Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[popsofctown]

I feel kinda like your putting some burden of proof on the cards for identical ones that may or may not have been playtested already.  The cards don't need to prove Donald definitely didn't playtest them in this form or a similar one, the critic needs to prove Donald definitely did playtest a sufficiently similar card.  "Remodel to hand" is only enough information to say the cards were as similar as Swindler and Saboteur.

[eHalcyon]

Darn it.  I knew that was going to happen sooner or later.

pops:  I tried replying to your message but had hit 'Modify' instead of 'Quote' and didn't notice until I'd saved it.  As a result, I overwrote your original post with my reply (now seen in a separate message).  I tried restoring your original post, but I'd cut some of the original text.  I apologize profusely.  Feel free to re-edit.

I wonder if I can disable my new ability to modify other people's posts.  I don't need to do be able to do that.

If you could disable the edit timestamp, you could become a Mafia god...

[Schneau]

Gowland
$3 - Action-Duration
+1 Action
Reveal the bottom two cards of your deck.  Choose two: Put a revealed card on top of your deck; put a revealed card into your hand; trash a revealed card.  The choices must be different.

Anyone have an idea why this card is a Duration? I really like it otherwise, I hope we would be able to take off the Duration portion of this card if it were to win.

[rinkworks]

I feel kinda like your putting some burden of proof on the cards for identical ones that may or may not have been playtested already.  The cards don't need to prove Donald definitely didn't playtest them in this form or a similar one, the critic needs to prove Donald definitely did playtest a sufficiently similar card.  "Remodel to hand" is only enough information to say the cards were as similar as Swindler and Saboteur.

My purpose in posting was to point out that, based on things Donald has said, Remodel-to-hand is a difficult mechanic to make work.  Secondarily, my point about non-terminals is just that making a card easy to stack will magnify any balance or gameplay problems that might exist.

Lest I was unclear initially, let me say so plainly now:  I am not saying that any particular card submitted for this Challenge is or isn't broken, or that all such cards are broken.

[rinkworks]

Gowland
$3 - Action-Duration
+1 Action
Reveal the bottom two cards of your deck.  Choose two: Put a revealed card on top of your deck; put a revealed card into your hand; trash a revealed card.  The choices must be different.

Anyone have an idea why this card is a Duration? I really like it otherwise, I hope we would be able to take off the Duration portion of this card if it were to win.

We've already seen some winning cards get tweaked a little.  If the community, and particularly the author, largely agrees to make a change, I don't see why we couldn't do so.  As for the voting, it's up to the individual voter what criteria they want to use to make their choices.

[Kirian]

So going through these and tallying up my votes, I noticed a couple of things:

1.  Why does everyone and their brother keep trying to make a Diabolic Tutor?  I think I counted six or seven in this batch that allowed you to search your discard pile.  (None of which got votes from me.)

2.  A couple of the TFB cards do not actually qualify by the original set of conditions...

Some quite interesting cards here, though... neat ideas (including some that I've seen before).

[blueblimp]

1.  Why does everyone and their brother keep trying to make a Diabolic Tutor?  I think I counted six or seven in this batch that allowed you to search your discard pile.  (None of which got votes from me.)

Sorry if I missed it, but is there a reason that such a mechanic is bad for the game? I get that frequent discard-rummaging would be time-consuming and annoying, but a terminal shouldn't have that problem. The mechanic is interesting enough that I'm surprised it's not in the game already.

[Davio]

I don't think Counting House is bad for the game.

[Titandrake]

Potential issues with discard searching:

As said before, it's time consuming. Counting House has a bit of this problem, but eventually people can take it on faith that you have 11 coppers in the discard.

It has the similar problem as Counting House, which is that it's much better when you draw it later in the deck. It's contrary to other cards, where you'd rather play them early. This isn't necessarily bad, but it can be annoying.

It could lead to the Golem style deck. Lots of Golems + 2 Actions = those actions get played every turn. Golem has a high cost which helps balance this out. If a discard-searching is somewhat cheap or non-terminal, you could load up on that and 1 copy of Witch, which is much easier than buying multiple copies of Witch. If Witch isn't in your discard pile, return a discard-searcher and try again next turn.

Although it's probably reasonable, it has the potential to be degenerate. It introduces a large amount of consistency. This is a nice effect from a power standpoint, but in the end variability makes for a more interesting game. That isn't to say that there should never be cards that add consistency. See Scheme, Inn. But you can't overload it too much.

