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[rinkworks]

Initially, I was disappointed to learn there would be only one card in Cornucopia that would make use of the Prize cards.  I think Tournament turned out fine, but I still wonder about other possible cards that would be fun for earning Prizes.  I really think the Prize cards add a lot to the game, as it provides a fun subgoal to pursue on the path to victory.  (Similarly, striving to earn Grand Markets and Peddlers are other subgoals I enjoy, if more subtle.)

The problem with Tournament, though, is the high luck/variance for it, similar to that on Treasure Map.  So I wondered about lower variance ways to earn Prizes.

How about this?

Piggy Bank
$4 - Action
Place up to 3 Coppers from your hand on your Piggy Bank mat.  If you have at least 8 Coppers on your Piggy Bank mat, you may trash 8 of them.  If you do, gain a Prize or a Duchy.

I haven't playtested it, but what I think this card might have going for it:

- Pursuing the goal is beneficial even if you never reach it, as it will thin your deck.
- Actually reaching the goal requires (barring things like Mountebank/Jester/Ambassador hitting you) the unusual purchasing a Copper.  But you don't have to do it early, and hopefully by the time you do, you'll have been able to get some +Buy and not waste a turn purchasing the eighth Copper.
- Possibly lower variance.  Maybe drawing your Piggy Bank with your last Copper still has the same variance as drawing your Tournament and Province together.  But as I say, setting Coppers aside is a great benefit to you even if you never reach 8.
- Most of the time (a Goons game possibly being an exception) you'll only be able to meet the goal once, and so you'll have to be all the more careful about which Prize you choose to take.  (In Tournament games, often once you earn that first prize, more will soon follow.)
- Cutpurse potentially rises from middling attack to significant counter.

Thoughts?

Anybody have any other ideas for Prize-earning cards?  kazztawdal, in http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=149.0 , has what I thought was a great idea for a Monster card that could be adapted into a Prize-earner fairly simply.

[WanderingWinder]

I think the card is pretty broken. Just culling the coppers this fast even without being able to gain prizes is pretty strong. If it were only 1 copper at a time, it would be interesting. You'd probably want to lower the number of coppers needed on the mat then though. Maybe 5 or 6.
Interesting idea though

[rinkworks]

I thought about 2 Coppers at a time initially, but I figured Steward is cheap and lets you trash two cards of ANY kind.   This would only get rid of Coppers, so it would be less useful than Steward unless you landed a Prize from it.  And then you'd still usually only be able to have one.  But yeah, maybe 3 is still too many.

[Kn]

Too weak. It would take more effort than it's worth to get a prize out of it. Otherwise, it's like an expensive chapel that only trashes copper. I would redo the card to give the option of setting aside any treasure, or allowing you to trash the piggy bank to get all the treasure that you set aside in your hand, and +2 buy. That way, it's kinda like a native village that only can be drawn from once, and only for treasures. I'd also reduce the cost to 2. And get rid of the prize benefit since it's irrelevant. Sorry, that goes against the whole idea of the card, but with a name like piggy bank, it needs to act like one.

[rinkworks]

Ok, how about this one?

Archivist
$4 - Action
Place a card from your hand on your Archivist mat.  If there are 5 differently-named cards on your Archivist mat, trash all 5 and gain a Prize or a Duchy.

Like my earlier idea, this provides a benefit even if you never claim a prize:  It could be used as a slow trasher, and/or a re-usable Island.  But, appropriately, it's weaker than other trashers and doesn't give 2 VP that Island does.  However, if you do go for a prize with it, it requires you to work a bit for it.  Although stowing away a Copper, an Estate, and possibly a Curse is an easy decision, you still need to come up with two other unique cards.  Possibilities include fast-trashers, once your deck is slim; another Archivist, if you bought multiples to speed the process; cursing attacks after the Curses are gone.

Possible ways to tweak this, if necessary:  (1) Require that ONLY unique cards ever get stowed on the mat, preventing you from pseudo-trashing multiple Coppers or Estates; (2) Trash ALL cards on the mat if you trash any, which prevents you from using it as a reusable Island AND go for prizes; (3) Change the number of unique cards required to claim a prize, obviously; (4) Trash the Archivist itself after claiming a prize, if the potential to use it as a reusable Island AFTER claiming a prize makes it too strong.

