Sherpa
Action - $5
Gain and play a Silver
You may pay any number of $ for +1 Action per $ paid
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Sherpa by NoMoreFun
An Explorer Variant that also can make Actions. Weak, simple, and probably playable; I like it! Very much in the spirit of this contest.
An interesting aspect of this is that you could use this as your sole source actions if there's some way to reliably generate virtual $. It wouldn't be very efficient, but if it's the only way to do it, sometimes it should be worth it.
Finalist |
Quill
Treasure - Duration
At the start of your next turn, +1 Card and you may play an Action from your hand twice.
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Quill by JW
This is similar to Royal Galley but with an additional +1 Card and +1 Action at the cost of much less flexibility. Upon thinking about this more, I suspect this is actually quite strong (but it wasn't disqualified and now I'm not deducting points). My only criticism about the design is that I personally don't like Treasure cards that don't do any Treasure-y things. Otherwise, I think it's a fine Throne Room variant. |
Gemcutter
$4 - Action - Duration
Trash a treasure from your hand. Gain a Treasure costing up to $3 more than it.
At the start of your next turn: discard a card, then draw up to 6 cards in hand.
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When you gain this, you may play it. |
Gemcutter by LibraryAdventurer
Another card that, upon looking at it closely, I think is very strong, mostly because of the draw-to-x effect. (Sorry for not paying more attention, it was a rough week.) Anyway, as of before I'm not deducing points now.
My criticism about this one is that I don't really see the idea? Like there's the mine effect, there's the next-turn effect, and there's the on-play effect. And these go together... why? Is there a theme or use case I'm not seeing? Otherwise it feels like three disjoint things put together, which I'm not a fan of. |
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Goody Two-Shoes by faust
This card on the other hand feels immediately cohesive! So we have four conditional effects with a common theme, giving this a high ceiling but a nonexistent floor. It's a super neat design...
... however. I'm worried that this is just too hard to use. The first effect you can pretty much only trigger once. The fourth is very hard to manipulate, especially since that's the one that gives you +cards. And the second is actually also very hard to manipulate because two is such a small number; it'd be a lot easier to have exactly 5 cards in hand. I think the one that you could sometimes trigger reliably is the third, but that's also the one with diminishing returns.
Having a difficult-to-active card is of course intended; a cheap card with a high ceiling that's also supposed to be weak should only be occasionally playable. I just honestly suspect that you overshot the goal here; I'm struggling to see how this is ever viable. Great art though. |
Slum
2$ action
+2 Actions
look at the top card of your deck. You may discard it.
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This is gained onto your deck (instead of to your discard pile). |
Slum by fika monster
I like the idea of a village for 2$ with only a pseudo-draw. I see how the gain-to-your-deck thing makes sense since you can set up a village for next turn if you know you need it. My main issue is that this seems a little too close to strictly weaker than Native Village for my taste. I think this could easily be played next turn (rather than gained to your deck) and it'd still be quite weak (no +card on a village is just really tough), but then it'd feel more justified. Still not a bad design though, and fits the contest theme well. |
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Prospector by segura
So this is a pretty cheap card that can make 1$/turn. However, being delayed (and also requiring explicit cashout) is a huge downside, so I fully agree that this fits the theme. I like that it can make coin tokens and villagers; it's a pretty easy way to ensure that this will see play because there always boards where you're willing to play villages way below rate. And hey if the game is a slog, then the coin token option is totally reasonable as well.
(Side note: this is a case where I don't mind this being a Treasure bc even though the villagers are realistically the stronger option, at least it feels a like like it does some Treasure-y things, a little like Coin of the Realm.)
Very cool design overall. Finalist. |
Pidgeon
+1 Card
+1 Action
Gain a Pidgeon. If you did, gain a copper into your hand. Otherwise, gain a copper into your discard.
2 Cost Action
-> There is 15 in the pile, instead of 10
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Pidgeon by HorazVitae
I agree with segura that this card is quite narrow. Which is maybe fine, but then I feel like there are more interesting ways to do this effect, such as Beggar. The issue is just that once the pile runs out, the effect is just horrendous unless you want to increase deck size. I mean again, it's fine to have a card that that does that, it's just that a cantrip gaining a copper doesn't seem like the most exciting way to do this effect, to me.
I might like this more if it cost like 5$ or even 6$. Of course then it'd be ridiculously overpriced, but the mere fact that you get a lot of expensive cards might be a reason to play it. With it costing 2$, you're not really going to use the cards themselves for anything most of the time. Idk, it's not a bad design, just doesn't seem exciting. |
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Dragon Egg by Augie279
Alright, so this is a by-itself weak Treasure (Festival minus 1 Action plus insurance against drawing it dead) that has a lot of combo potential. Use any trash for Benefit on this and you're way above rate. You could argue that this is a better implementation than Fortress because (a) it's less extreme, usually you can only do it once, and (b) it's not on a card that you'll buy all the time anyway.
Note that you dodged a real bullet with the Bonfire errata here; would have been a 2-card-shaped combo that generates infinite $ and buys. Counterfeit-ing this is a whopping 7$ and 4 buys but doesn't go infinite.
Finalist. |
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Straw by infangthief
Nice little trasher. Comparable to Loan but probably less frustrating to play with. I'd make it a Finalist if I didn't already have a bunch; no complaints anyway. |
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Reassemble by D782802859
Let's start by stating the obvious: the below-the-line penalty is gigantinormous. Bought straight-up for value this will usually be a disaster; you'd probably be better off buying Silver in most cases. You just can't go around giving your opponent Villagers.
However! The effect of this card has some mad potential. Since it's "up to" and not "exactly", you can trash two Provinces with this and end game very quickly. Extra points if you also got the card on the turn that you play it so the opponent can't use their tokens. Or imagine what this can do with KC/mastermind on the board.
Then there's a separate aspect to this card, which is that, sometimes, Villagers aren't that good. Sometimes, you just have enough Actions anyway, and then the rate of this card gets more reasonable. Perhaps there'll be a case where the opponent is neither bottlenecked by Actions nor by $, and then you can just get this for value.
So this is a card that's usually a trap, but has a lot of potential and so is something to look out for. Which I think is fantastic. I don't get the lack of upvotes (too complex?); I think this design is brilliant. Also kudos for finding another word that fits right into the Remodel family. If I had to make a complaint, it would be that the penalty is not particularly related to the above effect, but this is also true for various official cards. In any case, Finalist. |
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Royal Glove by grrgrrgrr
Nice little Conclave variant; it's better in some ways (Actions are guaranteed and you can get more than 2$ using Gold+) and worse since you may only get 1$ if you just have Copper. No complaints. |
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Safe House by LTaco
It's a very neat idea, but I'm not convinced the execution works. The issue is that this requires you to play a lot of Safe Houses, which requires you to draw a lot of cards, but they payoff is also to daw cards. As with faust's card, there's nothing wrong with a card being situational, but I don't quite see what the situation here is. The only way to reliably draw your safe Houses is to draw a lot of cards, in which case you no longer need the effect...
... that is, unless you combo it with something like Scheme, and actually yeah feels like a very strong combo. But it's also quite narrow. Idk, I feel like this "play me a lot of times" idea works better on a card like Bridge. |
Author
Topic: Weekly Design Contest #223: Weak is good, actually (Read 1763 times)