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[infangthief]

Here is a new mechanism idea for this week's contest:

Clubs

A Club gives you the option of putting cards of a certain type on your Club mat when you gain them. It also describes some special interaction with cards on your mat. Often the interaction would include some way to remove cards from the mat. Clubs are similar to Ways or Landmarks in that the Club is just there for the game - there is no "buying" of the Club's abilities.

Here are some examples:

	The Landowners Victory Club When you gain a Victory card, first put a copy of it from your mat onto your deck.
	The Gleaners Gathering Club After you play a Gathering card, you may discard a copy of it from your mat to take the VP from its pile.

These mockups use Shard of Honor's tool, with colour scheme: R:0.1 G:0.5 B:0.9.

The Landowners has type "Victory Club", which means that whenever you gain a Victory card you may optionally put it on your Club mat instead of wherever it would normally go. The instructions on The Landowners tell you what you must do with Victory cards that are on your Club mat. As usual, you do as much as you can, so if your mat doesn't have a copy of the card you just gained you don't do anything.

The Gleaners has type "Gathering Club", which means that whenever you gain a Gathering card you may optionally put it on your Club mat instead of wherever it would normally go. The instructions on The Gleaners tell you what you can do with Gathering cards that are on your Club mat.

Here is the Club mat. Each player has a mat like this and it tells you the rule about putting cards on it:

Club Mat Mat When you gain a card with the type specified by this game's Club, you may put it here.

Clarifications:

• Cards on your Club mat belong to you and contribute to scoring at the end of the game.
• The ability to put a gained card on your Club mat is timed the same as other "when-gain" abilities; the order of such abilities is interchangeable.
• There is no way to remove cards from your Club mat except as specified in an individual Club's instructions.
• There is no limit to the scope of instructions on a Club. For example they could provide additional ways to put cards on your Club mat.
• Where Club instructions refer to a "mat", it means a Club mat and not any other mat which may be in use in the game.
• Do not use more than 1 Club in a game.

For randomised game generation, follow the same method as for Ways to determine which (if any) Club is to be used. Then, if a Club is selected, check whether the game includes at least one card of the type specified by the Club. If not, add to the Supply an extra Kingdom card pile as follows:

• For Reward, add the Joust pile.
• For Ruins, add one of the Looter piles.
• For Loot, add one of the 6 Kingdom card piles which refer to Loot.
• For Spirit, add one of the 3 Kingdom card piles which refer to Imp or Spirit.
• For Zombie, add the Necromancer pile.
• For Heirloom, add a pile corresponding to one of the Heirlooms (and each player starts with the Heirloom in place of a starting Copper).
• For Shelter, do not add a pile, but replace each player's starting Estates with Shelters.
• For all other types, add one of the piles with that type.

Contest

So that's the Club mechanism.
Your challenge this week is to design a Club. It can be for any official Dominion card type.
I expect my main criteria in judging will be:

• Is it likely to change games in an interesting way?
• Is it likely to lead to meaningful strategic/tactical decisions?
• Does it avoid unnecessary complexity?

Note that games with Zombies, Heirlooms or Shelters do not usually involve cards of those types being gained. Thus Clubs for those types would need some careful design in order for them to be relevant.

Have fun designing! I look forward to seeing what you come up with and I expect to close the contest in about a week from now.

[Jonatan Djurachkovitch]

I'll see if I come with a mock-up, but here's my idea for now:

The Ready - Reaction Club
When any player plays a card, you may first put a card from your mat into your hand.

This shouldn't be implemented online, but can allow for some cool plays OTB.

[BryGuy]

                                                                                 

                                                                                 

Exchange House • Treasure Club
During Clean-up, you may trash a Treasure you have a copy on your Club mat that you would discard from play to gain Coffers equal to its cost in $.

Here is my entry, a Club that would allow you to trash Treasures at Clean-up if you have a copy on your Club mat and also gain Coffers for its cost in coins, limited to one each Clean-up. Gain a Copper and put in on your Club mat to trash them regularly. Do the same for other Treasures for future money spikes.

                                                     

[emtzalex]

Apprenticeship • Action Club After you finish playing an Action card, if you have a copy of it on your Club mat, you may play a cheaper card from your Club mat.

[infangthief]

3 entries so far. Any more to come in the final 24 hours?

[Snorka]

[infangthief]

@Snorka, to clarify, does Visiting Royalty cause the cards on your mat to enter play, or do they stay on your mat? Also can you play some but not all of them, or do you have to play all of them?

[Snorka]

@Snorka, to clarify, does Visiting Royalty cause the cards on your mat to enter play, or do they stay on your mat? Also can you play some but not all of them, or do you have to play all of them?

The cards enter play, and you have to play all of them.

[infangthief]

Thank you all for developing ideas for Clubs. All good entries, I think they would all work out fine in most games.


The Ready - a Reaction Club by Jonatan Djurachkovitch
You can gain Reactions to your Club mat and keep them there until you want them, and this works out quite differently for each case. Of 24 official Reactions (not counting Hovel) I think 25% of them trigger on someone playing a card, and at least 50% more trigger on you doing something that you are likely in control of (gaining, trashing, discarding). So those are all fun. The rest trigger on harder-to-predict situations with some second-guessing of opponents' plays - I think that could lead to messiness in OTB situations, not just online. And sometimes the correct play will just be to take the Reaction into your hand at the earliest opportunity for a Cargo Ship effect.


Exchange House - a Treasure Club by BryGuy
This makes Gold and Silver gainers much stronger - after gaining a token one for my mat each subsequent Silver is a 1-shot $5, and that makes even Bureaucrat feel worth going for! Without such gainers, it'll be interesting to decide whether it's worth it. The Copper trashing is like a cheap Bonfire that never runs out. As with many Treasure Club ideas, this negates the penalty side of things like Bureaucracy (boring), Charlatan (interesting) and Banquet (game-changing).


Apprenticeship - an Action Club by emtzalex
This is a bit tricky to get my head around! I think often the play would be to pick a $5 Action that I expect to play often, gain a copy of it to my mat, then when I gain cheaper Actions I'd want to put them on my mat so that I get to play them with effectively +1 Card +1 Action, perhaps even before the shuffle. The opportunity cost for that is just a $5 gain, so it seems strong but needs good game-awareness to set it up effectively.


Visiting Royalty - an Action Club by Snorka
An effect that is definitely worth using. The key questions are how far do you build before you start putting cards on your mat, then how far do you build up on your mat before triggering the royal visit. I suspect the answers are different each game. There will be megaturn combos; the Bridge one seems a bit broken with the winner (turn 5?) determined by shuffle luck, but others should need skill to set up efficiently. I think a "differently named" clause would improve it.

Picking a winner is a hard choice; all 4 are very different and the more I think about each one the more I like them. I have come close to picking each of them! In the end...

The winner is Apprenticeship by emtzalex.

[infangthief]

In the absence of emtzalex, I'll announce:
The runner up is Visiting Royalty by Snorka.
Snorka, are you available to run the next Fan Mechanics contest?

[Snorka]

Absolutely. I’ll post it shortly.