I'll probably try to playtest this soon, but I'm curious to hear what people think.  I love the idea of these little sub-quests, and I think this sort of thing would be more fun to pursue than simply trying to draw a Tournament and a Province together (even though I still like Tournament itself a lot).

[Censure]

Just nitpicking here, but both these ideas ruin the thematic link between winning the tournament and getting the princess.

How does an archivist win you a trusty steed or a pretty girl?

And I seriously doubt your spare change will win over the princess.

[rod-]

Exerting control over a gold mine and a silver mine has ALWAYS been enough to win the heart of the ladyfolk.

[rinkworks]

I've now done some fairly extensive testing of Piggy Bank and Archivist, which I've renamed Coin Collector and Museum, respectively.

Coin Collector ("Piggy Bank" in the original post) seems to play fine.  I took into account WW's thought that it was too strong, and Kn's thought that it was too weak.  But it seemed to play okay.  I think all it needs is to gain you a Prize AND a Duchy, rather than one or the other.  The reason is that it does take a good while to cash in*, by which time you probably don't want a Prize over a Duchy anyhow.  Plus, you will probably only get to cash in once, so boosting the reward isn't as dramatic as it would be with, say, Tournament.

*With one exception:  To avoid the issue of not drawing Coin Collector and your last Copper together, open Coin Collector/Silver and don't buy much of anything until your CC is cashed in.  You pick up the 8th Copper on a turn when you've used CC and thus can't buy much else anyway.  You can buy a 9th Copper on such a turn to reduce the chance of bad draw luck later.  When you cash in the CC, you'll have virtually no money in your deck, but that's okay:  you just pick Bag of Gold or Trusty Steed as your prize, and that will correct your treasure shortage -- which more than compensates for those early turns where you bought nothing at all.  With this strategy, gaining a Duchy as well actually weakens you a little (a good thing), as it slows down your now very trim but powerful deck.

If you use CC solely for the trashing ability, it's strictly worse than Chapel, so no problem there.

--

Museum (previously Archivist)

This is too weak as originally stated.  You have to work too hard for 5 uniques that you don't mind trashing.  Not only does this mean trashing a couple of good cards you spent turns accumulating, but you're also spending five whole turns building up to a Prize or Duchy, which is almost certainly a losing strategy.

If you use it only for its trashing ability, it's even worse:  all the trashing it does that's useful is one Copper, one Estate, and sometimes one Curse, and you spend as many turns to get there.  Later in the game, you can stow away a Province and a Duchy too, which is somewhat useful on late-game turns where you're clogged with green and can't do anything better anyway, but it's not a game-changing move even then.

So, as with Coin Collector, I boosted the reward to a Prize and a Duchy.  I also knocked the requirement down to just 4 unique cards, which is a whole lot more manageable.  A couple of use cases:

(1) You stow away a Copper, an Estate, and a Curse.  Now you only need to stow one more card away to gain a Prize and a Duchy.  Since a Prize and a Duchy are virtually always going to be better than the weakest card in your card at any given time, it's no problem if the fourth card you stow away is a good one.  Probably it's just a Silver, which is no great loss.

(2) You open Museum/Museum, stowing away a Copper, an Estate, and then one of your Museums.  Just one card to go, which is, as in case (1), no problem.

(3) You stow away a Copper, an Estate, and the Chapel you've been using in parallel to trim down.  Just one card to go.

The point here is that finding 3 cards to stow away is easy.  It's what you have scrape together beyond 3 that's hard.  Reducing the requirement from 5 cards to 4 is a more dramatic change than it seems.

I still need to play with this one some more, but I think these changes make it more balanced.  It's still not something you always want to go for, but in certain situations it's a lot of fun.  Even just the Island-like capability of it is fun on its own:  you can get one copy of each Victory card out of your way, which encourages you to buy different ones.

[icesphere]

I really like the idea of museum, I'm excited to try it out. A couple of questions on how the final version of it works: Can you only add unique cards to the mat? Do you trash all the cards on the mat when you get 4 unique cards? If you still have cards on the mat when the game ends do they count as part of your deck for scoring purposes?

[rinkworks]

I really like the idea of museum, I'm excited to try it out. A couple of questions on how the final version of it works:

My (probably?) finalized version of the card text will probably clear up your confusion, but I'll answer your questions afterward anyway:

Museum
$3 - Action
You may choose a card from your hand that you do not already have a copy of on your Museum mat.  Place it on your Museum mat.
If you have at least 4 cards on your Museum mat, you may trash 4 of them and gain a Prize and a Duchy.

