Hello! I playtested Cornucopia/Guilds 2E, and it seemed fun and potentially interesting to talk about what I contributed to the set. So here’s the secret history from my perspective. First, from the very beginning.
The backstory of getting invitedDecember 25th, 2022: Plunder had recently come out. On f.ds, I asked a question about Flagship + Band of Misfits + duration. Ingix said that they asked Donald X. this in the past, and the answer was that there’s a new ruling for
playing cards: if a Throne Room replayed a card that isn’t in play, the Throne Room now adopts Band of Misfits rules. AJD immediately pointed out that that would change interactions with Throne Room-Caravan-Way of the Horse. Donald X. confirmed that yes it would change those interactions, and I thought this new ruling was hilarious.
(You’re probably wondering, why is this guy talking about this and why is any of this relevant to their invitation, but just bear with me for a little bit.)
February 7th: Later in 2023, Donald X.
reversed the ruling. Well it was fun while it lasted. The ruling changing is the part that mattered.
March 2nd: Somehow, Jeff (from Temple Gates Games) learned about the initial ruling, but missed the new ruling, because
they asked about the old ruling. I told them that there was a new ruling, and they thanked me for answering so many of their rules questions by offering me all the expansions on the TGG client for free. It was very generous of them, thx Jeff.
March 4th: JNails decided to commentate an A League match: kazumaru0828 vs yurikamome (this was season 56). During that match, this happened in chat (JNails didn’t record the commentary, so I have no physical evidence that this happened and this probably wasn’t the exact wording of what people said, curse you JNails):
DZ: Jeff recently gave me all the expansions on TGG for free, because I answered so many of their rules questions
Donald X.: Oh sweet. Do you play board games?
DZ: if I had a game to play, yes. hang on why does this sound like a job interview
Donald X.: What do you mean by that. No you're right, I have some games that need external playtesters.
JNails: DZ can you tell me what your biggest weaknesses are
mrguy888: DZ how's your rap album coming along
At the time I thought, well that was funny, but there’s no way Donald X. asked me that because they were considering me as a playtester. All I had going for me was that Donald X. friended me back on dominion.games (later they told me that was because I was a “master spectator”). I asked “why does this sound like a job interview” just so Donald X. could shoot me down. Somehow it didn’t happen. And no I don’t have a rap album.
March 7th: While I was eating pizza, Donald X. DM’d me out of the blue. They told me “do not leak stuff, ok?”, sent me a server invite, and well I’m a man of my word.
The current game that Donald X. was working on was Moon Colony Bloodbath. I guess I can take a paragraph to talk about that game here. A few hours after getting invited, Donald X. emailed me (it was put in my spam folder, curse you Gmail) all the cards and rules for MCB. After only 2 days, I already played and reported my first game. The reason why I was so quick was because:
1) Donald X. is cool.
2) the game looked awesome.
3) I have a friend who lives in the same building as me, so it was easy to find someone to play with.
4) I had card sleeves laying around, so all I had to do was print the cards (and I could use pen/paper/phone for everything else).
5) it’d look bad if the new guy just...never did anything.
So that’s the story from my perspective. Only Donald X. knows why they asked me if I “played board games” (and/or if they even remember asking me that in spec chat).
First Encounter with the 2EI think Cornucopia/Guilds 2E started at a similar time as Seaside/Prosperity/Hinterlands 2E, maybe a bit later. However, the next time it would be reprinted was sometime in 2024, and it was 2023, so it was on pause. Still, Donald X. asked for my thoughts on Cornucopia/Guilds 2E, and here’s what it looked like on March 7th.
Doctor, Fortune Teller, Masterpiece, Horse Traders, Taxman, Harvest, Bag of Gold: All of these had already been removed. I was happy with all those choices, especially Doctor. Farming Village, Tournament, Diadem, and Followers will die shortly.
Carnival, Demesne, Infirmary, Ferryman, Shop: All as-is. Except Shop was called Farm, except that name was unavailable because of the Harem retheme. If they had different versions in the past, I am unaware of them. In my
self interview, when I said there were "cards I had no voice in," these were the ones. Also yes originally only 6 cards were getting removed; it was going to be a smaller update pack, which nowadays seems like nonsense.
“Farrier”: This one was much different. The top of the card looked weak to me, but since Donald X. liked it, there’s a chance it’ll be resurrected in the future, so I’ll keep it secret. The overpay was Masterpiece! Donald X. immediately mentioned to me that they were starting to hate the overpay part, and I agreed it looked awful.
