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[infangthief]

Inspired by Rising Sun's teaser "Prophecies that will someday happen and change everything", here is a rule-changing mechanism, which I will call Decrees.

Here is a randomizer for Decrees:

Shuffle the Decrees and place one face up under each Kingdom Supply pile.
Each Decree applies whenever it is exposed.

If Decrees are selected to be used in a game, there will be 10 different Decrees (or 11 in games with Young Witch), one under each Kingdom Supply pile. They change the rules, but only when they are exposed i.e. the pile on top of them is empty. So in a typical game there may be 0 to 3 active rule changes at any time.

Which Decrees are under which piles is public information, so players may adjust their strategies in order to expose or avoid exposing particular Decrees. Note also that if a pile empties and then later becomes non-empty, that Decree will cease to apply.

Here are some example Decrees:

That's Enough
Decree
You may not gain more than 3 cards per turn.

Clear Out
Decree
When you discard one of these cards from play, trash it.

Note that Clear Out refers specifically to cards from the pile it was placed under, which makes it similar to a trait, except that it only applies when the pile is empty.

Your challenge
Your challenge this week is to design a Decree. In fact, because each individual Decree should be really simple, you may submit up to 2 entries.

I believe that a good Decree will:

• Be simple, because any game using Decrees will have 10 different ones, which is already a lot for players to consider.
• Be likely to influence strategy, though exactly what impact it has may depend on the pile to which it is assigned.
• Not kill the game.
• Not contradict other Decrees. So this one is kind of meaningless for this contest as there are no "official" Decrees to be contradicted (and I don't care if your entry contradicts an example I gave above, or another person's entry), but if you submit 2 entries at least ensure they do not contradict each other!

The layout for a Decree should be the opposite of Trait; whereas a Trait slides under the bottom half of a pile, a Decree should slide from the top, so it is possible to have both under the same pile. However, for the purposes of mock-ups, we can use the Trait layout. I've gone for a colour scheme of R:1.8 G:1.3 B:0.5.

Submission deadline is 4pm forum time on Wednesday 31st July.

[BryGuy]

                                                                               

                                                                               

                                                                               

Clean Sweep • Decree
When revealed, each player may trash a Hand card starting with the current player then going clockwise.

Duchy Sale • Decree
When revealed and two piles are empty, Duchy costs $4.

Here are my entries. They should be simple enough. I have two others i'll post after the contest ends.

                                                                               

[infangthief]

I think these need something to say when you can do the thing.

[Tiago]

• Not kill the game.

Oops. Hopefully this isn't what you meant.

[schadd]

   

[Jonatan Djurachkovitch]

I like this idea! I'm afraid that this can make games a bit unfun, since it forces you to read twice the amount of text as you usually do. A solution to this would be to treat decrees as landscapes, limiting them to a maximum of two in a game, but that makes it sad if they never get uncovered. Or you could queue them up so you only need three per game, but what of you empty a fourth pile? I don't know. Whatever. Here are my submissions:

Shopping Spree - Decree
When you gain a card costing at least $3, +1 buy

Enchantment - Decree
When you play a card from this pile, get +1 Card and +1 Action instead of following it's instructions.

[Jonatan Djurachkovitch]

[Duchy sale]

This was my first thought, but with Provinces costing 7 instead.

[BryGuy]

I like this idea! I'm afraid that this can make games a bit unfun, since it forces you to read twice the amount of text as you usually do. A solution to this would be to treat decrees as landscapes, limiting them to a maximum of two in a game, but that makes it sad if they never get uncovered. Or you could queue them up so you only need three per game, but what of you empty a fourth pile? I don't know.

Yeah, i'd prefer to use them where they are picked with other Horizontals. This would require slightly different rules to apply like:
Decree: Select up to two Horizontals. If a degree is selected, set it aside – it is inactive for now. When a Supply pile empties, place the top Decree on the empty Supply pile where it becomes active.

[infangthief]

I realise I did not give the contest timeframe in the OP. Adding it now.

Submission deadline is in about 2 and a half days from now.

[emtzalex]

My Submission:

Public Education Decree When this is revealed, each player moves their +1 Card, +1 Action, +1 Buy, or +$1 token here.	Checkpoints Decree When you gain a Victory card, if you don't have a copy of a card from this pile in play, discard one or put the gained card onto your deck.

Public Education is a Decree version of Teacher; it lets you put one of the tokens from Adventures on to a pile once it empties. These can be very powerful, but while you're gaining them you don't get the bonus. Conversely, Checkpoints will slow players down later in the game if they don't have the card from the pile.

[infangthief]

24 hours to go!

[J410]

I like this mechanic a lot, even though it will likely be too much card-reading for an official expansion.

Fortifications - Decree When drawing your hand, draw two extra cards. Free expeditions for everyone, every turn. Happens at end of turn to give an incentive to pileout (instead of start-of-turn). Great against opponents that already draw their deck.