Therefore...

Can you only add unique cards to the mat?

Yes.  If you've already got, say, an Estate on the mat, you can't put another one there.

Do you trash all the cards on the mat when you get 4 unique cards?

No, you only trash 4 of them.  As the trashing step is optional, you could build up lots of cards on the mat and then, when you do want to cash in, you just pick any 4 of them to trash.

If you still have cards on the mat when the game ends do they count as part of your deck for scoring purposes?

Yes.

In practice, this usually seems to mean that you put four junk cards on, trash them, then just throw unique Victory cards on it until the end of the game, Island-style.  But there's no reason you can't use the Museum mat for both purposes simultaneously.

[icesphere]

Just finished playing 3 games with the Museum card. 

Game #1 - Ending score - 46, 43, 22(me).  The game took 21 turns.  Was able to get a prize with the Museum card, but only got to use it once. 

Game #2 - Ending score - 38(me), 31, 31.  The game took 25 turns.  Was able to get a prize and use it 2 times.

Game #3 - Ending score - 34, 32, 26(me). The game took 19 turns.  Was not able to get a prize before the game ended.

I think there were two big differences between game #2 and the other two games: Game #2 had Colony and Platinum, and it also had a source of extra actions (Fishing Village), the other two games did not have either of these. I did better in the third game because I tried to get other cards to support a better deck and spent less time on getting the 4 cards for my Museum, but I still lost, and I wasn't able to get a prize before the game ended.

It seems like Museum is too slow for most games.  Maybe if you gave it +1 Action, or reduced the requirement to 3 cards it would work better.  Also I found myself either gaining a Curse card just to put it on my Museum mat, or putting a card I wanted to keep on the Museum mat, thus slowing down my deck even more.  You also have less coin in your deck when using this card, so another possibility might be to add +1 or +2 coins to the card. It would also probably be a good idea to have you gain the prize on top of your deck like Tournament. Anyways, I might try some of these variations and see how it goes.

[rinkworks]

Just finished playing 3 games with the Museum card.

Thanks for the report!

It seems like Museum is too slow for most games.

The results from your three games actually look about right to me, except that it looks like you weren't able to redeem the Museum quite as fast as I usually can.  Hard to tell, since you don't say which turns you did it.  But it's by design that it's not necessarily a smart buy in every game (it's bad with rush strategies on the board, for example).  It's also by design that it's usually only practical to redeem once, on average.  If a game lasts 15-20 turns, which I guess is average for a Province game, you're using an action on ~20% of them on the Museum.  That's a lot of work for a Prize and a Duchy, so burning double that on two sets is probably really bad.   But the slow trashing ability is equally important:  even if you never redeem the Museum, you're getting some benefit by stowing cards away, Island-style.  Thinking of the Museum as a reusable Island with restrictions might be closer to the mark than comparing it to Tournament.  Tournament's ability to claim lots of Prizes in rapid succession was exactly what I didn't want to recreate.

Normally what I do with Museum is stow away a Copper, a Estate, and one or two of:  Museum (sometimes I buy two to speed things up, then stow one away when they collide), Curse, cursing attack after the Curses are gone, no-longer-needed trasher (Chapel, Trading Post), weak cantrip (Pearl Diver, Haven, etc), or Silver.  If four of those aren't available,  then Museum was probably a very bad card to buy in the first  place.  But even so, if you can at least get to three, then at that point it's a good play to use almost any other card as the fourth.  Because even a Laboratory is worth losing to get a Trusty Steed + Duchy in return.   But only stow away a good card if it's the fourth card!  By the way, I suspect it's a really bad idea to buy a Curse just to stow away on the Museum mat.  Because then you're burning a buy AND bogging down your deck and can't even reap the reward for it unless the Curse and Museum collide.  Maybe if you're getting a Curse for Ambassador to use first it's okay.

Anyway, after I redeem the Museum once, I stow away Victory cards (and maybe another Copper) until the game ends, without planning on redeeming it again.  Usually the game ends before you run out of unique Victory cards to put there.  Of course if the game DOES run long, the option of a second redemption is still available.  But it's pretty rare.

