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[theory]

This is the second preview by Donald X. Vaccarino, introducing the next Dominion expansion: Dark Ages.

Feodum is the victory card that counts treasures that you always knew I’d make. What you didn’t know is that it would only count Silvers. If Coppers count, man, that’s like a Gardens deck, we built that one already. I mean it’s different but whatever. If Golds count, man, I already wanted a deck with a lot of Gold. So it only counts Silvers. And to help that out, it’s a Silver piñata. You might even buy one just to crack it open, with no plan of really going for Feodums.

Feodum does something when you trash it. There are a bunch of cards like that in this set. There’s really only so much you can do with the trash directly, like Graverobber, but you can do tons of things based on cards getting trashed. And if you are the kind of person who likes card combos, these cards are for you. For example you can just Remodel a Feodum into a Feodum, for the 3 Silvers. Look at that.

Cultist also does something when you trash it. Those of you who were waiting for a Dominion expansion that let you sacrifice Cultists, finally, here it is. And hey you get three cards when you do it. When you play Cultist, you give people a Ruins, that sounds bad, and you draw two cards, and hey you can play another Cultist. These guys stick together. In fact if your deck’s only actions are Cultists, you can just string them together, like a line of hurtful Laboratories.

Ruinses, it turns out, are a pile of cards like Curses, with three ways to get them, besides just buying them or something. They only show up in games with a Looter, which is a word you may have been wondering about on Cultist. There are five different ones (ten copies each) and they’re shuffled together, I’m not making this up. As with Curses you only use ten total per opponent. Not two of each per opponent, just whatever random mix you got. So when you play Cultist, your opponent will get one of these five cards. You will know which one is on top of the Ruins pile, but not what’s under it. You won’t really care; even though some are worse than others, they’re all bad.

Ruined Market for example just gives +1 Buy. It’s as simple as Smithy! I am betting you can guess what three of the other Ruinses do. The last one will remain a small mystery until next week. Looking at the art, it appears that that Ruined Market was once Grand. It’s hard times for all of us.

Once you get given a Ruined Market, well, it’s pretty bad, but it does do something. You don’t usually want it – though it has a certain charm in a Fairgrounds deck – but who knows, maybe that +1 Buy will come in handy. So it’s like a Curse but more interesting. And really that’s the whole point to them.

[cooperaa]

I guess an obvious combo is Trader/Feodum.

I'm not thrilled about the idea of a deck filled with Ruins.  There must be a lot of trashing to counteract that.  Here's hoping!

[Kuildeous]

I'm thrilled that we have something that is the equivalent of varied curses. I know that I was pleased when Thunderstone had varied diseases.

Sounds like Ruins are not quite as bad as Curses, but you still want to be rid of them in general.

But, Fairgrounds just got really serious (apart from Black Market decks).

[Glooble]

How many of us saw Feodum coming when Trader was released?

[Robz888]

Not quite as bad as Curses, but still pretty bad! Boards with Cursing Attacks and Ruining Attacks are going to be interesting.

[jotheonah]

I guess an obvious combo is Trader/Feodum.

I'm not thrilled about the idea of a deck filled with Ruins.  There must be a lot of trashing to counteract that.  Here's hoping!

Does it give you 7 silvers? Who really needs 7 silvers?

[ashersky]

I like the idea of Feodum -- with 40 silvers, they max out at 13 VP each, but rarely if ever reach that.

Trader seems like the ideal way to gain lots of silvers, of course, and you'll always have enough to buy more silvers/Feodums...is it fast enough to beat provinces/colonies?  You need 18 silvers in your deck to equal provinces, which is almost half the supply...

[philosophyguy]

Ok, so the Ruined Lab variant is obvious: +1 Card
And, the ruined terminal Silver (no idea which one he'll pick) is going to be +$1.
The interesting question is: will the Ruined Village be +2 Actions or just +1 Action? I'm guessing +2 because outside of some Conspirator niche cases, an action that does nothing has no redeeming quality.

[carstimon]

Not quite as bad as Curses, but still pretty bad! Boards with Cursing Attacks and Ruining Attacks are going to be interesting.

Yeah.  It's going to be interesting to have to choose between witch and cultist.  Maybe it comes down to: is my opponent going to be able to benefit from the ruins (because, maybe, fishing village is on the board). 

I have chapel and feodum in my hand.  Should I trash my feodum?  You should if you have
8 feodums in deck          < 21 silvers
7 feudums in deck          < 18 silvers
etc

[lespeutere]

I guess an obvious combo is Trader/Feodum.

I'm not thrilled about the idea of a deck filled with Ruins.  There must be a lot of trashing to counteract that.  Here's hoping!

Does it give you 7 silvers? Who really needs 7 silvers?

Someone with lots of feodums? ;-)
It's soo much fun, still got yesterday's post by someone in mind, saying "silvers just got worse" 

[werothegreat]

Be careful when you buy an Embassy with Feodum on the board.

[ashersky]

Ok, so the Ruined Lab variant is obvious: +1 Card
And, the ruined terminal Silver (no idea which one he'll pick) is going to be +$1.
The interesting question is: will the Ruined Village be +2 Actions or just +1 Action? I'm guessing +2 because outside of some Conspirator niche cases, an action that does nothing has no redeeming quality.

How about a Ruined Workshop?  Only gain a card costing up to 1...

[rinkworks]

I love that Ruined Market is what Donald X.'s first draft of the actual Market card was going to be, way back in the very beginning before he figured out what +1 Buy was worth.

[Robz888]

I wonder what the other "ruined" cards are going to be?

Ruined Village: +1 Action
Ruined Laboratory: +1 Card
Ruined Wodcutter: + $1

[pingpongsam]

I am confused about why it was necessary to put verbiage on the card explicitly giving me permission to play another Cultist. I suppose the real question is why would I think that i couldn't?

[ashersky]

I am confused about why it was necessary to put verbiage on the card explicitly giving me permission to play another Cultist. I suppose the real question is why would I think that i couldn't?

Without needing another action...so you can chain them if you play one and keep drawing them.

[Robz888]

I am confused about why it was necessary to put verbiage on the card explicitly giving me permission to play another Cultist. I suppose the real question is why would I think that i couldn't?

I think you have that wrong. You don't need another action to play another Cultist here--that's an ability of the card.

[Gansura]

EDIT: As the previous two posters posted the same answer as I did within less than a minute, I'm completely changing this post.

My guesses-
Ruined Smithy: +1 card
Ruined Woodcutter: +$1
Ruined Village: +1 action
Ruined Chapel: Trash a card. Gain a card with the same cost.

[jotheonah]

 Warning - while you were reading 11 new replies have been posted. You may wish to review your post.

Guys, am I wrong or is this the most apeshit expansion yet? I don't even.

[jsh357]

Ok, so the Ruined Lab variant is obvious: +1 Card
And, the ruined terminal Silver (no idea which one he'll pick) is going to be +$1.
The interesting question is: will the Ruined Village be +2 Actions or just +1 Action? I'm guessing +2 because outside of some Conspirator niche cases, an action that does nothing has no redeeming quality.

Yeah, I was wondering about that.  Maybe +2 Actions, -1VP; +2 Actions, -1 Coin; +2 Actions, discard 2 cards...

[pingpongsam]

I see, thanks for the clarification. 1 action is required to play the 1st Cultist but all subsequent cultists from the same turn consume no further actions, right?

[Grujah]

Open - Feodum/Chapel.

[theory]

To preempt an inevitable rules question: as far as I remember, Ruins are like Prizes when Ambassadored, in that they aren't "gained" or "returned" from the Supply in a normal sense.

[jotheonah]

can you say "Peddler enablers"?

[ashersky]

I see, thanks for the clarification. 1 action is required to play the 1st Cultist but all subsequent cultists from the same turn consume no further actions, right?

As long as they are played in a row, I believe.  I think once you played another action, you've "finished" the Cultists' orders and if you subsequently drew a Cultist, you'd need an action to play it.

[GendoIkari]

I wonder what the other "ruined" cards are going to be?

Ruined Village: +1 Action
Ruined Laboratory: +1 Card
Ruined Wodcutter: + $1

That would seem to be what Donald implied. But Ruined Village seems way worse than all the others. With Market and Woodcutter; you may find yourself glad you have that card in hand. With Laboratory, at least you can replace it with another card if you have an action lying around. But Ruined village is just as bad as a Curse/Estate (confusion card), unless you happen to have Horn of Plenty, Conspirator, or Peddler.

[Robz888]

Now, what everybody was really wondering--how do these cards combo with Scout? (That's all I care about.)

Feodum is a Victory card, and Scout works on Victory cards. Perfect! That's called synergy, people.
Cultist gives other players Ruins cards. Scout can't scoop up Ruins cards (not that we know of... yet). But Scout can't scoop up Curses either! So really it's no worse.
Ruined Market gives you another Buy. That way, you don't just buy Scout. You can buy something else, too.

[Schneau]

Looters and Ruins - the design space for fan cards just got much bigger!

[jotheonah]

SO you can actually buy ruins if you want, right? Like in a Goons or Garden deck? Could this make Goons-Scrying Pool viable?