I don't think it's a bad mechanic, it's just a mechanic that appears to swing from useless to overpowered pretty quickly.

[Schneau]

I have noticed that a lot of the submitted cards have quite a bit of text on them. For example, even the winner of Challenge 2 Soothsayer (which I voted for) has to have quite small text to make it all fit on the card. This card and many of the other submitted cards have more text than most official cards. I've found that most official Dominion cards are simple and concise. So, I would encourage people to try to make their cards less complex for future challenges. I also find that I'm not as likely to vote for cards that are too complex or wordy. Just something to think about through these challenges!

[Davio]

I hate long texts.

On the other hand, it only takes a couple of plays with a certain card to know what it does. Jack of all trades has a lot of texts, does a lot of different things, but still is surprisingly simple.

I've tried to make my texts as concise as possible and have reworded them probably a couple of times. On the other hand, I try to make my texts consistent with the original cards: I try to do it with the syntax as well as the words. Then again, the original cards aren't that consistent themselves.

Baron uses the wording "Estate card" twice, what silliness!
And both "Treasure" and "Treasure card" are used all over the place.

[rinkworks]

2.  A couple of the TFB cards do not actually qualify by the original set of conditions...

Which ones?  I was pretty careful this time, and I don't think anything slipped by.  There are a couple of edge cases where the benefits are related to what's in the trash pile, e.g., "For every differently-named card in the trash pile, +$1."  I decided this was okay, since you will quickly get into a situation where, say, trashing a Copper is worth a different amount of money than trashing an Estate.  That fits the letter of the rules.

[rinkworks]

I hate long texts.

On the other hand, it only takes a couple of plays with a certain card to know what it does. Jack of all trades has a lot of texts, does a lot of different things, but still is surprisingly simple.

This piece from Donald is a great essay about this sort of thing.  Ideally, you've got a simple card that reads simply.  But it's okay to have a certain number of cards like Native Village and Golem, which require a lot of text but are ideas that are simple enough that, once you ingest them, you know what they do.  Because in spite of all the words, there aren't that many moving parts.

Then you've got cards like Grand Market, which does a lot of different things, but they're all concise and standard things, so that's okay.  Where you run into trouble is when you have lots of moving parts AND lots of text.  When I was learning the game, Bishop was the toughest card for me to ingest, because it does a number of different things and also has a fair bit of text there.  Not a huge amount, but you probably wouldn't want any more.

Anyway, I share your love of the really simple cards.  Complex ones are worth doing when they're really great ideas that offer strategic possibilities you can't get any other way.  I think there is room in this contest for a few of those.  But ultimately my favorite official cards tend to be things like Conspirator, Festival, and Border Village.

[popsofctown]

I find JoaT confusing.  It's still a good card.  As an in-deep player barrier to entry means little for me.

[Guy Srinivasan]

Maybe my favorite point from these designs:

Novello
$5 - Action-Attack
+3 Cards
Each player (including you) with 4 or more cards in hand puts a card from his hand on top of his deck.

If you've set up your deck to buy Provinces due to variance (e.g. ev $6-7ish per hand spiking to $8+ randomly), putting a card back from your hand on top of your deck is bad for you when your hand is anywhere from the worst to just above average, but good for you if your hand is significantly above average or better. Playing BM+Novello, this makes the Courtyard effect on average bad for your opponents (completely random 5-card hands) and good for you (random 7-card hand without your Novello in it).

[popsofctown]

Novello is one of my favorites too. 

I wonder how many people read the discussion before they vote.  It has invariably changed my votes for the better, every time.

I say this because I want to point out that the top/bottom swapper village doesn't have nearly as many moving parts as it appears too, because your opponent's reveal the same top and bottom when you stack, and the village user often reveals the bottom card multiple times so only the top needs inspection.

But I'm not sure anyone even listens to feedback like that..

[Titandrake]

Novello is one of my favorites too. 

I wonder how many people read the discussion before they vote.  It has invariably changed my votes for the better, every time.

I say this because I want to point out that the top/bottom swapper village doesn't have nearly as many moving parts as it appears too, because your opponent's reveal the same top and bottom when you stack, and the village user often reveals the bottom card multiple times so only the top needs inspection.

But I'm not sure anyone even listens to feedback like that..

Depends on your voting criteria...

