money, and I'm sure someone would try a Den of Sin Big Money thing and try to race without getting any of those alt-vps, and they might win.
Looking at this, I learned that Shapeshifting made some cards more worth it than previously, which was not what I thought.
I learned Tranquil Village seems to really depend on the Kingdom's needs of villages, and I didn't see a scenario where it was extremely compelling in my small sample size of three kingdoms.
I learned Ring Leader is as powerful as I thought, but in a "fun" kind of way, which was interesting.
I learned Outcast/Wilderness Throne is very well balanced.
Honestly, I really like all 4 of these cards. I see them all fitting in with Dominion. To really evaluate, I'd have to do dozens of playtest games which I don't have the time for. At the end of the day, there has to be a winner.
Ring Leader and Outcast/Wilderness Thrones were my favorite from the test Kingdoms, and I enjoy them both a lot. I think that Ring Leader is slightly less balanced than outcast/wilderness throne though.
Thanks everyone! Feel free to push back on anything I said, I am not infallible. My hope is that my critique can help you improve your card designs. If it didn't, well, like I said, I'm not infallible.
Author
Topic: Weekly Design Contest #206: Evolution (Read 2478 times)