I've seen the
Bank Note idea before and the balancing with Platinum is the main thing, I think, but it also works quite well with Bank. I think it is quite similar to Venture, except it can be drawn dead and doesn't sift. On the other hand, it does offer a little bit more control over what bonus you get. I think it really needs playtesting at both $4 and $5 price points, in sets both with and without Platinum and Bank.
Cathedral is REALLY strong. It turns a regular village into a lv. 2 City, Smithy becomes +4 cards... and if you can get a few Cathedrals in play, it's just ridiculous. The Copper restriction might be enough to keep it in check. But as others have noted, the wording needs to be made clearer.
Feudal Village does not seem like an effective Attack card to me. It has the potential to hurt other players by eliminating their attacks, but I imagine that it would help more than hurt since you let them draw 2 cards! If Feudal Village is the ONLY attack card in the set, it is absolutely helping the others.
Hideaway is quite neat.
I'd rephrase Investigator to say "puts back one non-Treasure card" -- it's a little less awkward, I think. I wouldn't classify it as an attack unless you got to choose what to put back.
Is
Investment a permanent Duration card?
King -- is this actually worth getting multiples of?
1 King = 1 VP per 4 treasure
2 Kings = 2 VP per 5 treasure
3 Kings = 3 VP per 6 treasure
4 Kings = 4 VP per 7 treasure
Granted, the potential value DOES go up. But it also increases the requisite treasure in order to get any points at all. Suppose you had 20 treasures.
1 King = 5 VP
2 Kings = 8 VP
3 Kings = 9 VP
4 Kings = 8 VP
In this case, the return for getting more Kings isn't that great, and it can actually hurt you if you do not have enough treasure to make it to the next level. My example is for 20 treasure cards, which is actually on the high side even when playing straight BM. With these numbers, only the first King is worth $6.
Knight is pretty neat, but it looks like something you'd only want one of (since it would require significant investment to build up more than one). Additionally, it can become functionally useless in kingdoms without cursing or trashing. The latter point aside, it seems really interesting. Needs testing!
Lost Fortune needs rule clarifications. As it is worded, I think I could play Lost Fortune as my first treasure and not face the penalty (since I can't go less than $0), and then proceed to play more treasures without any drawback from Lost Fortune.
Magistrate is very strong. It is like Cutpurse with more options and more power (+cards, optional trashing, can hit Platinum and give you that much). $5 might still be fine. Test!
Merchant is really interesting. Perhaps the wording you want is something like "While this is in play, -$1 for each Treasure card you play". But then I suppose you'd have trouble accounting for things like Horn of Plenty... hmm. Tricky.
How does Curse-returning doesn't help much in preventing
Politician from being an infinite VP gainer. Opponents have to have the Curse in hand to return it, and then they have to choose to gain a Curse to keep you from gaining the VP. Most are probably inclined to take the Copper. And of course, you would never take the Curse yourself. But I don't think it's a problem either way. Monument potentially allows you to gain VP.
Pub is really neat. First, it lets you play Treasure during your Action phase, bringing in the kind of quirkiness currently only possible with Black Market. Next, it does something different with VP tokens. This means it synergizes very well with VP gainers like Monument, Bishop, and especially Goons (with which you might gain extra Coppers to feed Pub). Without any of these available, Pub still lets you gain VP. It does this better if opponents also have Pub; if they don't, you'll need to set it up yourself.
If you'd like to make it easier to use as an Engine, you could change the Reaction to "reveal this and discard a card from your hand". With two Pubs in hand, you can play one and then use the second one to gain a VP token which you immediately use to draw back up to 5; then you can play the Pub you still have in your hand. It's still difficult to use because you can't draw more than 5 with it. I imagine it would easily get bogged down when greening.
One point of clarification is needed -- when you trash a Treasure card with Pub, does its money value remain spendable during your Buy phase? If it does (and that's what happens when you use Mint and have extra coin and buys, right?) then it
could get extremely hard to track if you manage to chain multiple Pubs and play and trash multiple Treasures with it.
The relationship between
Spendthrift and
Debt is confusing. First, you say that it is not a Kingdom card. So can it be bought? If it can only be gained via spendthrift, the "+$1, +1 Buy" never comes into play. If it can be purchased, then I suppose its purpose is to let you get an extra $1 in a turn in exchange for taking on the Curse. I think a bigger issue is making it a Curse type card in the first place. There are indeed wording differences on cursing cards, and they are not consistent. Moreover, does the presence of Debt mean that cursing attacks become even more powerful once the regular Curses run out, i.e. are you obligated to take Debt if there are no more Curses?
I find
Town to be a little too similar to Pawn.
I made lots of comments, but didn't touch on everything. Anything I didn't mention, I probably like it but didn't have anything interesting to say about it.
Overall I really like it. I think the most problematic card is King. The math just doesn't work, unless I'm doing something wrong!