 Ruins are Actions so they're much worse than curses in any of the following decks: Golem, Farming Village, Hunting Party (imagine having 5 different kinds of ruins thrown at your HP deck!)

[ashersky]

Looters and Ruins - the design space for fan cards just got much bigger!

Somebody tell Rinkworks.  His mini-set just got two new categories!

[Grujah]

Ruined Market gives you another Buy. That way, you don't just buy Scout. You can buy something else, too.

Like, you can buy a 2 Ruins INSTEAD of a scout.

[philosophyguy]

Looters and Ruins - the design space for fan cards just got much bigger!

Quick: add new cards to the contest set!

[jotheonah]

Like a lot of things that are designed to skip crappy cards skip non-actions. The addition of a crappy action is sort of a bummer.

[ashersky]

SO you can actually buy ruins if you want, right? Like in a Goons or Garden deck? Could this make Goons-Scrying Pool viable?

 Ruins are Actions so they're much worse than curses in any of the following decks: Golem, Farming Village, Hunting Party (imagine having 5 different kinds of ruins thrown at your HP deck!)

They cost 0, like curses, so I see them as a viable 3-pile option.  As actions, they are also Graverobber-able to a 3-cost action (or silver), which helps remove them.

[Qvist]

Cross-post:

Feodum
Combos with: Trader, obviously.
Ok, a straight forward one. But, how strong will it be? With Trader, an absolute powerhouse.
Bureaucrat and Explorer might also work very well with it. With Ironworks/Workshop the rush may also work.
Although three-piling is generally very hard here. Not so strong as Gardens or Silk Road at first glance.
Then there's the on-trash benefit. So, let's say I have 5 3-points Feodums(?) with 9 silver and trash one. Now I have 4 4-point Feodums, 1-point more and better economy. So, I want to trash them if I have more Feodums than they are worth right?
Maybe you even don't want to 3-pile. Just get Feodums and Silver and then Provinces. I'm not sure.

Cultist
Obviusly very strong. The main action is like a worse Witch, but there's also the not-colliding and on-trash benefit.
The not-colliding bonus is very strong, but I'm not so sure about the on-trash benefit.
That could lead to some strange combos. I buy a Farmland, trash a Cultist and draw 3 cards which I cannot play anymore.
Or: Opponent plays Bishop, I trash Cultist and 3 cards. Then opponent plays Militia: Nooooo!
And: With Familiar (or any other Curser) and Cultist on the board, this will be madness!

Ruined Market
Not much to say about this card per se. Of course it's bad. A few words about this concept. I'm still not sure if I like it because it can be very swingy depending how the other Ruins will look like. +1 Card, +1$, +1Action probably.

[Cuzz]

Wow. Yesterday's cards were new and interesting, but still felt like basic Dominion. Sage could have fit in with several other expansions.

These new ones on the other hand are straight up nuts. A pile of not-curses shuffled together? A triple-type attack that you can chain together forever, dishing out non-curses all the way? A silver pinata that counts silvers? (ok, that's not too crazy but still will totally warp a ton of games).

I'm excited.

[Gansura]

To preempt an inevitable rules question: as far as I remember, Ruins are like Prizes when Ambassadored, in that they aren't "gained" or "returned" from the Supply in a normal sense.

Why wouldn't they be treated like curses? That makes more sense to me than treating them like prizes. They are in the supply and can be bought unlike prizes.

[ehunt]

Thoughts on feodum, in order:

1. How do you pronounce feodum?
 
2. Bureaucrat got buffed!

3. What the hell is a feodum?

4. That's going to be so much fun.

[Tdog]

Ok, so the Ruined Lab variant is obvious: +1 Card
And, the ruined terminal Silver (no idea which one he'll pick) is going to be +$1.
The interesting question is: will the Ruined Village be +2 Actions or just +1 Action? I'm guessing +2 because outside of some Conspirator niche cases, an action that does nothing has no redeeming quality.

+1 card has no redeeming qualities, either.

[jotheonah]

Thoughts on feodum, in order:

1. How do you pronounce feodum?
 
2. Bureaucrat got buffed!

3. What the hell is a feodum?

4. That's going to be so much fun.

Yeah, Feodum is def. my fav so far.

[GendoIkari]

Ok, so the Ruined Lab variant is obvious: +1 Card
And, the ruined terminal Silver (no idea which one he'll pick) is going to be +$1.
The interesting question is: will the Ruined Village be +2 Actions or just +1 Action? I'm guessing +2 because outside of some Conspirator niche cases, an action that does nothing has no redeeming quality.

+1 card has no redeeming qualities, either.

Sure it does. As long as you have an action to spare, you can play it; and the result is as if it had never been in your deck in the first place.

[ehunt]

To preempt an inevitable rules question: as far as I remember, Ruins are like Prizes when Ambassadored, in that they aren't "gained" or "returned" from the Supply in a normal sense.

Why wouldn't they be treated like curses? That makes more sense to me than treating them like prizes. They are in the supply and can be bought unlike prizes.

But the ruin on top may not match the one being ambassadored.

[theory]

To preempt an inevitable rules question: as far as I remember, Ruins are like Prizes when Ambassadored, in that they aren't "gained" or "returned" from the Supply in a normal sense.

Why wouldn't they be treated like curses? That makes more sense to me than treating them like prizes. They are in the supply and can be bought unlike prizes.

I'm not totally sure, and the FAQ obviously elaborates more on the issue, but it's because all the Ruins are in a single stack, and randomized.  You don't necessarily give out Ruined Markets or Ruined ___ or Ruined ___, you just give out whatever is on top.

[Tdog]

Ruined Market gives you another Buy. That way, you don't just buy Scout. You can buy something else, too.

Like, you can buy a 2 Ruins INSTEAD of a scout.

That would just be silly. Why wouldn't you want a scout?

[jotheonah]

I like how you can trust the letter but not the spirit of Donald X's proclamations.

Like he's been saying forever "I'll never make another Curse-typed card" And I'm sure he won't BUT these are basically curse variants, they just have a new type.  This expansion is full of things we thought we would never see.

[Tdog]

Feodum is "the estate or domain of a feudal lord"

[Qvist]

To preempt an inevitable rules question: as far as I remember, Ruins are like Prizes when Ambassadored, in that they aren't "gained" or "returned" from the Supply in a normal sense.

Prizes say "This is not in the supply." So Ruins will work just like Curses, I think.

[jsh357]

Man, so Poor House hurt Upgrade, but Cultist may just be its new best friend.  Sorry, IGG.

[Kuildeous]

Ok, so the Ruined Lab variant is obvious: +1 Card
And, the ruined terminal Silver (no idea which one he'll pick) is going to be +$1.
The interesting question is: will the Ruined Village be +2 Actions or just +1 Action? I'm guessing +2 because outside of some Conspirator niche cases, an action that does nothing has no redeeming quality.

+1 card has no redeeming qualities, either.

It could be Throne Roomed or King's Courted.

But you obviously drew a crappy hand if that's a viable option for you.

[sitnaltax]

OK, simulators. In the Jack/Feodum deck, do you want one or two Jacks before you start on the Feodums?

[Qvist]

3. What the hell is a feodum?

I didn't know either and had to look it up. I think I know now what it is and I think an English equivalent is "fiefdom".

[Tdog]

Ok, so the Ruined Lab variant is obvious: +1 Card
And, the ruined terminal Silver (no idea which one he'll pick) is going to be +$1.
The interesting question is: will the Ruined Village be +2 Actions or just +1 Action? I'm guessing +2 because outside of some Conspirator niche cases, an action that does nothing has no redeeming quality.

+1 card has no redeeming qualities, either.

It could be Throne Roomed or King's Courted.

But you obviously drew a crappy hand if that's a viable option for you.

So can +1 action, KC turns it into a village minus the draw

[Davio]

Cultist + an opponent's Governor = 3 cards out of turn + Gold/Grand Market/whatever. 

[werothegreat]

Apprentice->Cultist->Graverobber

[Gansura]

I'm not totally sure, and the FAQ obviously elaborates more on the issue, but it's because all the Ruins are in a single stack, and randomized.  You don't necessarily give out Ruined Markets or Ruined ___ or Ruined ___, you just give out whatever is on top.

I think it would just be easier to say, you give them out left to right, and though you can't return two different types of ruins to the supply, the other players will likely get different types from the supply. I'm curious to see the FAQ but I'm also interested in the reasoning behind it either way.

[ashersky]

So would you buy a Ruined Market if there's no other +Buy in the kingdom?  Assuming it was the one on top, you'd have to overspend for it.

On the flip side, if the ruins pile is out, so is a Looter, so you'll probably get one whether you want it or not.  But given shuffle luck, maybe you just keep getting Ruined Scouts instead and you really need that buy...

I could see it happening.

[jotheonah]

What could the weird one be?

Ruined Monument - +.1 VP
Ruined Gardens - Worth one VP for every 30 cards in your deck.
Ruined Golem - Play one action from your deck
Ruined Library - Draw up to five cards in hand
Ruined Militia - Opponent discards down to five cards in hand
Ruined Pawn - Choose 1: +1 Buy
Ruined Island - 1 VP. You may set this aside with another card, but they will NOT be returned to your deck at the end of the game.