Any given voter could be voting on power level, how cool the card looks, how tight the design is, how simple the card is, whether it introduces an interesting mechanic, whether it makes you want to play the card, how much the card can act as a centerpiece of a deck, how the card would play in real life, etc.

It comes down to whether this set is meant as eye-candy or as an expansion to play. Eye-candy = vote with inclination towards cool effects/neat design, actual play = vote with inclination towards making sure power levels are right. The discussion slants more towards balancing power than neat effects.

Personally, I only read the discussions to see what people say about my card  .

[Tables]

I tended not to read comments before voting, but have read them since. I think I might read them before, might help me notice things I hadn't yet. Like despite having been playtested by me and another guy numerous times, my card actually had a wording issue that people have picked up on, which neither of us had ever noticed.

I actually dislike Novello. It's a slightly different Ghost Ship, and Ghost Ship is not a fun card in general.

[popsofctown]

Not nearly as brutal.  Orders of magnitude less brutal.

[Mecherath]

Personally, I only read the discussions to see what people say about my card  .

Same here.  The contest is the main reason I stopped lurking.  I've already got feedback I want to use to rework my cards.

[Fragasnap]

I'm late to commenting, I guess.

Hardy
$2 - Action
+1 Action
Reveal the top 3 cards of your deck. Put the revealed cards costing at most $2 into your hand. Put the other cards back on top in any order.

Rings of Apothecary, but doesn't choke on the starting green nor copies of itself. I was intrigued and briefly playtested a strategy relying entirely on this: Without the +1 Card from Apothecary, drawing copies of itself is mostly irrelevant unless there are other $2 cards to pull the Provinces it can't draw off the top of the deck.

Mix
$4 - Action
+$2
Reveal the top 4 cards of your deck. Trash the Curses, discard the Victory cards, place all Actions on the top of your deck in any order, place all Treasure cards on the bottom of your deck in any order.

Interesting. I like that it can encourage draw engines by pooling Actions together, but it sticks all the Treasures you want to draw with the engine on the bottom of your deck. Trashing the Curses might be too strong in games with strong Cursing cards though. I'd have to see this card's praxis to get a feel for it. Also, I can only assume we resolve the card types in order, otherwise I have to tear my Harems apart so I can discard them and put them on the bottom of my deck simultaneously.

Jannings
$3 - Treasure-Curse
Worth +$2
You may trash one action card you have in play immediately. If you do, gain a Gold on your deck.
--
Worth -1 VP
--
(Rules clarification: This is a Curse as well as a Treasure. It is a kingdom card and does not replace the Curse pile. It may be gained by a player from cursing attacks instead of a regular Curse. It may be revealed and discarded as a Curse as a response to Mountebank.)

I'm all for challenging the traditions in Dominion with new Curse type cards, but this is not the way to do it. While the victory point penalty is a big part of Curses, the space they uselessly occupy in the deck is even more important. This however is in many cases better than Silver. If this were a $5 Treasure and not a Curse, I would still sometimes buy it to trash cheap actions and gain Golds. With only a -1VP penalty, this is much too good to be a sometimes replacement for Curse.

Chase
$2 - Action
Look at the top 4 cards of your deck.  Reveal and discard up to 3 of them.  Put the rest back in any order.  If you revealed an..
Action card, +1 Card
Treasure card, +1 Action
Victory card, +$1

Clever. Its bonuses are never better than Peddler, excluding the cycling, though the deck ordering can happen before the draw which is pretty strong for a $2. I'd want to see this in an actual game to really be able to judge it.

Reid
$3 - Action
Count how many cards you have in play, including this. Look at that many cards from the top of your deck. You may discard any of those cards.
Choose one: +2 Cards or +2 Actions.

I really like unbounded cards like this one and getting to look at the cards before you draw is nifty, but I can't support this card simply for the possiblity of a player needing to order seven or more cards on top of his deck. Talk about analysis paralysis.

Ford
$3 - Action
+1 Card
+1 Action
Look at the top 5 cards of your deck.  Discard all duplicates.  Put the rest back on top in any order.
--
(Rules clarification:  You discard cards that are duplicates of other revealed cards, not cards that are duplicates of cards in your hand.)

This card would be really fun for cycling with a deck consisting of unique engine parts and for Cornucopia's Menagerie and Harvest. The fact that it could enable some obtuse engines is enough for me to vote for this card.

