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[Graystripe77]

Merchant Banker
Action/Duration: $4
+$4
---------------------
At the start of your next turn, discard a card

At first I thought this card was too powerful, but after some brief testing, it seems perfectly priced. Thoughts?

[Morgrim7]

(Card name goes here)
Action/Duration: $4
+$4
---------------------
At the start of your next turn, discard a card

At first I thought this card was too powerful, but after some brief testing, it seems perfectly priced. Thoughts?

How about discard a treasure at the start of your next turn? Because otherwise you can just discard some old VP/Curse card. I dunno. I really like this idea, though.

[Morgrim7]

About name... mabye Credit?

[Jack Rudd]

(Card name goes here)
Action/Duration: $4
+$4
---------------------
At the start of your next turn, discard a card

At first I thought this card was too powerful, but after some brief testing, it seems perfectly priced. Thoughts?

You might want to test this one in a game with at least one member of {Minion, Watchtower, Library, Tactician} present.

[Graystripe77]

Alright, thanks for the idea Jack. I tried a few games with these cards, and it seems fine, about as strong as any other average 2-card combo. Since it is a duration, playing it more often requires a lot more copies, which interferes with the accumulation of other cards. This seems to be perfectly balanced, so far as I can tell.

If this works out, it may be in the fan-expansion as well.

[rinkworks]

I'm not sure I believe it's really balanced.  At +$3, I can see it:  a terminal Gold would be about a $5 card, and losing a card next turn is usually going to be a pretty small penalty, because chances are at least one out of your next five cards is a VP/Curse card, or, failing that, a dead Sea Hag or a clashing terminal or whatever.  (Another way to look at it is that it is not even as severe a penalty as half a Militia.  Militia is a pretty decent attack, but at half the power you can discard, for example, just your one Estate instead of your one Estate AND a Copper.)  And if the penalty does lose a useful card, maybe that's because your deck is so rich with great cards that you can draw back up anyway.

Sometimes the penalty will genuinely hurt, sure.  But often enough and severe enough to compensate for a $4 +$3 action this turn?  Maaaybe, but maybe not.  Consider that Oasis uses a similar penalty (this turn rather than next turn) to drop the power level of a card from approximately the $4 tier to the $3 tier.  That's a much smaller gap than dropping from approximately the $5 tier to the $4 tier.

But what we're talking about is not a $4 +$3 action but a $4 +$4 action, which, without the penalty, would be priced somewhere around $7.  I just don't see having to discard a card knocking the cost down by 3.

That said, I like the core concept, which I guess is like a Tactician in reverse:  sacrifice the next turn a little for beefing up the current turn.  I'm sure the idea can be made to work.

[DStu]

cardNameGoesHere-BM seems to tie against DoubleJack:
[["Server" offline]]

[HiveMindEmulator]

To me it looks a lot like Vault. It practically guarantees you can buy Gold, and when drawn with Gold, practically guarantees you buy a province. (Also it works very well with double-Tacticians.) If this is balanced at $4, it would stand to reason that Vault would also be balanced at $4. The only time Vault is really superior is decks where you can draw the whole deck multiple times in one turn (i.e. scrying pool).

[DStu]

Vault has more cycling than cngh. DoubleVault seems to win a bit against 4cngh.
Edit: and it's a Duration, so less card for the same price because of missing the shuffle.

[DStu]

So my impression after all:
I also thought it would be to strong, as apparently everybody, but after the sims it seems quite balanced. It's strong in BM, but not stronger than other cards out there. It does not seem to be as resilent against attacks as DoubleJack, for example. Getting hit by a Militia AND having to discard another card is no fun certainly.
The 2-card combos don't seem that dangerous, Minion is certainly good, Library is more a problem of collision than a great help for next turn.

Coming to the engines, I haven't tested this. But in a draw-your-whole-deck engine, two of them basically work like two Merchant Ships which works on the first turn completely, with a minor drawback on turn 2 if you only play one. If you play two, it might get a bit more servere, and as mentioned if you are faced hand-size reduction attacks. But Merchant Ships are not the overpowered source of money in draw-engines, so that's also not too hard. The discard is a further advantage in Library/Watchtower engines, but they are not so common and I like having a little more help for them.

[O]

The distribution split of 4$ versus 2$/2$ isn't really distinguishably better or worse, so the card basically is a Merchant Ship for 4$ with a discard-a-card-penalty. Which seems more than reasonable.

[popsofctown]

Distribution of $ is distinguishably worse.  You're correct in that it's not the worst thing in the world, but clumping money together is generally better.