“Tithe Collector”: The top was a +2 Coffers Militia that only attacked if you had enough Coffers. The bottom line was “in games using this, draw an extra card in Clean-up.” Every turn this game, you have a 6 card hand. As I’ll explain later, this had problems.
Exit Farming Village and DiademHey remember when I said that Cornucopia/Guilds 2E was scheduled for 2024? Yeah that was a lie. On March 22, Donald X. told us that art was going to start in late April/May. And now we could replace a 7th kingdom card, a 2nd Prize, and add a new Prize (replacing a blank).
Diadem: The 2nd Prize to die was always going to be Diadem. JNails said they’d rather see the overpowered Prizes cut instead of the dud ones, but still. Diadem was getting removed, no question.
Housecarl: The 6th Prize. It never changed.
Coronet: This started as a Treasure as giving Coffers and +1 of a token you have. An ability that was tried out a bunch of times and has continued to fail. Also any payload Prize is competing against Princess, and this was not remotely competitive. Then it became, Throne an Action and a Treasure; the concern now was, Coronet Princess is a built in combo, and if you get both of them you win.
Farming Village: The 7th kingdom card was up to a vote. Donald X. immediately nominated Farming Village and Journeyman for being uninteresting. JNails and I voted for Young Witch and Tournament for being frustrating. In the end Farming Village got the most votes. I said “well if the new village is awesome I’ll probably back down,” to which Donald X. said “I'll do what I can! And I mean I should hop to it.”
Farmhands: This started as a $2-cost, +2 Action +1 Coffers. And the bottom started as an overpay effect! We talked about what combination of March/Delay/Toil would be good. Herald was in the same set, which sort of overlapped with March. I said that when-gain Toil already exists with Gondola and Villa, but when-gain Delay doesn’t exist anywhere, so having only Delay would be more special (and easier to fit in the text box). It initially only set aside Actions, but JNails suggested that it could set aside any card (including Copper and Estate).
Farrier: I’m sure some of you would’ve wanted Masterpiece’s overpay to return. Donald X. said: “On TGG I'm playing the new sets, when it's not the Daily, and you know Tournament has not been sinking games at all for me. Farrier, that one is pissing me off.” You know a card is going to change if that’s what Donald X. thinks of it. So it was time for a new card. The current version of Farrier never changed. Donald X. also tried a different Farrier that was a cantrip that gave +1 Coffers if you had enough differently named cards in play. It wasn’t exciting and the overpay Farrier was more exciting, so that card died after like one game.
Evolutions of the new cardsFarmhands: I was unimpressed with Farmhands. Having to spend one of your buys to overpay for the Delay ability makes it much less useful. JNails and I also tried to get a megaturn where you use Farmhands to set aside Province, and then use Tools to gain Province. We pulled it off 0 times. To quote myself again: “it’s a Horn of Plenty megaturn but on Nightmare Mode.” (And I can’t even imagine trying to do the megaturn with Changelings.) Donald X. then wanted to try when-gain Delay instead of overpay Delay, because let’s be honest: overpay isn't actually that good of a mechanic. We tried the when-gain (at $2, with the same top) and it was better, but +2 Actions +1 Coffers is still awful. In the end Donald X. realized that every time they were buying a Farmhands, they were basically paying $4 for it, so Farmhands turned into a normal village at $4. Everyone was happy (and it's my favorite of the new cards). Very late in the going, Donald X. thought about setting aside the card face down, which I did not understand at all (plus it didn’t fit in the text box).
Footpad: LastFootnote said that Tithe Collector was too strong and annoying. Some nerfs were tried, but at this point I asked, was the bottom part (“draw an extra card in Clean-up”) really that great? It causes a bunch of shuffling, the 6-card hand you get is a lie because there’s always a Militia, it can cause a strong 5/2 to run away with the game, and if an engine can’t get the attack going, some money strategies become unbeatable. The backup idea that Donald X. had was “when you gain a card in your Action phase, +1 Card.” To quote Donald X.: “Overall the games were fun; they were ‘yes you brilliant and also handsome man, pursue this,’ rather than ‘oh look how broken all these boards were, you lose again you big loser.’”
Exit Tournament and FollowersTournament: April 18th was an exciting day. LastFootnote and kieranmillar played with the new cards, and had 2 games in a row where one player got 6 Prizes and crushed everything. That’s what happens when you replace the bad Prizes with good ones: this very snowball-y card gets more snowball-y. LastFootnote said “I never thought I'd say this, but I think I'm finally coming around on replacing Tournament” and that was the deciding factor. Thx LastFootnote! To fill up the space in the 100-card pack, LastFootnote suggested having 2 of each Prize for multiplayer.