Nagel
$5 - Treasure-Reaction
Worth $1
Gain a Silver, placing it on top of your deck.
--
If this card is trashed in any way, reveal it and gain a Gold on top of your deck.

I like this idea: Simple and to the point. I have tested it as Big Money + Nagel against Big Money and Nagel handles the end game better due to the inflation of Silvers in the deck, but it seems to struggle earlier because Nagel itself is a $5 Copper.

Edna
$3 - Action
Choose one: trash a card from your hand, gaining a number of Coppers equal to its cost in coins, putting them into your hand; or trash any number of Coppers from your hand, gaining a card with cost exactly equal to the number of Coppers you trashed.

This is a fun idea either for Copper flooding in a Salvager style effect or for removing Coppers. The ability to trash any number of Coppers might be too strong-- but it would only be particularly notable in games using Mountebank anyway. This is a clever way to get around using the Coppers you trash.

Marlene
$3 - Action
+1 Card
+1 Action
Trash a card from your hand.
Gain a card costing less than the trashed card; put it in your hand.

With so many cards gaining to hand in this submission list, I'm happy to see one that gains a card that costs less. I would only be able to see this as being situational, but the fact that this is a cantrip makes it quite effective for either removing Coppers from your deck or transforming Estates into Coppers.

Ethel
$5 - Action
Trash a card from your hand. If it is a...
- Treasure card, gain a Treasure card costing exactly $3 more, and a Victory card costing exactly $2 more;
- Victory card, gain a Treasure card costing exactly $1 more and put it into your hand.
Each other player may reveal and set aside a Province. At the start of his turn, he discards it and gets +$1.

Looking at Mine, I don't think this should cost $5 since it generally only turns Estates into Silvers, but that Treasure card trashing is pretty clever, gaining Victory cards which could be turned into more Treasures in the hand. Plus a lower cost might enable an Ethel-rush sort of strategy to ensure you are drawing Ethels with your Victory cards.

Mae
$3 - Action
Trash a card from your hand.
If it is worth:
At least $1: +1 Card
At least $3: +1 Action
At least $5: +1$
At least $7: +1 Buy
At least $9: +1 VP

I am fond of this idea, but the bonuses seem to assume card prices are linear, which is not the case. What am I even supposed to be trashing with this? Trashing Silver to make this a cantrip? Trashing a King's Court for a Market's effect? With increased bonuses, I could see this as being fun, but it would probably end up being a more complicated version of Apprentice or Salvager anyway.

Corinne
$4 - Action-Victory
+1 Buy
You may trash a Victory card from your hand. If you do, +2 VP and gain a differently named Victory card costing up to the cost of the trashed card.
--
Worth 1 VP for every 2 Estates in your deck (rounded down).

Baron's best friend here. The action effect could be made useful by buying more Estates with the extra buy or, paradoxically, by clearing out starting Estates, though it can cause you to gain more Estates by trashing different Victory cards. Thinking about it, it might be faster than it initially appears.

[Polk5440]

It took me forever to digest the Challenge 5 cards, but here are my thoughts:

Dealing with the Deck, Cartographer-Style

There are so many cards that utilize the put back in any order mechanic! I don’t like most of them, but I would like Hardy a lot if it was priced higher.

Discard Pile Mechanic

I like the idea of utilizing the discard pile, and I don’t really buy that it slows the game down enough to cause a decline in fun if the mechanic is done right. Fields is a lot like Fairbanks, and I like Fairbanks better. I like that Fairbanks is not dead when you don’t have a discard pile (you still get +$2) which is the main reason I don’t play Counting House that much – I always seem to shuffle it to the top of my deck.

Draw and Put Something Back

There are a lot of cards that are similar this time around. Robeson is a lot like Chaplin, but unlike some previous commenters, I think Chaplin is the better balanced version. Reordering is sneaky powerful; but I suppose play testing is in order here to know for sure. Barrymore and Gibson seem really similar, and I would prefer to play games with Barrymore in the kingdom.

Treasure Related

There are a lot of cards that are Treasures, gain Treasures, or manipulate Treasures, and I like a lot of them, especially the following four:

Gilbert is very slick in principle (who doesn’t like to gain Treasures?), but may need to be priced a little lower or have a little buff to it to make it playable more often.