[GendoIkari]

Answer to the Ruins / Ambassador question, from Donald:

The Ruins pile, when present, is a supply pile. You can only buy/Workshop/etc. the top card. If it's empty that counts towards game end.

You can only Ambassador two Ruins at once if they have the same name. When you Ambassador a Ruined Market, you return it to the top of the pile. Then the player to your left gains one. Then the player to their left may or may not gain one, depending on whether or not the next Ruins is a Ruined Market.

[Julle]

Cultist is also a mild counter against trashing attacks. Also, now you can buy silver, put it top on your deck with watchtower, buy cultist, trash it with watchtower and draw the silver you just bought. Not useful at all though.

[ashersky]

What could the weird one be?

Ruined Monument - +.1 VP
Ruined Gardens - Worth one VP for every 30 cards in your deck.
Ruined Golem - Play one action from your deck
Ruined Library - Draw up to five cards in hand
Ruined Militia - Opponent discards down to five cards in hand
Ruined Pawn - Choose 1: +1 Buy
Ruined Island - 1 VP. You may set this aside with another card, but they will NOT be returned to your deck at the end of the game.

This game deserves its own thread, with a prize for the right guess.

[Davio]

I think it has to make sense word wise.

How does one ruin an Island? Other than the Dharma guys fom Lost I find it hard.
And how do you ruin a Pawn?!?

[Julle]

What could the weird one be?

Ruined Monument - +.1 VP
Ruined Gardens - Worth one VP for every 30 cards in your deck.
Ruined Golem - Play one action from your deck
Ruined Library - Draw up to five cards in hand
Ruined Militia - Opponent discards down to five cards in hand
Ruined Pawn - Choose 1: +1 Buy
Ruined Island - 1 VP. You may set this aside with another card, but they will NOT be returned to your deck at the end of the game.

This game deserves its own thread, with a prize for the right guess.

Ruined Chancellor: You may put your hand into the discard pile.

[carstimon]

Ok, so the Ruined Lab variant is obvious: +1 Card
And, the ruined terminal Silver (no idea which one he'll pick) is going to be +$1.
The interesting question is: will the Ruined Village be +2 Actions or just +1 Action? I'm guessing +2 because outside of some Conspirator niche cases, an action that does nothing has no redeeming quality.

+1 card has no redeeming qualities, either.

Well there's a difference.  Ignore KC, TR, conspirator, HoP, peddler, etc.  Then there's no reason to play the +action.  There's no detriment.
Sometimes, however, you do want to play the +1 card.

[GendoIkari]

What could the weird one be?

Ruined Monument - +.1 VP
Ruined Gardens - Worth one VP for every 30 cards in your deck.
Ruined Golem - Play one action from your deck
Ruined Library - Draw up to five cards in hand
Ruined Militia - Opponent discards down to five cards in hand
Ruined Pawn - Choose 1: +1 Buy
Ruined Island - 1 VP. You may set this aside with another card, but they will NOT be returned to your deck at the end of the game.

This game deserves its own thread, with a prize for the right guess.

Ruined Scout: +1 Action. Reveal the top 4 cards of your deck. Put any victory cards revealed into your hand, and put the rest on top of your deck, in any order.

[Tdog]

What could the weird one be?

Ruined Monument - +.1 VP
Ruined Gardens - Worth one VP for every 30 cards in your deck.
Ruined Golem - Play one action from your deck
Ruined Library - Draw up to five cards in hand
Ruined Militia - Opponent discards down to five cards in hand
Ruined Pawn - Choose 1: +1 Buy
Ruined Island - 1 VP. You may set this aside with another card, but they will NOT be returned to your deck at the end of the game.

I think all the ruins will be from the base set, in case you buy dominion and
 then dark ages. "I know what a market is, but what the heck is this newfangled monument?

[ashersky]

I think it has to make sense word wise.

How does one ruin an Island? Other than the Dharma guys fom Lost I find it hard.
And how do you ruin a Pawn?!?

I also think they will all be base set cards.

Ruined Moat could be the +1 card.  When another player plays an Attack card, you may reveal this from your hand. If you do, you are still affected by that Attack.

[jotheonah]

I ruined a Pawn once. They made me buy the whole chess set. True story.

[carstimon]

So would you buy a Ruined Market if there's no other +Buy in the kingdom?  Assuming it was the one on top, you'd have to overspend for it.

On the flip side, if the ruins pile is out, so is a Looter, so you'll probably get one whether you want it or not.  But given shuffle luck, maybe you just keep getting Ruined Scouts instead and you really need that buy...

I could see it happening.

There are times I've bought council room when I could draw my deck, just for the +buy.  And that's worse than ruined market.  So yes.

[Gansura]

What could the weird one be?

Ruined Monument - +.1 VP
Ruined Gardens - Worth one VP for every 30 cards in your deck.
Ruined Golem - Play one action from your deck
Ruined Library - Draw up to five cards in hand
Ruined Militia - Opponent discards down to five cards in hand
Ruined Pawn - Choose 1: +1 Buy
Ruined Island - 1 VP. You may set this aside with another card, but they will NOT be returned to your deck at the end of the game.

This game deserves its own thread, with a prize for the right guess.

Ruined Chancellor: You may put your hand into the discard pile.

Rethinking my earlier guess -
Ruined Chapel: Trash a card from your hand. Gain a card of equal cost that is not a treasure.

But I like ruined Chancellor, if just for the potential artwork.

[jotheonah]

Ruined Chapel is an actual possibility. Just "Trash a card from your hand"

Have you guys thought about the fact that cards with a Trash clause on the bottom could potentially turn up in sets with no trasher?

[ashersky]

What could the weird one be?

Ruined Monument - +.1 VP
Ruined Gardens - Worth one VP for every 30 cards in your deck.
Ruined Golem - Play one action from your deck
Ruined Library - Draw up to five cards in hand
Ruined Militia - Opponent discards down to five cards in hand
Ruined Pawn - Choose 1: +1 Buy
Ruined Island - 1 VP. You may set this aside with another card, but they will NOT be returned to your deck at the end of the game.

This game deserves its own thread, with a prize for the right guess.

Ruined Chancellor: You may put your hand into the discard pile.

Rethinking my earlier guess -
Ruined Chapel: Trash a card from your hand. Gain a card of equal cost that is not a treasure.

But I like ruined Chancellor, if just for the potential artwork.

I see Ruined Moneylender: Trash a Gold from your hand.  If you do, +$1.

[GendoIkari]

Have you guys thought about the fact that cards with a Trash clause on the bottom could potentially turn up in sets with no trasher?

This has been discussed a good bit at BGG... But it's no different than Tunnel showing up in a set with no discarder.

[Davio]

Ruined Harems, an empty building.

Who took ma girlzzz!?!?

[Robz888]

Oh, Feodum and Trusty Steed.

[Cuzz]

What could the weird one be?

Ruined Monument - +.1 VP
Ruined Gardens - Worth one VP for every 30 cards in your deck.
Ruined Golem - Play one action from your deck
Ruined Library - Draw up to five cards in hand
Ruined Militia - Opponent discards down to five cards in hand
Ruined Pawn - Choose 1: +1 Buy
Ruined Island - 1 VP. You may set this aside with another card, but they will NOT be returned to your deck at the end of the game.

This game deserves its own thread, with a prize for the right guess.

Ruined Chancellor: You may put your hand into the discard pile.

I laughed out loud for a while at this.   

[ashersky]

Oh, Feodum and Trusty Steed.

And the long-awaited buff to Explorer.

[bedlam]

What could the weird one be?

Ruined Monument - +.1 VP
Ruined Gardens - Worth one VP for every 30 cards in your deck.
Ruined Golem - Play one action from your deck
Ruined Library - Draw up to five cards in hand
Ruined Militia - Opponent discards down to five cards in hand
Ruined Pawn - Choose 1: +1 Buy
Ruined Island - 1 VP. You may set this aside with another card, but they will NOT be returned to your deck at the end of the game.

This game deserves its own thread, with a prize for the right guess.

Ruined Chancellor: You may put your hand into the discard pile.

Ruined Chapel: Return the last card you trashed to your deck

[Cuzz]

Ok, so the Ruined Lab variant is obvious: +1 Card
And, the ruined terminal Silver (no idea which one he'll pick) is going to be +$1.
The interesting question is: will the Ruined Village be +2 Actions or just +1 Action? I'm guessing +2 because outside of some Conspirator niche cases, an action that does nothing has no redeeming quality.

+1 card has no redeeming qualities, either.

Well there's a difference.  Ignore KC, TR, conspirator, HoP, peddler, etc.  Then there's no reason to play the +action.  There's no detriment.
Sometimes, however, you do want to play the +1 card.

Don't forget library and watchtower.

[Qvist]

How about opening Trader/Embargo, embargoing the Feoda (I just looked up the plural), picking up more Traders and then get a free Silver on most Feoda buys?

[chwhite]

What could the weird one be?

