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[weezerblather]

Arsonist
Cost: 6
Action-Attack

Players reveal their hand, if they have victory cards they trash them, and may gain a victory card of at least (1) less than the trashed victory card. If they reveal a hand with no victory cards, you gain a curse.

So if someone reveals province, duchy, they trash them and get a duchy(or harem/duke/etc) and a garden (great hall, estate, etc.)

this card is spendy, and it is hit or miss, getting a curse is bad news. However, late game, with colonies or provinces and lots of green in peoples hands this card can be devastating. We really enjoy it and we don't think it is OP because trashing estates is great if that's all they have in their hand, and they don't have to gain a victory card back. Loading up on moats or defenses also help. We have play tested this card for about 20 games now and love it. Obviously we haven't tested every combination but it destroys garden strategy, but I have also gained 3 curses by using it in a 3 player game.

thoughts??

(very new to creating cards, but this one has been the most fun/successful for us)

[jonts26]

Its a fun concept. It does feel really swingy, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It actually gives me a strong saboteur vibe. I think it's going to be largely ignorable on most boards, but devastating on a few. The problem is that it provides no benefit to you and may even help your opponents or hurt your own deck. The other problem is that by the time you'd want to buy this card, it seems pretty late in the game to actually buy and you'd likely favor a duchy. It does destroy a lot of gardens/dukes/silk roads decks.

Also a few suggestions on the wording:
should read each other player - you dont want to hit yourself
and maybe something like "each revealed victory card is trashed and the owner gains a victory card costing at most $1 less than the trashed card. "

[weezerblather]

Thanks, yes I hadn't really spent a whole lot of time on the wording, I was more focused on the actual concept of the card and how it worked with other cards. I was thinking about lowering it to 5 as well, but I need to give it another 10-15 games to know for sure. I appreciate the input, it is a fun card and very situational but my main goal was to see if this card was flawed or not, and so far I don't see any major issues.

[Brando Commando]

This looks like it would just be a terror in some engines. If you were, say, to use Governor/Council Room to put cards in their hands to then destroy, that seems pretty devastating.

But even with more regular draw engines might get you to this point in a game: The curses pile has been depleted (and many have already been trashed), and several players have great card draw and one or two of these in their deck. This means that you'll be hit by it every turn, and the best defense would be to have a bunch of non-green cards to fill up hands (like caravan) without inhibiting your ability to draw your own Arsonist.

I don't know if I agree with Jonts26 re: late game buys. It seems like if other players' decks are anything but really fat with the above mentioned cantrips, this could be a great way to trash their Provinces.

[eHalcyon]

You should limit the swinginess a bit by limiting the number of victory cards trashed.  Say it trashes only 1 (or maybe even 2) victory cards from opponent's hands.  Then it's not as terrible if (in a 3 player game) one opponent was lucky enough to have a clean hand and the other just happened to draw 4 gardens.