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[LastFootnote]

I'm reworking the Inventor card from my fan expansion. It's pretty much the only card in the set that can draw 3+ cards, but I want to put a new twist on that. Here's the best idea I came up with so far.

Inventor
Types: Action
Cost: $5
+2 Cards. Reveal your hand. The player to your left reveals then discards the top 3 cards of his deck. +1 Card for each differently named card you both revealed.

As you play more of these in an engine deck, your hand gets larger and you're more likely to get them to trigger. However, your left-hand opponent can attempt to cripple your draw by pursuing a different strategy than you.

Any comments, criticisms, etc?

Previous versions:

Inventor
Types: Action
Cost: $5
+2 Cards. The player to your left discards the top card of his deck. You may reveal a copy of that card from your hand. If you do, +2 Cards.

[Dsell]

This is a really, really cool idea. I like the mild Cornucopia-esque encouragement of variety. It also would make play order more important. I fear it could possibly be a little weak, especially when you don't have villages or TR/KC to let you draw your deck but I could be very, very wrong on that.

[Kahryl]

Definitely too weak. +2 cards at worst, +4 cards at best, for a $5 card? When Smithy gives you +3 cards reliably?

How about:

Inventor
Types: Action
Cost: $5
+2 Cards. The player to your left discards the top card of his deck. You may reveal a copy of that card from your hand. If you do, +2 Cards, +1 Buy and the revealed card costs $2 less until end of turn, but not less than $0.


(you invented the thing, now you can make a whole bunch! Assuming you have the raw materials..)

[Dsell]

Definitely too weak. +2 cards at worst, +4 cards at best, for a $5 card? When Smithy gives you +3 cards reliably?

How about:

Inventor
Types: Action
Cost: $5
+2 Cards. The player to your left discards the top card of his deck. You may reveal a copy of that card from your hand. If you do, +2 Cards, +1 Buy and the revealed card costs $2 less until end of turn, but not less than $0.


(you invented the thing, now you can make a whole bunch! Assuming you have the raw materials..)

That's a neat fix but sounds way too strong. If used in multiples it's insane. And this card is definitely best in multiples where you can draw your deck anyway. A little buff like +1 buy wouldn't hurt but the princess bonus seems way overpowered.

[Kahryl]

It's not a princess bonus because if only affects the revealed card and you can't choose what he's going to reveal. If it's a copper or Estate it's no stronger than before except for the +buy.

It might be too swingy - if he's VERY unlucky enough to reveal Province twice, you've got $4 provinces. Then again, Saboteur is swingy in the same way. And your opponent has to HAVE two provinces to begin with which is a good sign that the game is close.

[Dsell]

If you're both building similar engines and Inventor reveals multiple engine components and gets +buys it would be really easy to end the game on piles. It obviously is better stacked, but that bonus makes it just insane when stacked.

Mirror Worker's Village+Inventor decks could end the game ridiculously fast.

[blueblimp]

It doesn't seem that weak to me. In the absence of trashing, your opponent is going to reveal a copper or an estate pretty often, and you'll probably have one of those in your (now 6-card or more) hand.

It does seem a bit vanilla for $5 though. Other +3/4 drawers at $5 have some other powerful bonus to go along with it: +buy on Council Room, Wharf, Margrave; attacks on Margrave, Torturer, Rabble; etc.

[LastFootnote]

Thanks for the feedback, everybody.

@Kahryl: I like your cost-reduction idea, but power level aside, I worry it might have tracking issues. If you're playing a bunch of Inventors every turn, it would probably get very tricky to remember which cards have a reduced cost this turn and by how much.

@Dsell: I've been playing a few test games with it and it's tough to say whether it's too weak. In a game where you and your opponent are going after different strategies, it certainly whiffs quite often (50% or so). On the other hand, if you whiff it's probably because you just flipped one of the cards they need for their strategy. But once you start taking that into account, you start getting into targeted Attack territory, which I'd like to avoid. Hmm…

It does really suck when you flip an opponent's Tunnel and don't have any Tunnels yourself, I'll say that.

@blueblimp: I suppose you're right about it being a bit vanilla. I'd hoped the unreliable nature of the card would avoid that issue. In my opinion, adding +1 Buy doesn't really help that issue. There's also the fact that I'm trying to fit this card into an existing set. The set already has enough Attack cards (3 in a 13-card set), so I can't do that.