Ruined Monument - +.1 VP
Ruined Gardens - Worth one VP for every 30 cards in your deck.
Ruined Golem - Play one action from your deck
Ruined Library - Draw up to five cards in hand
Ruined Militia - Opponent discards down to five cards in hand
Ruined Pawn - Choose 1: +1 Buy
Ruined Island - 1 VP. You may set this aside with another card, but they will NOT be returned to your deck at the end of the game.

This game deserves its own thread, with a prize for the right guess.

Ruined Chancellor: You may put your hand into the discard pile.

I could see Ruined Chancellor being the "+$1" Ruin, actually.

Ruined Chapel- "Trash a card from your hand", is probably too good to be a Ruin, but I wouldn't rule it out entirely.
Ruined Bureaucrat- "Gain a Copper, putting it on your deck."
Ruined Feast- "Trash this card."

Thirding or fourthing the sentiment that all the Ruins will be taken from base set cards.

(EDIT:  "Warning.  11 new replies have been made."  Yikes.)

[jotheonah]

A free Silver? You want to buy the Feoda first, then Embargo the Silver pile 10 times, and then somehow get like $9 and 3 buys with Trader in hand.  Not exactly practical, but definitely awesome.

[Glooble]

Ruined Tactician

Discard your hand.

[jotheonah]

Oh, Feodum and Trusty Steed.

And the long-awaited buff to Explorer.

A situation where you would choose NOT to reveal a Province?

[Davio]

Ruined Ghost Ship: For art, see Ghost Ship.

[Glooble]

oh, and Ruined Tournament is how you get the booby prizes, like Pony and Bag of Copper.

[DStu]

And the long-awaited buff to Explorer.

I don't see this as being a real buff to the Silver gainers, as Silver gainers are already pretty good for many alternative victory strategies, like in non-rush Gardens, SR, Duke.  I don't expect this to peak much higher than these three.
So we have another victory card where a medium treasure strategy is viable, and this time Silver is explicitly named, but more or less every set (or at least every second) has such a card.

[Robz888]

So, Cultist looks really strong. Really, it's a Laboratory with a bunch of other benefits, including a Curse variant attack. It's a Laboratory because you can keep playing copies of it (provided you have them, sort of like Lab), which is easier because it's drawing cards. It's not completely equivalent to Lab, because you can't play any other Actions, but then it has the benefit of giving your opponents these mostly useless cards. Oh, and you can trash it for a nice pay off.

[Polk5440]

Ruinses, it turns out, are a pile of cards like Curses, with three ways to get them, besides just buying them or something. They only show up in games with a Looter, which is a word you may have been wondering about on Cultist. There are five different ones (ten copies each) and they’re shuffled together, I’m not making this up.

Actually, I was under the impression that Donald DID, in fact, make this game up. 

As with Curses you only use ten total per opponent. Not two of each per opponent, just whatever random mix you got. So when you play Cultist, your opponent will get one of these five cards. You will know which one is on top of the Ruins pile, but not what’s under it. You won’t really care; even though some are worse than others, they’re all bad.

So that's why Dark Ages is such a large expansion! It's stuffed full of junk....

[jotheonah]

CUltist-Conspirator seems like a thing. Or Cultist-Minion. Of course Ruins kinda trash Minion decks.

[GendoIkari]

Oh, Feodum and Trusty Steed.

And the long-awaited buff to Explorer.

A situation where you would choose NOT to reveal a Province?

There already were situations though. Fairgrounds and Horn of Plenty come to mind for the simple ones. For more convoluted ones... Forge, Upgrade, and Governor you might really need a Silver in hand instead of a Gold. There might only be 1 Gold left and you are losing. There might only be 1 Silver left and you are winning. There might be 0 Golds left and you want to gain something. There might be some kind of fear of Thief/Noble Brigand/Jester. Ok, I'm done.

[bedlam]

oh, and Ruined Tournament is how you get the booby prizes, like Pony and Bag of Copper.

Ruined Potion: Snape glares at you silently for 5 minutes   

[Davio]

You have to be careful with Cultist as you can't really mix them with other cantrips.

Draw a Lab off a Cultist and you're dead.

[rinkworks]

Ok, so the Ruined Lab variant is obvious: +1 Card
And, the ruined terminal Silver (no idea which one he'll pick) is going to be +$1.
The interesting question is: will the Ruined Village be +2 Actions or just +1 Action? I'm guessing +2 because outside of some Conspirator niche cases, an action that does nothing has no redeeming quality.

+1 card has no redeeming qualities, either.

Well there's a difference.  Ignore KC, TR, conspirator, HoP, peddler, etc.  Then there's no reason to play the +action.  There's no detriment.
Sometimes, however, you do want to play the +1 card.

I think the distinction is that "+1 Buy" enables you to get some benefit out of having the card in your deck, however niche a situation it might be when you want it.  But "+1 Card" (combos with specific other cards aside) only ever gives you what you would have had if you hadn't had it in the first place, so it doesn't really help.

+1 Card - Eats your action.
+1 Action - Eats a card slot.
+1 Buy - Gives you +Buy!  Now I can get two Provinces!
+$1 - Gives you a coin!  Now I can afford one Province!

Now, nothing says that all the Ruins cards have to be potentially useful, nor that they need to be roughly equivalent in strength.  But there IS a fundamental difference between the first two, which require combos to do anything for you, and the last two, which are simply meager benefits.

[Gansura]

What could the weird one be?

Ruined Monument - +.1 VP
Ruined Gardens - Worth one VP for every 30 cards in your deck.
Ruined Golem - Play one action from your deck
Ruined Library - Draw up to five cards in hand
Ruined Militia - Opponent discards down to five cards in hand
Ruined Pawn - Choose 1: +1 Buy
Ruined Island - 1 VP. You may set this aside with another card, but they will NOT be returned to your deck at the end of the game.

This game deserves its own thread, with a prize for the right guess.

Ruined Chancellor: You may put your hand into the discard pile.

I could see Ruined Chancellor being the "+$1" Ruin, actually.

Ruined Chapel- "Trash a card from your hand", is probably too good to be a Ruin, but I wouldn't rule it out entirely.
Ruined Bureaucrat- "Gain a Copper, putting it on your deck."
Ruined Feast- "Trash this card."

Thirding or fourthing the sentiment that all the Ruins will be taken from base set cards.

(EDIT:  "Warning.  11 new replies have been made."  Yikes.)

Bureaucrats are already ruined. I know; I live in DC.

Ruined Cellar: Discard a card.

[ashersky]

A free Silver? You want to buy the Feoda first, then Embargo the Silver pile 10 times, and then somehow get like $9 and 3 buys with Trader in hand.  Not exactly practical, but definitely awesome.

So what's the fastest way to empty Feoda and silvers?  How many turns does it take in solitaire?  Sounds like a solo challenge!  You could use Gardens as a stand-in on Iso.

[Schneau]

So, Cultist looks really strong. Really, it's a Laboratory with a bunch of other benefits, including a Curse variant attack. It's a Laboratory because you can keep playing copies of it (provided you have them, sort of like Lab), which is easier because it's drawing cards. It's not completely equivalent to Lab, because you can't play any other Actions, but then it has the benefit of giving your opponents these mostly useless cards. Oh, and you can trash it for a nice pay off.

Interesting. I was thinking it looks more like an altered Witch than Laboratory. I think it will be hard to get a bunch of Cultists in one deck, especially if your opponents also get them and give out Ruins. I think the Lab-like effect will be pretty minimal in most games. But, it's +2 Cards and give out Ruins is a lot like Witch, with the bonuses of being able to play Cultists without actions and on-trash benefits showing how much weaker giving Ruins are than giving Curses.

[shraeye]

Yes! KC-Cultist means that you are three times allowed to play another Cultist (no, not allowed to play three times, I see that).  That's a really flippin' allowed choice

Outside of Feoda being an awesome word, Donald has verified that the plural of Ruins is Ruinses.  Brilliant.

[GendoIkari]

Yes! KC-Cultist means that you are three times allowed to play another Cultist (no, not allowed to play three times, I see that).  That's a really flippin' allowed choice

Outside of Feoda being an awesome word, Donald has verified that the plural of Ruins is Ruinses.  Brilliant.

Looking forward to all the threads on the rules forum of newbies asking if when you KC a Cultist, if you get to draw 6 cards and then play another Cultist 3 times.

[bedlam]

CUltist-Conspirator seems like a thing. Or Cultist-Minion. Of course Ruins kinda trash Minion decks.

Cultist-conspirator... Your conspirator would already be activated because you would have to play a village first in order to play both cultist and conspirator

[Robz888]

Yes! KC-Cultist means that you are three times allowed to play another Cultist (no, not allowed to play three times, I see that).  That's a really flippin' allowed choice

Outside of Feoda being an awesome word, Donald has verified that the plural of Ruins is Ruinses.  Brilliant.

Nasty Ruinses, they took our precious.