I think this will seem ok, but 7$ cards, Goons, or Tournament will break it.

[O]

Distribution of $ is distinguishably worse.  You're correct in that it's not the worst thing in the world, but clumping money together is generally better.

I think this will seem ok, but 7$ cards, Goons, or Tournament will break it.

I've heard this often as conventional wisdom but never really seen why. Outside of the duration effect, why is a distribution of $ in this case really worse?

[Tables]

Card power in non-linear. Expensive cards tend to have a bigger jump in power per $1 cost than cheaper cards. For example, suppose you have $6, two buys and there are no actions you're interested in. 80% of the time, you're going to buy a Gold, not two Silvers. Suppose you have a $5 and two buys. You're probably (about 95% of the time) ignoring that extra buy and just eyeing up the $5's. In fact, with $5, you're looking at the $5's and probably only give the $4's a look if they're really important. With $4, you look at both the $4's and $3's.

And this is why distribution of money is not as good as concentration of money. Distribution means you tend to hit $4 a lot early when you really want to hit $5-6, or $5-6 a lot late when you really want to hit $8. High variance means you hit those high numbers and some low numbers, which means you can get those good cards and either filler or skip buys with the others, which, thanks to the aforementioned non-linear costs, is a good thing.

[Graystripe77]

Well, thanks for all the feedback. I'm still testing this card, particularly with engines. So far, it seems a little powerful in engines, but no more than Chapel. Thanks for the testing btw, DStu.



Also, I'm open to suggestions for the name of this card.

[Axxle]

Well, thanks for all the feedback. I'm still testing this card, particularly with engines. So far, it seems a little powerful in engines, but no more than Chapel. Thanks for the testing btw, DStu.



Also, I'm open to suggestions for the name of this card.

... Blood money 

[Insomniac]

Im not sure it would be that much better with Kings Court. Sure you get a guarenteed Colony but your hand is nuked. And Horse Traders isn't retardedly OP with Kings Court (which guarantees a Platinum or a Province).

That said I see a comparison with Horse Traders probably suggesting that this card should be more than 4. 3 Cards to get 3 at the 4 cost. But it has a reaction tacked on and a buy and it doesn't miss shuffles so I'm probably wrong on this point.

The time I see this taking off is Double Tactician with one of the villages. Tactician every turn with a strong action money source, you only need 3-4 probably so you don't have to buy out the stack or compete for the split.

All that said I really like the card idea 

Just my two cents

[O]

Card power in non-linear. Expensive cards tend to have a bigger jump in power per $1 cost than cheaper cards. For example, suppose you have $6, two buys and there are no actions you're interested in. 80% of the time, you're going to buy a Gold, not two Silvers. Suppose you have a $5 and two buys. You're probably (about 95% of the time) ignoring that extra buy and just eyeing up the $5's. In fact, with $5, you're looking at the $5's and probably only give the $4's a look if they're really important. With $4, you look at both the $4's and $3's.

And this is why distribution of money is not as good as concentration of money. Distribution means you tend to hit $4 a lot early when you really want to hit $5-6, or $5-6 a lot late when you really want to hit $8. High variance means you hit those high numbers and some low numbers, which means you can get those good cards and either filler or skip buys with the others, which, thanks to the aforementioned non-linear costs, is a good thing.

That's true for smaller quantities without +buy: Fishing village's 1-1 split is worse than the same card with a 2-0 split. It's true when you're buying 5$ cards.

But then you green, and you're buying provinces without +buy. The +4$ is far more likely to overshoot and have deadweight loss in your hand than the +2/+2. 10/6 is significantly worse than 8/8, etc. So yes, its a bit better in the midgame ("a bit" because you actually are going to frequently overshoot with +4$ in the midgame as well, buying provinces when you don't want to be), but a fair amount worse in the endgame aswell.

[Thanar]

Also, I'm open to suggestions for the name of this card.

Here are a few possible names, which I gleaned from some lists of medieval professions:

Exchequer
A department or office of state in medieval England charged with the collection and management of the royal revenue and judicial determination of all revenue causes. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/exchequer

Merchant Banker
A banker who provides capital to companies in the form of share ownership instead of loans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_bank
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_banking#Emergence_of_merchant_banks

Fence
A receiver of stolen goods or a place where stolen goods are bought. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fence_%28criminal%29)

Usurer
One that lends money especially at an exorbitant rate. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usury)

Thanar

[Graystripe77]

Thanks very much Thanar. This card will henceforth be known as Merchant Banker.