No other card in the set draws more than 2 cards, so I need this one to have that potential. +4 cards by itself might be balanced at $5, but I'm guessing it's too strong and it's certainly too vanilla. I am definitely open to ideas, though.

[Schneau]

Drawing 2 or 4 seems a bit swingy - what if you made it draw 3 or 4 instead? So, it would always draw 3, and if you match, it draws 4. That way, it's at least as good as Smithy, but sometimes is better.

Either way, mirror BM Inventor games might be very quick, since both decks will be very similar. It might give incentive to not go BM if your opponent is.

[LastFootnote]

Drawing 2 or 4 seems a bit swingy - what if you made it draw 3 or 4 instead? So, it would always draw 3, and if you match, it draws 4. That way, it's at least as good as Smithy, but sometimes is better.

I'd considered that, but it suffers from the too-vanilla problem even more than the 2/4 version does.

I had also considered having the left-hand player flip 2 cards and giving you +1 Card for each match. It's less swingy, but I need a good wording for it. If I go that route, I'll probably use Tribute's differently-named cards wording to avoid it being too powerful as an opener.

I could also have the card draw 3 cards with the chance to draw 2 more, but +5 cards seems really out there.

[LastFootnote]

OK, I've created a new version of the card that gives 2 to 5 cards (see the top post). Hopefully this fixes the power issue while keeping the card interesting and a bit risky. It's very rare that you'll get fewer than 3 cards with this version.

[Schneau]

I think you're moving in the right direction, but now I'm worried about politics in a 3 or 4 player game. If you're going an Inventor heavy deck, does the player to your left try to play a low-diversity deck to keep your inventors missing? This seems worse with 3 or 4 players, since in that case the other players don't have to worry about altering their strategies.

I'd recommend having the player to your left reveal cards until 3 unique cards are revealed. That way, it takes away the possibility that they just reveal 2 Coppers and you match one of your own Coppers. But, it allows you to guarantee three chances at hitting. I think this would encourage both players to play more diverse decks, instead of encouraging them to play BM strategies.

[LastFootnote]

So, I thought up a new version, completely different from the previous ones. Please let me know what you think.

Inventor
Types: Action
Cost: $5
Reveal the top 3 cards of your deck. If you revealed 2 or more…
Action cards, +1 Card;
Treasure cards, +1 Action;
Victory cards, +$1.
Draw the revealed cards.

[Schlippy]

Sounds fine, may be a bit swingy without trashing or a card that lets you look at the top cards of your deck, but I guess that's ok in most circumstances.

[Schneau]

Interesting. Are you purposefully making it not as good for BM or engines? It seems like drawing 2 or more Actions would improve to have +1 Action, and drawing 2 or more Treasures would improve to have +1 Card. I could sort of see the reason for nerfing it like you did, but it doesn't seem to make sense thematically.

[LastFootnote]

Interesting. Are you purposefully making it not as good for BM or engines? It seems like drawing 2 or more Actions would improve to have +1 Action, and drawing 2 or more Treasures would improve to have +1 Card. I could sort of see the reason for nerfing it like you did, but it doesn't seem to make sense thematically.

Yes, that was intentional. If 2 Treasures gave either +1 Card or +$1, I think it would encourage boring strategies.

As for the theme, I can change the name and art of a card to fit the mechanics.

[LastFootnote]

Inventor
Types: Action
Cost: $5
Reveal the top 3 cards of your deck. If you revealed 2 or more…
Action cards, +1 Card;
Treasure cards, +1 Action;
Victory cards, +$1.
Draw the revealed cards.

OK, my first test indicates that this is quite strong. If you keep track of what's left in your deck, you can really eke a lot out of it. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. +3 Cards/+1 Action, +4 Cards, and +3 Cards/+$1 are all very powerful effects. The card does sometimes whiff, and I'm sure that cursing attacks would absolutely destroy its utility. I'll have to test it a bunch more, especially to see what kinds of decks it encourages. Overall, I like it so far.

[O]

dual types are fun with that 

[LastFootnote]

dual types are fun with that 

Sure, but those are few and far between.

EDIT: Well, not actually far between. But few. I stand by that part.