[Robz888]

So, Cultist looks really strong. Really, it's a Laboratory with a bunch of other benefits, including a Curse variant attack. It's a Laboratory because you can keep playing copies of it (provided you have them, sort of like Lab), which is easier because it's drawing cards. It's not completely equivalent to Lab, because you can't play any other Actions, but then it has the benefit of giving your opponents these mostly useless cards. Oh, and you can trash it for a nice pay off.

Interesting. I was thinking it looks more like an altered Witch than Laboratory. I think it will be hard to get a bunch of Cultists in one deck, especially if your opponents also get them and give out Ruins. I think the Lab-like effect will be pretty minimal in most games. But, it's +2 Cards and give out Ruins is a lot like Witch, with the bonuses of being able to play Cultists without actions and on-trash benefits showing how much weaker giving Ruins are than giving Curses.

It's kind of both, which is why I think it's so strong. I mean, imagine if Witch let you play another Witch if you had one it hand. That would be a significant buff to an already super powerful card, right? Well, Cultist isn't giving out Curses, but it's giving out junk, and you trash it for +3 Cards if you want. Pretty strong!

[ashersky]

So, Cultist looks really strong. Really, it's a Laboratory with a bunch of other benefits, including a Curse variant attack. It's a Laboratory because you can keep playing copies of it (provided you have them, sort of like Lab), which is easier because it's drawing cards. It's not completely equivalent to Lab, because you can't play any other Actions, but then it has the benefit of giving your opponents these mostly useless cards. Oh, and you can trash it for a nice pay off.

Interesting. I was thinking it looks more like an altered Witch than Laboratory. I think it will be hard to get a bunch of Cultists in one deck, especially if your opponents also get them and give out Ruins. I think the Lab-like effect will be pretty minimal in most games. But, it's +2 Cards and give out Ruins is a lot like Witch, with the bonuses of being able to play Cultists without actions and on-trash benefits showing how much weaker giving Ruins are than giving Curses.

It's kind of both, which is why I think it's so strong. I mean, imagine if Witch let you play another Witch if you had one it hand. That would be a significant buff to an already super powerful card, right? Well, Cultist isn't giving out Curses, but it's giving out junk, and you trash it for +3 Cards if you want. Pretty strong!

Cultist as your card drawer is stronger than Witch, too, right?  The chance that, the more Cultists you have, the better chance you could draw +4/6/8... cards on one "play" seems to help in all sorts of decks.

[shraeye]

Also! I noticed that Donald basically said that there were 3 looter cards in Dark Ages.  Yay.

[carstimon]

So, Cultist looks really strong. Really, it's a Laboratory with a bunch of other benefits, including a Curse variant attack. It's a Laboratory because you can keep playing copies of it (provided you have them, sort of like Lab), which is easier because it's drawing cards. It's not completely equivalent to Lab, because you can't play any other Actions, but then it has the benefit of giving your opponents these mostly useless cards. Oh, and you can trash it for a nice pay off.

Yeah, but I don't see this being that viable, usually.  By the time you're chaining at least 3 in one play, or by the time you're pretty much guaranteed to get 2 in one play, ruinses are gonna be gone.  Especially considering you're going to be getting ruinses as well.  And then they're just worse labs, except for the trashing bit.

It seems like you need such a good cultist density.  Maybe if the board had chapel/university.

[Gansura]

Also! I noticed that Donald basically said that there were 3 looter cards in Dark Ages.  Yay.

Could there be non-attack looters? Such as:

Type: Victory-Looter
$5
+4VP
When you buy this gain a ruins.

[Robz888]

So, Cultist looks really strong. Really, it's a Laboratory with a bunch of other benefits, including a Curse variant attack. It's a Laboratory because you can keep playing copies of it (provided you have them, sort of like Lab), which is easier because it's drawing cards. It's not completely equivalent to Lab, because you can't play any other Actions, but then it has the benefit of giving your opponents these mostly useless cards. Oh, and you can trash it for a nice pay off.

Yeah, but I don't see this being that viable, usually.  By the time you're chaining at least 3 in one play, or by the time you're pretty much guaranteed to get 2 in one play, ruinses are gonna be gone.  Especially considering you're going to be getting ruinses as well.  And then they're just worse labs, except for the trashing bit.

It seems like you need such a good cultist density.  Maybe if the board had chapel/university.

Sure, but if you do get that density quickly, probably with a nice early trasher or something, the snowball effect is going to be so huge.

[ashersky]

Also! I noticed that Donald basically said that there were 3 looter cards in Dark Ages.  Yay.

Could there be non-attack looters? Such as:

Type: Victory-Looter
$5
+4VP
When you buy this gain a ruins.

That would be interesting, but after the Ruins pile is empty, it's a pretty cheap source of VP.

[Kuildeous]

I kind of wish that Ruins cost $1…just to really jack with Upgrade and Remake.

[Robz888]

I kind of wish that Ruins cost $1…just to really jack with Upgrade and Remake.

I don't think Upgrade could handle much more punishment!

[GendoIkari]

So, Cultist looks really strong. Really, it's a Laboratory with a bunch of other benefits, including a Curse variant attack. It's a Laboratory because you can keep playing copies of it (provided you have them, sort of like Lab), which is easier because it's drawing cards. It's not completely equivalent to Lab, because you can't play any other Actions, but then it has the benefit of giving your opponents these mostly useless cards. Oh, and you can trash it for a nice pay off.

Yeah, but I don't see this being that viable, usually.  By the time you're chaining at least 3 in one play, or by the time you're pretty much guaranteed to get 2 in one play, ruinses are gonna be gone.  Especially considering you're going to be getting ruinses as well.  And then they're just worse labs, except for the trashing bit.

It seems like you need such a good cultist density.  Maybe if the board had chapel/university.

Sure, but if you do get that density quickly, probably with a nice early trasher or something, the snowball effect is going to be so huge.

Prediction: Cultists are going to be pretty decent, but not to the level of Witch or Mountebank. Probably somewhere around #6 in the best $5 cards list.

[Kuildeous]

The neat trick that Donald did with Ruins (and I do not believe this was a coincidence) is that there are just enough cards to fuel a 6-player game.

[Schneau]

Prediction: Cultists are going to be pretty decent, but not to the level of Witch or Mountebank. Probably somewhere around #6 in the best $5 cards list.

Prediction: Cultist won't be in the top 10 of the best $5 cards, but probably the top 20.

[Varsinor]

I really like both the Feodum and the concept of Ruins!

I like how Feodum provides another strong alternate VP strategy by comboing with the silver gaining cards. I mean, it's not as if Jack needed any help to be strong, but Explorer did!

Let's see, what else is there that can gain lots of Silver. Off the top of my head:

Jack
Explorer
Trader
Bureaucrat
Trusty Steed
Ironworks
Workshop

And I guess there might be at least one other in Dark Ages itself.

Looks like a long enough list to be able to combo Feodum with one of them often enough! (Well, it might even turn out that it is dominant too often, but I am hopeful that it will not.)

[AJD]

Answer to the Ruins / Ambassador question, from Donald:

The Ruins pile, when present, is a supply pile. You can only buy/Workshop/etc. the top card. If it's empty that counts towards game end.

You can only Ambassador two Ruins at once if they have the same name. When you Ambassador a Ruined Market, you return it to the top of the pile. Then the player to your left gains one. Then the player to their left may or may not gain one, depending on whether or not the next Ruins is a Ruined Market.

Okay, so that answers the similar question about Jester: if Jester hits a Ruins, it only has an effect if the next Ruins on the stack is the same one.

[Voltgloss]

Don't have time to read the whole thread, so apologies if this was already brought up, but:

With Feodum around, will we get a rule clarification on whether Silvers (and, by extension, other money cards) are a pile that can/cannot be emptied?

[Qvist]

Another random thought: I think Feoda might be a great defense against Governor.

[Varsinor]

OK, simulators. In the Jack/Feodum deck, do you want one or two Jacks before you start on the Feodums?

Definitely at least 2. I'd guess more like 3 - or even more as long as the opponent doesn't start going for the Feodums.
Although it is well possible that one wants to go primarily for Provinces in a Jack game anyway. But in that case you'll want at least 2 Jacks as well (maybe 3 in contrast to the normal DoubleJack strategy in order to gain more points off late game Feodums).

[Insomniac]

Rules question! I play village cultist cultist. Do I have an action available to me? The ways I see it are

1)No you played 2 actions.
2) Yes village gave you 2 you played a cultist for one and as part of cultists resolution you got to play another

[Grujah]

2.

[Powerman]

JoaT + Feodum + Graverobber =

[Robz888]

Rules question! I play village cultist cultist. Do I have an action available to me? The ways I see it are

1)No you played 2 actions.
2) Yes village gave you 2 you played a cultist for one and as part of cultists resolution you got to play another

2)

Yes, you have an action. You did not spend an action to play the second Cultist.

[Gansura]

Don't have time to read the whole thread, so apologies if this was already brought up, but:

With Feodum around, will we get a rule clarification on whether Silvers (and, by extension, other money cards) are a pile that can/cannot be emptied?

Treasure card piles can be emptied and count toward the end condition. See, for example, http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=2728.msg44273#msg44273.