Final Blow - Decree Follow instructions of cards played from this pile twice. When you do, return it to its pile when you discard it from play. The most card-warping trait now as decree, but only when the pile is empty. If it empties in the middle of your turn, it only affects cards played afterwards (and only those are returned). Doing so also cancels the effect for your opponent, at least until it empties again.

[infangthief]

Contest closed

[infangthief]

Sorry, taken longer to complete this than I hoped. Anyway:
Judging

	Clean Sweep, by BryGuy A one-time trashing opportunity. Most games I feel this decree will have very little impact, as trashing is often unimportant in the mid-late game.
	Duchy Sale, by BryGuy Cheap Duchies for the end of the game. I like this, nice and simple, shakes things up a bit at the very end. On boards with Workshop variants it could well influence strategy throughout the game. This would need some clarification how it interacts with cost-reducers.
	Festivities, by Tiago Suddenly everything becomes non-terminal. It's nice and simple. I'm personally not a fan of an overabundance of Actions but I think I prefer it here as a decree impacting everyone rather than the race to Champion - There will be interesting gameplay leading up to when/whether Festivities gets exposed.
	Truce, by Tiago A new way for the game to end. I really like this decree. Depending which pile it is under this could give you a very short game, which would throw normal principles out of the window. It's presence would make you consider other players' likely strategies much more than normal.
	Levy, by schadd Compulsory exiling. A simple idea which will have a big impact. Sometimes helpful, if there's no junk trashing available, but mostly this decree provides an obstacle to work around. I like it, and I think it provides an appropriate level of awkwardness.
	Urgency, by schadd There was a meme "every turn I'm shuffling". Nothing practically wrong with this decree, but I don't think I'm a fan, as I like Dominion's shuffle management considerations. And compulsory shuffling may mostly seem like a burden for some casual players.
Shopping Spree - Decree When you gain a card costing at least $3, +1 buy	Shopping Spree, by Jonatan Djurachkovitch Solid and simple. Extra buys requires careful design, but Galleria is an official card so we should be on safe ground with this. So you might have a game without any extra buy and then suddenly you have as many buys as you like, so long as you're buying decent stuff. A bit like some City games.
Enchantment - Decree When you play a card from this pile, get +1 Card and +1 Action instead of following it's instructions.	Enchantment, by Jonatan Djurachkovitch Another simple idea, that can change the game a lot, and its effect depends a lot which pile it's under. But the actual play of lots of cards as +1 Card +1 Action gets boring.
	Public Education, by emtzalex Vanilla bonuses for all. Nice, strengthens the card however you like so again there'll likely be a race to get most copies of the card.
	Checkpoints, by emtzalex This is a neat idea. In 2-player Dominion it seems unlikely that a pile will empty without both players taking a copy of the card, but then you still have to get the card into your hand or in play. A bit complex for my liking.
	Fortifications, by J410 Simple and strong. Good thought about having an incentive to get the final card from the pile.
	Final Blow, by J410 I like this, especially the dynamics of refilling the pile so that the decree keeps switching on and off. If there's mid-turn gaining then you'll have to carefully track which cards were affected by this and which weren't.

Winner: Truce by Tiago
Runner-up: Levy by schadd

[infangthief]

Thanks for the thoughts on the mechanism also.

I agree that it would be simpler to have just 1 (or a few) Decrees, to come into play when the first (or first few) piles get emptied.
But I was quite keen on the idea of players needing to target a particular pile if they wanted a particular Decree.
For example, Tiago's "Truce" Decree is only fun if it is tied to a particular pile.

Maybe you could have 1 Decree dealt to each player, and it gets placed under the first pile that player gains a card from. (The first Kingdom Supply pile that doesn't already have a Decree under it.)

And of course now we know the official Omen/Prophecy mechanism, playing Omens looks like a much more fun way to have control over the rule-change rather than needing to empty a pile!

[Tiago]

And of course now we know the official Omen/Prophecy mechanism, playing Omens looks like a much more fun way to have control over the rule-change rather than needing to empty a pile!

I actually prefer emptying a pile, as it's something you have to go out of your way for instead of simply playing the card that you were going to play anyway.

[infangthief]

Festivities seems equivalent to Great Leader.
But I will be shocked if we get a Prophecy equivalent to Truce.

[infangthief]

Revisiting this mechanism, I would just have up to 2 Decrees per game. Instead of a "Decrees" randomizer, the individual Decrees would be selectable in the same way as Events, Traits etc.

However, whereas the assignment of a Trait to a Kingdom Supply pile is done at random, the assignment of a Decree would be chosen by a player. Specifically:

• If there is 1 Decree, the last player in turn order chooses which Kingdom Supply pile to place it under.
• If there are 2 Decrees, the last player in turn order selects one of them and chooses which Kingdom Supply pile to place it under, then the next-last player chooses which other Kingdom Supply pile to place the other one under.

This gives players some control over the impact of the Decrees on particular strategies. It also mitigates first player advantage to some extent.