Joust: So now, a replacement. Several ideas were thrown around for Joust, with the concerns being: the card can’t be terminal or else the village Prizes are too good; you automatically have a bunch of copies of it if it’s a cantrip $4 and that’s stupid; the card wants to try to be less snowball-y. The first version of Joust that I got to try was: $5 Peddler, may discard Province to gain a Prize to hand. I played 2 games with it against JNails and those games still sucked.
Followers: The culprit was that Followers sucks the life out of the game and the player who gets it obviously wins but their deck is filled with Estates and their deck sucks but they have Followers so they win but very slowly and obviously. At around the same time, there was a
Reddit thread about Tournament, and it turns out a bunch of comments were hating on Followers. So if you posted in that thread you affected the course of the future. Some of us had been trying to kill Followers for a while, and hooray justice has triumphed.
Renown: In that same thread, someone mentioned that they felt uncomfortable with the idea of winning a Princess in a Tournament. That’s been a complaint for a while, and if Harem could get renamed, why not Princess? Its original name was Royal Favor, but Renown is clearly a better name.
Courser: To keep the old Prizes and new Prizes separate (for the madmen who insist on playing with Tournament and Joust at the same time), the new Prizes got renamed to Rewards. Trusty Steed was fine, but the Chancellor part was unnecessary so it got dropped. The name Courser was a suggestion by Cave-o-sapien, the inventor of DomBot.
Huge Turnip: Oh yeah a Followers replacement. Having an attack did not seem like an option (especially if the goal was to make Tournament haters tolerate Joust). Donald X. came up with the card as-is, and its objectively the best card name ever.
Coronet: So all of those were great improvements. The main complaint I had now was with Coronet. Firstly, you can use Coronet on Renown and Huge Turnip at once, what a crazy built in combo. Also you can draw your deck and use Coronet on Joust to win 2 Rewards at once, that’s crazy snowbally. The first problem was solved by adding non-Reward to both parts of Coronet; the second problem was solved by setting aside the Province (it could have played the Province but that would've been confusing and trick people into doing a Tools megaturn that doesn't win). It’s more niche, but a lot more tolerable.
Final commentsOk this has gone on way too long so I'll try to wrap this up:
-I would like to thank Donald X. for inviting me. I had/am having a lot of fun playtesting for you, and I hope that my ramblings and (often negative) first impressions on new cards were at least somewhat useful to read.
-Tuesday and Wednesday (and occasionally Monday) nights are highlights of the week for me, because that’s when Donald X. does their own playtesting and writes their own reports. I always look forward to reading them.
-So what do I think of the new Cornucopia/Guilds. Well done Donald X. you improved these 2 expansions that were horrible and way overrated. It still has some cards that I don’t really care for (both old and new), but it removed 2 cards that I’ve banned (Doctor and Tournament), so I can’t ask for much more.
-Both Cornucopia/Guilds 2E and Moon Colony Bloodbath were sent to Jay around May 2023. Despite that, this only just came out. And now you know how long we’ve been waiting for this.
-I’m allowed to suggest things to Donald X, although I rarely ever try to pitch new card ideas (and I know DXV wants to be the one who makes the cards). Overall my success rate for suggestions is uh low (for example, I suggested a Joust that was never tried) but that’s fine; if I can hate on Donald X.’s cards, they can do the same to me.
-I didn’t keep track of the exact number of games I played against JNails, but it was a lot. Online games are fast like that.
-After Mic Qsenoch wasn’t impressed by the overpay version of Farmhands, Donald X. went brainstorming and came up with 8 new villages. I commented on those ideas, and to keep it short: 1 was boring (remember that Farmhands was replacing Farming Village, an unexciting card); 2 looked too strong; 3 of them didn’t want to be a village and the concepts may or may not get rescued in the future; 1 had looping and tracking issues and it would’ve required way too many words to solve; 1 was basically Town. Look at me killing 5 cards at once.
-I wanted one of the cards to be called Cheesemaker. I tried to get it on Ferryman (the extra card it gains is the Cheese), but was unsuccessful. I still think it’s the better name.
-It feels egotistical to add things that I wrote here onto the wiki, so someone else will have to do that, thx.
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Topic: Secret History of Cornucopia/Guilds 2E by a Playtester (Read 994 times)