[GendoIkari]

Don't have time to read the whole thread, so apologies if this was already brought up, but:

With Feodum around, will we get a rule clarification on whether Silvers (and, by extension, other money cards) are a pile that can/cannot be emptied?

This is clarified in the rules for the Base set of Dominion; Treasures have always counted as a pile that can be emptied, just like every other supply pile.

[joel88s]

Yes! KC-Cultist means that you are three times allowed to play another Cultist (no, not allowed to play three times, I see that).  That's a really flippin' allowed choice

Outside of Feoda being an awesome word, Donald has verified that the plural of Ruins is Ruinses.  Brilliant.

Verified I assume meaning declared, the idea being that Ruins as the name of a card is construed as singular.
By the same logic you could say that you played four Goonses in a turn. (Do we say that?)
I suppose the distinction could be that there are different types of Ruins cards, thus a need to refer to the various types collectively as Ruinses - sort of like the cactuses/cacti thing.

[GendoIkari]

Rules question! I play village cultist cultist. Do I have an action available to me? The ways I see it are

1)No you played 2 actions.
2) Yes village gave you 2 you played a cultist for one and as part of cultists resolution you got to play another

2)

Yes, you have an action. You did not spend an action to play the second Cultist.

Pedantic man is here!

It depends on how you choose to play it. When you play the first Cultist, you now have the option to play another Cultist, as a part of resolving the first Cultist. If you do, then afterwards you will still have an action remaining from your Village. But, you could also choose to not play the Cultist as a part of the "you may" clause, and then play a Cultist because you have an extra action from Village. In other words, simply saying "I play Village, Cultist, Cultist" is not enough information to know if you have another action.

[werothegreat]

Curious - in the box, will there be separate slots for each Ruins pile, or will they all be shoved into one pile?

[rinkworks]

Prediction: Cultists are going to be pretty decent, but not to the level of Witch or Mountebank. Probably somewhere around #6 in the best $5 cards list.

Prediction: Cultist won't be in the top 10 of the best $5 cards, but probably the top 20.

Prediction:  Ruined Market won't be in the top 5 $0 cards but probably somewhere in the top 10.

[chwhite]

Crossposted from the other prediction thread:


Feodum: Ew.  Ew ew ew ew ew ew.  I really don't like that this card exists in this form at ALL.  I mean, sure of course there has to be a Treasure-counting alt VP card, but Silver-only still doesn't sit right with me even after Donald's explanation.  He excluded Copper because it would be too similar to Gardens, but Silk Road already plays very similar to Gardens anyway, so since when is that a disqualifying factor?  And I don't see why Kingdom Treasures need to be excluded, you don't always want them.  (Heck, sometimes I don't want Gold.)

As for the pinata ability, it's a double-edged sword.  Trashing Feodum for benefit for the Silvers and not actually going Feodum is, I suspect, going to be pretty slow and not necessarily better than just buying Silver to begin with.  C.f. Treasure Map, which is a bad card that gets you four golds when you line it up: and lining up Feodum/Trasher is easier, but the immediate benefits are far lower, too.  If you trash Feodum to get Silvers to feed your other Feodums, that's a tough tradeoff too.  What it does do, however, and I am frustrated just thinking about it, is throw a kick in the teeth of denial strategies.  For example, Bishop is a great Gardens counter, but if you're going for a slim Bishop deck you may not be as able to just blithely buy and trash Feodums.

Obviously, it's going to be great with Silver-gainers like B-crat and Explorer; I suspect a Jack deck will still just want to go Province anyway, though I could see it possibly grabbing Feodums over Duchy in the endgame.  In general this is a card that is going to be ill-suited to rush strategies, and instead feature mostly as cheap Duchies in silver-flood decks that get most of their points from Province.  I can also predict with confidence that I'm going to hate this card.

Cultist: I don't see how this can be anything but super strong.  While Ruins don't hurt nearly as much as Curse, a self-chainable junk-giving card that can find itself, and then gives you a bonus late-game when the Ruins are depleted, is going to dominate games nearly as much as Witch.  (This is because the fact Curse being a dead card is usually even more harmful than the -1 VP.)  I suspect chaining Cultists is going to be not very common in practice, because if all the players go Cultist like they probably should your deck is going to get junked up and it'll be hard to line them up often.  The when-trash bonus, however, is going to be really nice in games with trashing, which balances the fact that the presence of trashing is obviously going to take the sting off of Ruins a bit when it exists.

Ruined Market:  Yeah, as mentioned by others this is actually probably one of the more useful Ruins.  These things may not be as bad as Curse, but I sure as heck won't want a deck full of them.

[rinkworks]

Love the artwork, by the way.  The replication of the artwork on the Grand Market card is really clever, effective, and evocative.

[werothegreat]

Upgrade a Cultist into a Gold, Watchtower it, draw it along with 2 other cards.

[Robz888]

Cultist: I don't see how this can be anything but super strong.  While Ruins don't hurt nearly as much as Curse, a self-chainable junk-giving card that can find itself, and then gives you a bonus late-game when the Ruins are depleted, is going to dominate games nearly as much as Witch.  (This is because the fact Curse being a dead card is usually even more harmful than the -1 VP.)  I suspect chaining Cultists is going to be not very common in practice, because if all the players go Cultist like they probably should your deck is going to get junked up and it'll be hard to line them up often.  The when-trash bonus, however, is going to be really nice in games with trashing, which balances the fact that the presence of trashing is obviously going to take the sting off of Ruins a bit when it exists.

Hey look, chwhite and I agree on something!

I predict Cultist will be equivalent, or stronger, than Witch and Mountebank.

[werothegreat]

Love the artwork, by the way.  The replication of the artwork on the Grand Market card is really clever, effective, and evocative.

It's the same artist.

[chwhite]

Cultist: I don't see how this can be anything but super strong.  While Ruins don't hurt nearly as much as Curse, a self-chainable junk-giving card that can find itself, and then gives you a bonus late-game when the Ruins are depleted, is going to dominate games nearly as much as Witch.  (This is because the fact Curse being a dead card is usually even more harmful than the -1 VP.)  I suspect chaining Cultists is going to be not very common in practice, because if all the players go Cultist like they probably should your deck is going to get junked up and it'll be hard to line them up often.  The when-trash bonus, however, is going to be really nice in games with trashing, which balances the fact that the presence of trashing is obviously going to take the sting off of Ruins a bit when it exists.

Hey look, chwhite and I agree on something!

I predict Cultist will be equivalent, or stronger, than Witch and Mountebank.

I don't think it will be quite as strong as Witch or Mountebank.  It's going to be hard to actually chain Cultists if there are Ruins flying around, and the Ruins will hurt but not as much as Curse, and the when-trash ability, awesome as it is, is still just one card better than playing Cultist to begin with.

I do think it will probably be better than Ill-Gotten Gains, and almost certainly better than all the other $5 Attacks.

Also, we totally agreed on Spice Merchant, too.

[Varsinor]

The interesting question is: will the Ruined Village be +2 Actions or just +1 Action? I'm guessing +2 because outside of some Conspirator niche cases, an action that does nothing has no redeeming quality.

I'm pretty sure it will be +1 action. Sure, that is worse than +1 buy, +1$ or +1 card in most cases. But Donald already wrote that some of them are worse than others. And he also wrote that they're all bad - and +2 actions wouldn't be all that bad - there are many decks in which I'd voluntarily take that card, at least for free.

IMO that would be too good for supposedly being bad... I think the Ruined Market is as close as any of the Ruins gets to being a not-too-bad or even desirable card on quite a few boards (the ones without other +buys).

But still, there are more cases than have been mentioned here so far where a Ruined Village with only +1 action isn't all that bad:

But Ruined Village seems way worse than all the others. With Market and Woodcutter; you may find yourself glad you have that card in hand. With Laboratory, at least you can replace it with another card if you have an action lying around. But Ruined village is just as bad as a Curse/Estate (confusion card), unless you happen to have Horn of Plenty, Conspirator, or Peddler.

There are quite a few more examples in addition to Horn of Plenty, Conspirator or Peddler where a Ruined Village which gives only +1 action can be beneficial:

Fairgrounds obviously.

And there are cases with Menagerie, Throne Room, King's Court and Golem. (For instance, a Hand of KC, Ruined Village and 3 Torturers is considerably better than KC and 4 Torturers.)

When you play a Ruined Village before drawing up to x cards with Library, Watchtower or Jack, the existence of the Ruined Village at least won't have hurt you.

[mistergross]

Shelter prediction:

$2
Victory/Action
0 VP
Trash a card from your hand.

(Replaces Estates)

Either that, or same thing with $3 cost, 1 VP

[Insomniac]

Thanks for the answer guys. Now hypothetical. 2 cards in the kingdom. Witch and Cultist. Your turn 3 you have 5 coins. Which do you buy. I'm thinking it's cultist here for the chain. But the -1 vp from curses might give witch the edge (since you both get to dole out 10 bad cards). Let's also assume your first player and your opponent hasn't picked up either yet.

And then if your second player do you always pick the opposite?