If you think you'd like it better with a buff, though, by all means, go for it.  I would recommend raising the cost, though.  $3 is pretty cheap, really, for a trasher that awards prizes.  So extras should probably hike it up a bit.

[icesphere]

I think the card works well in longer games, but struggles against big money strategies in province games that do not have attack cards to slow the game down. Museum is a slow trasher like Remodel, which also somewhat struggles in shorter games, but the difference is Remodel is constantly upgrading your deck, and allows you to trash any card, where Museum's trashing is limited to unique cards and the extra benefit(duchy and prizes) is usually not realized until near the end of the game.  Also you could build a faster deck and then buy Remodel near the end of the game and still use it to trash gold into provinces or silver into duchies.

I think you are right that if you added any bonuses to the card, it would make it much more powerful.  So probably the card works fine how it is, and you just need to be careful to only buy it in certain setups, however, I really like the idea of the card, so it would be nice if there was a way to make it more useful in a shorter game.

[rinkworks]

All makes sense to me.  Good comparison with Remodel, although usually I'd rather trash Coppers outright than get a replacement for them.

To speed Museum up a bit, maybe try your suggestion of 3 uniques; alternately, allow up to 2 uniques to be stowed away at a time.  I'm dubious of these ideas myself but can't know for sure, having not tested them.

Maybe a good non-invasive way of speeding the card up is to allow the Prize to go on top of your deck (like Tournament does), instead of to your discard pile.  You'll get more Prize use then, even if it takes as long to cash in.

I'm still wondering if you were slower than I usually am at cashing them in, though -- 1-2 uses of the resulting Prize seems quite a bit less than my own experience.  Maybe it's also important to rev up a good drawing/cycling engine, so you can both get to the Museums more often and also the resulting Prizes.

[icesphere]

I think part of the problem was that I was just trying to test the new card without considering whether or not it made sense for the given setup.  Both the setups where it did poorly, there weren't any good cards to get a drawing/cycling engine going.  I'll try it out with different card setups and see if it works better.

[Davio]

How about being able to move any card to the Museum mat, but you only get the benefit if you place a 4th unique card?
For example the mat could have 3 Estates, 2 Coppers, 2 Curses and placing a single Silver would activate it.

This way you get more speed and can play it most turns. You don't get stuck when you already have an Estate and a Copper on there.

This makes it more like Remodel but with a delayed bonus.
It's probably better than Remodel in the beginning, because you only get $2's and $4's from Remodel at that time when you need $5's and $6's.

This may increase the speed too much, but you could place a cap on the number of different cards which can be placed on it, for example up to 2/3 Copies of every card.

[rinkworks]

Davio:  That probably works, though you'd have to bump the cost up to $5 or so, because then it's essentially a reusable Island without any constraints at all, so you could throw Provinces and Duchies onto it with abandon in the end game.  But for me, it takes away the flavor I was going for.

By the way, after playtesting last night, the situationality of Museum became pretty clear.  On one game, I redeemed Museum once and got to use the resulting Prize twice before the end of the game (but to considerable effect).  My opponent, however, had already redeemed Museum twice by then and had run rampant with them, and I think he redeemed it a third time before the game ended.

The second game was more similar -- one Prize apiece around the mid-game, the Prize used once or twice before the end of the game.  Both games were Province games.  It's also probably significant that neither had any other form of trashing (well, one also had Island), so our decks were pretty fat.

[icesphere]

Played 3 more games with Museum - this time they were 2-player games against a computer player using the BMU (Big Money Ultimate) strategy. 

Game #1 - 54, 33(me) - 26 turns - Gained prize(bag of gold) on turn 9, played bag of gold on turn 12, turn 17, and turn 23. The computer got too far ahead on Provinces, and I was never able to catch up.

Game #2 - 42(me), 30 - 22 turns - Gained prize(followers) on turn 14, king's courted followers on turn 17, played followers on turn 18, king's courted followers on turn 20. This game went much better, obviously king's courting followers a couple of times helped.

Game #3 - 39, 37(me) - 22 turns - Gained prize(followers) on turn 10, played followers on turn 13, turn 16, and turn 19. I also gained another prize(trusty steed) on turn 16 and played it on turn 19. I was behind on Provinces again and was trying to buy Duchies to catch up.

I think Museum works well for certain setups, but it is definitely a slower strategy, so if your opponent is going for a faster strategy you may not have time to catch up.