I like the idea of alternate Curses, so I like Jannings, as well, in principle. Yes, it is strong (possibly too strong), but I disagree with previous comments and other threads that it is confusing, or alternate curses can never be playable. If an attack card says “gain a curse” and the Jannnings pile is out, you would have to gain a regular curse, otherwise you would not be satisfying that line of the attack card. I think it is a benefit, not a detriment or broken feature, that it’s a curse that doesn’t clog – it brings down the power level of attacks (which too often are must buys), and there may be an interesting dynamic in a 3-4 player game where you get a couple of rounds of non-clogging curses which doesn’t make the early game so swingy (e.g. not such a big deal that the player to your left flipped your Sea Hag with his Sea Hag). There are only 10 in the supply. Also, can the player being cursed take advantage of the extra Silver and end the game quickly before getting clogged with regular curses and down even more VP than normal attacking games?

I like that Powell goes hunting for Treasure. You could use this ability to set up a slick Powell-Venture chain, or make sure your Loan hits a Copper by playing Powell-Loan. I like that there are possibly many ways to utilize the card. As far as those who are mentioning a “broken” Tunnel interaction – what about Golem-Tunnel with no other actions in your deck? This “break” already exists. It’s just a shame the trick doesn’t work with Chancellor.

Last, but not least, I like Nagel as a more playable Bureaucrat. Not sure about the pricing, though.

[One of the cards mentioned is mine.]

[Fragasnap]

I like the idea of alternate Curses, so I like Jannings, as well, in principle. Yes, it is strong (possibly too strong), but I disagree with previous comments and other threads that it is confusing, or alternate curses can never be playable. If an attack card says “gain a curse” and the Jannnings pile is out, you would have to gain a regular curse, otherwise you would not be satisfying that line of the attack card. I think it is a benefit, not a detriment or broken feature, that it’s a curse that doesn’t clog – it brings down the power level of attacks (which too often are must buys), and there may be an interesting dynamic in a 3-4 player game where you get a couple of rounds of non-clogging curses which doesn’t make the early game so swingy (e.g. not such a big deal that the player to your left flipped your Sea Hag with his Sea Hag). There are only 10 in the supply. Also, can the player being cursed take advantage of the extra Silver and end the game quickly before getting clogged with regular curses and down even more VP than normal attacking games?

I actually have played with a Curse that acts similarly to Great Hall. It was worth -2VP instead of -1VP though, in order to attempt to balance the fact that it doesn't clog your deck and it was pretty strong even for the increased negative VP.
The biggest issue then is that it may as well be named "Useless Lump" in the great many games that don't involve cursing cards, which is why Jannings suggestion of a card that could be useful to buy without Cursing cards is probably necessary.

I like that Powell goes hunting for Treasure. You could use this ability to set up a slick Powell-Venture chain, or make sure your Loan hits a Copper by playing Powell-Loan. I like that there are possibly many ways to utilize the card. As far as those who are mentioning a “broken” Tunnel interaction – what about Golem-Tunnel with no other actions in your deck? This “break” already exists. It’s just a shame the trick doesn’t work with Chancellor.

Powell doesn't cost a prohibitive $4P and isn't terminal. Powell/Tunnel can start generating Golds for you as early as turn 3 while Golem/Tunnel will, best case scenario, be able to get 2 Golds at turn 5 (assuming the daft opening of Potion/Tunnel, requiring transcedant shuffle luck), let alone that your Golems can later collide to your detriment and aren't producing $1 on their own.
If Powell was worded to get around this issue, I would like it too.

[Polk5440]

I like that Powell goes hunting for Treasure. You could use this ability to set up a slick Powell-Venture chain, or make sure your Loan hits a Copper by playing Powell-Loan. I like that there are possibly many ways to utilize the card. As far as those who are mentioning a “broken” Tunnel interaction – what about Golem-Tunnel with no other actions in your deck? This “break” already exists. It’s just a shame the trick doesn’t work with Chancellor.

Powell doesn't cost a prohibitive $4P and isn't terminal. Powell/Tunnel can start generating Golds for you as early as turn 3 while Golem/Tunnel will, best case scenario, be able to get 2 Golds at turn 5 (assuming the daft opening of Potion/Tunnel, requiring transcendent shuffle luck), let alone that your Golems can later collide to your detriment and aren't producing $1 on their own.
If Powell was worded to get around this issue, I would like it too.

Good point. I thought what people were calling broken was just being able to discard your whole deck + discard at one time.

[rinkworks]

Last day of voting on these!  Get your votes in by tomorrow morning!