[carstimon]

Rules question! I play village cultist cultist. Do I have an action available to me? The ways I see it are

1)No you played 2 actions.
2) Yes village gave you 2 you played a cultist for one and as part of cultists resolution you got to play another

2)

Yes, you have an action. You did not spend an action to play the second Cultist.

Pedantic man is here!

It depends on how you choose to play it. When you play the first Cultist, you now have the option to play another Cultist, as a part of resolving the first Cultist. If you do, then afterwards you will still have an action remaining from your Village. But, you could also choose to not play the Cultist as a part of the "you may" clause, and then play a Cultist because you have an extra action from Village. In other words, simply saying "I play Village, Cultist, Cultist" is not enough information to know if you have another action.

And this is gonna be a good play when ruined diadem is released: -1$ for every unused action.

[werothegreat]

Who would buy Transmute if it were the only trasher on a board with Feodum?

[Grujah]

I'd go Cultist. It gives junk faster as there is no fear of collision, which will slow down Witch more than it Witch slows down you. Especially if there is a trasher (Salvager/Upgrade/), so you can turn them into something awesomer when Ruins run out (maybe even into witches, but i don't think cultist is THAT much faster than a witch).

[Voltgloss]

Don't have time to read the whole thread, so apologies if this was already brought up, but:

With Feodum around, will we get a rule clarification on whether Silvers (and, by extension, other money cards) are a pile that can/cannot be emptied?

Treasure card piles can be emptied and count toward the end condition. See, for example, http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=2728.msg44273#msg44273.

I asked my question inartfully.  A better question:  how big is the Silver pile supposed to be?  One set's worth of Silvers, or two (Base + Intrigue)?  Or even three (old Base + new Base + Intrigue)?  Whatever the answer, there are significant ramifications for Feodum.

[platykurtic]

My predictions.

Feodum: Super obvious synergy with Trader and Jack. The fact that you can trash them for one to gain another "point" worth of silver is a tough mechanic to wrap my head around. It seems like you need to predict the number of silvers you'll end up with and calculate a balance based on that. You can also buy one to deny your opponents and then trash it for silvers (although they might be able to graverob it). There are 40 silvers, so in 2 player splitting those would make this worth 6 points, meaning with a good enough silver enabler this strategy seems pretty dominant over provinces. What constitutes a good silver enabler beyond the obvious is a good question that we'll have to figure out. With 6 silvers this becomes a consolation prize for duchy, which might not be an unreasonable way to skew a province deck. All in all a good alternate victory card that makes you think whether or not to go for it

Cultist: Love the theme. I look forwards to all kinds of looters running around destroying stuff. If this were a curser it would be strictly dominant over witch, one of the better cards. The chaining lets you justify getting two of them early, though you'd run out of ruins before this could get too crazy. But with the lab effect with other cultists and the trash for benefit aspect they aren't useless after ruins are gone either. The chaining doesn't seem like a strategy to itself since it will soon get clogged with green in anything but a golden deck of sorts, so the trashing sounds more appealing. Presumably this is all balanced out by the fact that Ruins aren't as bad as curses, although they're nearly as deck clogging. I call this a really good card

Ruined Market: Less harmful and useless curses. They don't have the negative point, and they have a small chance of being useful. Certainly in a game where +buy is desperately needed someone could quite reasonably buy this off the top of the ruins deck. DVX implied that there's also Ruined Smithy (+1 card), Ruined Village (+1 action), and Ruined Something (+1$), along with a weirder one. RMarket sounds like the most useful, which RVillage being particularly useless. RSmithy cycles a bit if you've got the action and the +1$ is a copper if you've got the action. Certainly all this will make fairgrounds and similar better, though presumably they're only put out when something like cultist is on the board. With fairgrounds I'd probably try to buy these up at the last minute with extra buys. With both players going for that at the same time it could get dicey. Games with cursers and looters could turn into a huge slog, but otherwise this sounds like a fun mechanic

[michaeljb]

Don't have time to read the whole thread, so apologies if this was already brought up, but:

With Feodum around, will we get a rule clarification on whether Silvers (and, by extension, other money cards) are a pile that can/cannot be emptied?

Treasure card piles can be emptied and count toward the end condition. See, for example, http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=2728.msg44273#msg44273.

I asked my question inartfully.  A better question:  how big is the Silver pile supposed to be?  One set's worth of Silvers, or two (Base + Intrigue)?  Or even three (old Base + new Base + Intrigue)?  Whatever the answer, there are significant ramifications for Feodum.

The Treasure cards from Dominion and Dominion: Intrigue can be combined, since these cards are intended to be in abundant enough supply to not run out.

I remembered this being in Intrigue's rulebook, but I had incorrectly thought it was in the section for 5-6 players (it's actually in the Preparation section). So based on that, I'd say you could use all three sets of base cards you might have access to if you want, even if you're only playing with 2 players.

[Grujah]

Looters + Rabble!

It's even thematic! 

[Warrior]

So when exactly is the date Dark Ages available to buy? Or are we still waiting for the release date?

[GendoIkari]

Upgrade a Cultist into a Gold, Watchtower it, draw it along with 2 other cards.

I'm not sure if you can do that, actually... I think that when you play Upgrade, first you trash the Cultist. At that moment you have to choose to draw 3 cards; before you have gained anything from Upgrade. Then you gain a card, then you can reveal Watchtower.

[michaeljb]

So when exactly is the date Dark Ages available to buy? Or are we still waiting for the release date?

Well it's technically available to buy now; I've pre-ordered my copy from Boards & Bits (edit: and I know there are some other sites taking pre-orders on it now). It's supposed to actually release at a gaming convention (pretty sure it's GenCon but not sure enough to just say it ) next week, with general availability (hopefully) soon to follow.

[werothegreat]

Upgrade a Cultist into a Gold, Watchtower it, draw it along with 2 other cards.

I'm not sure if you can do that, actually... I think that when you play Upgrade, first you trash the Cultist. At that moment you have to choose to draw 3 cards; before you have gained anything from Upgrade. Then you gain a card, then you can reveal Watchtower.

Still, you get 3 extra cards, and an Action to use them with!

[GendoIkari]

Upgrade a Cultist into a Gold, Watchtower it, draw it along with 2 other cards.

I'm not sure if you can do that, actually... I think that when you play Upgrade, first you trash the Cultist. At that moment you have to choose to draw 3 cards; before you have gained anything from Upgrade. Then you gain a card, then you can reveal Watchtower.

Still, you get 3 extra cards, and an Action to use them with!

Indeed. Upgrade and Lookout will both be great here; because they are the (so far) non-terminal trashers.

[dor]

Indeed. Upgrade and Lookout will both be great here; because they are the (so far) non-terminal trashers.

Also apprentice.

[werothegreat]

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

IT JUST DAWNED ON ME

SHELTERS PROTECT YOU FROM LOOTERS





i.e.

Shelter
Victory-Reaction
$2
0 VP

When another player plays a Looter card, you may reveal this from your hand.  If you do, you are unaffected by that Looter.

[GendoIkari]

Indeed. Upgrade and Lookout will both be great here; because they are the (so far) non-terminal trashers.

Also apprentice.

Oh man, how could I forget Apprentice! Especially since that's going to be an awesome use for Cultists! It's as good as trashing a Province, without the loss of points!

[chwhite]

Indeed. Upgrade and Lookout will both be great here; because they are the (so far) non-terminal trashers.

Also apprentice.

Technically Loan and Spice Merchant too, but obviously they don't work on Cultists.

[Gansura]

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

IT JUST DAWNED ON ME

SHELTERS PROTECT YOU FROM LOOTERS





i.e.

Shelter
Victory-Reaction
$2
0 VP

When another player plays a Looter card, you may reveal this from your hand.  If you do, you are unaffected by that Looter.

Or similarly, Shelter
Victory-Action
$2
0 VP

You may trash a ruins.

[Varsinor]

So can +1 action, KC turns it into a village minus the draw

No, TR would turn the +1 action ruin into a village minus the draw. With KC, it's a Crossroads minus the draw.

[michaeljb]

Upgrade a Cultist into a Gold, Watchtower it, draw it along with 2 other cards.

I'm not sure if you can do that, actually... I think that when you play Upgrade, first you trash the Cultist. At that moment you have to choose to draw 3 cards; before you have gained anything from Upgrade. Then you gain a card, then you can reveal Watchtower.

My vote is that the watchtower reaction goes along with the trashing event, then comes the drawing three cards, so you could get that gold

Not sure exactly what you're saying, but Gendo definitely has it right...Watchtower reacts to gaining a card, which doesn't happen until definitely after the trashing.

+1 Card, +1 Action, Trash a card from your hand. Gain a card costing exactly $1 more than it.

The card you trash could be Cultist, which then immediately makes you draw 3 cards, before you have a chance to gain a different card.

[michaeljb]

If the Shelter is going to not be worth any points, what's the point of making it a Victory type card? Just to make it feel better replacing Estate or something?

[werothegreat]

If the Shelter is going to not be worth any points, what's the point of making it a Victory type card? Just to make it feel better replacing Estate or something?

So it can count towards Silk Roads?  So Scout can put it in your hand?

[DStu]

If the Shelter is going to not be worth any points, what's the point of making it a Victory type card? Just to make it feel better replacing Estate or something?

For Scout obviously...

[Warrior]

Cultist: This is an interesting card. The effect cultist has is similar to witch with the fact it lets you draw 2 cards, and hand out a junk card. In a way, cultist doesn't seem as powerful as witch because the ruins don't seem to hurt as bad as curses. On the other hand, having the ability to chain cultists could result in emptying the whole ruins pile in just a few turns, causing your opponent's deck(s) to all of a sudden be flooded with a load of nearly useless cards. If a cultist chain is set up correctly (we'll figure out how to do that in a couple weeks), it may be more powerful in "junking" your opponent than witch because of how fast you can do it. If you think about it, without witch's curse effect, the card itself is worse than a moat. That's why its important to hand out as much junk as possible, and then hopefully TFB (trash for benefit) the witch. This seems to be done easier with the cultist, because of the opportunity to chain and load your oppenent's deck(s) with ruins, AND you get +3 cards when you trash the cultist, which is actually a pretty nice effect. I still have to say witch may be more powerful because the curses it distributes are just more harmful than ruins, but cultist's ability to get the damage done fast will (probably) make it a good attack to use quickly, then trash it after the "ruining" is done.

[Warrior]

So when exactly is the date Dark Ages available to buy? Or are we still waiting for the release date?

Well it's technically available to buy now; I've pre-ordered my copy from Boards & Bits (edit: and I know there are some other sites taking pre-orders on it now). It's supposed to actually release at a gaming convention (pretty sure it's GenCon but not sure enough to just say it ) next week, with general availability (hopefully) soon to follow.

thanks @michaeljb

[michaeljb]

If the Shelter is going to not be worth any points, what's the point of making it a Victory type card? Just to make it feel better replacing Estate or something?

For Scout obviously...

Right, of course! I should have thought of that, I mean, I've seen Robz's posts 

[chwhite]

Now, what everybody was really wondering--how do these cards combo with Scout? (That's all I care about.)

Feodum is a Victory card, and Scout works on Victory cards. Perfect! That's called synergy, people.
Cultist gives other players Ruins cards. Scout can't scoop up Ruins cards (not that we know of... yet). But Scout can't scoop up Curses either! So really it's no worse.
Ruined Market gives you another Buy. That way, you don't just buy Scout. You can buy something else, too.

It's going to be hilarious when one of the previewed cards actually combos with Scout.

[dor]

So can +1 action, KC turns it into a village minus the draw

No, TR would turn the +1 action ruin into a village minus the draw. With KC, it's a Crossroads minus the draw.

Not exactly, since a non-drawing village (like a non-activated Shanty Town) leaves you with 4 cards in hand while TR+RV with only three. The same goes for KC+RV

[WanderingWinder]

So, regarding the witch v cultist thing. Some of it will depend on what that last ruins is, obviously. If it's, like, good or something, then you take witch for sure; if it's uh, REALLY bad, like the -2 VP thing, you are going to be more skewed to cultist. BTW, is anyone else realizing how WEIRD it will be to have the supply being somewhat unknown /aside. Anyhow, if we just assume those don't exist, or are like confusions or something, I think witch definitely wins the head-to-head. Why? In a nutshell, curses will run, ruins will run, and BAM, you're staring at a three pile ending, and hey look, those -10 VP from the curses are important, I think probably even more important than the potential chaining, with the junk getting slung around, but I could be wrong.
In general, I am less sure. I mean, they do different things. But the lab-possible effect will help engines with cultist a lot more than witch; it's just.... I mean, how good is a stack of labs anyway? It is good, don't get me wrong, but not great; well, the attack does a lot, and the trashing might, but really TFB is what you want for that. But it's nice to have a non-ambassador junking attack that works in engines a good bit better than BM! So I'm quite with chwhite here, I would guess it is somewhere in the 6-10 range for 5-costers (well, there may be more strong 5s coming here! so let's say closer to 10), but it all really depends on what that last ruins is.

[popsofctown]

I dislike the randomly ordered ruins pile :/  I know there are going to be times I care what's second from top

[DWetzel]

If a cultist chain is set up correctly (we'll figure out how to do that in a couple weeks),

1. Buy lots of Cultists.
2. Play one.
3.
4. Profit!

would be roughly my guess.  Seriously, aside from the obvious tricks to top-deck stuff, "buy more cultists" and "have less other cards in your deck" would pretty much be the gist of how to chain them.

It seems to really be a card that will snowball to a ridiculous degree though, possibly even worse than cursing attacks, and I think I'll despise games playing with it.



 

[DWetzel]

Bizarro question for the day:

Can Ruins show up in the Black Market deck?  That'd suck almost as bad as getting Treasure Map.

[dor]

Bizarro question for the day:

Can Ruins show up in the Black Market deck?  That'd suck almost as bad as getting Treasure Map.

They can't, because they are not part of the kingdom cards, just as Curses, Potions and Platinums can't.

[HiveMindEmulator]

Ok, so the Ruined Lab variant is obvious: +1 Card
And, the ruined terminal Silver (no idea which one he'll pick) is going to be +$1.
The interesting question is: will the Ruined Village be +2 Actions or just +1 Action? I'm guessing +2 because outside of some Conspirator niche cases, an action that does nothing has no redeeming quality.

+1 card has no redeeming qualities, either.

Well there's a difference.  Ignore KC, TR, conspirator, HoP, peddler, etc.  Then there's no reason to play the +action.  There's no detriment.
Sometimes, however, you do want to play the +1 card.

I think the distinction is that "+1 Buy" enables you to get some benefit out of having the card in your deck, however niche a situation it might be when you want it.  But "+1 Card" (combos with specific other cards aside) only ever gives you what you would have had if you hadn't had it in the first place, so it doesn't really help.

+1 Card - Eats your action.
+1 Action - Eats a card slot.
+1 Buy - Gives you +Buy!  Now I can get two Provinces!
+$1 - Gives you a coin!  Now I can afford one Province!

Now, nothing says that all the Ruins cards have to be potentially useful, nor that they need to be roughly equivalent in strength.  But there IS a fundamental difference between the first two, which require combos to do anything for you, and the last two, which are simply meager benefits.

I'm not sure what you're saying here. All of them but the +1 Action one "eat" your action. And all but the + Card one "eat a card slot. All of them need some sort of combo to actually be useful. I don't see why +$1 is considered a "meager benefit" and +1 Card isn't. +$1 might be better than +1 Card most of the time, since it won't draw your other ruinses dead, but it's not a ton better, though I guess you might also buy it in a Minion or other draw-up-to-X deck with enough villages. But it's not fundamentally a whole lot different.

[jonts26]

Page 7 and no one has said it:

1. Buy Feodom
2. Reveal Watchtower
3. Trash Feodom
4. Profit!

EDIT: And the profit goes on top of your deck.

[pauley_walnuts]

Page 7 and no one has said it:

1. Buy Feodom
2. Reveal Watchtower
3. Trash Feodom
4. Profit!

You missed a step of revealing Watchtower a few more times to put all those silvers on top.

[Tdog]

Ruined Curse: -2 VP 

[pauley_walnuts]

Ruined Curse: -2 VP 

I don't know. You can't really have a ruined curse since it isn't a physical structure.

[WanderingWinder]

Page 7 and no one has said it:

1. Buy Feodom
2. Reveal Watchtower
3. Trash Feodom
4. Profit!

EDIT: And the profit goes on top of your deck.

I saw steps 1-3 in another thread.
It is a really interesting combo though, maybe as good (at least close) as the trader one.

[jonts26]

Page 7 and no one has said it:

1. Buy Feodom
2. Reveal Watchtower
3. Trash Feodom
4. Profit!

EDIT: And the profit goes on top of your deck.

I saw steps 1-3 in another thread.
It is a really interesting combo though, maybe as good (at least close) as the trader one.

Too many threads! How can I keep up?

[chesskidnate]

Didn't check whole thread, I wouldn't be too surprised if Donald actually didn't make three of the other ruins as predictable as he implied but my guess for the mystery one is either a ruined chapel(as many others have posted) or a ruined workshop(gain a card costing up to 2$[poorhouse combo?])

[jonts26]

Page 7 and no one has said it:

1. Buy Feodom
2. Reveal Watchtower
3. Trash Feodom
4. Profit!

You missed a step of revealing Watchtower a few more times to put all those silvers on top.

Nope, got my edit in before your comment. But yeah, that should clearly be step 5.

[werothegreat]

Bizarro question for the day:

Can Ruins show up in the Black Market deck?  That'd suck almost as bad as getting Treasure Map.

They can't, because they are not part of the kingdom cards, just as Curses, Potions and Platinums can't.

Nice avatar.  Think I may give mine a change, just for giggles...

[LastFootnote]

I'll take a shot at predicting the other Ruins.

Ruined Smithy: +1 Card.
Ruined Village: +2 Actions.
Ruined Woodcutter: +1 Coin.
Ruined Chapel: Trash a card from your hand.

Ruined Smithy might be +2 Cards and still be sufficiently bad.
Ruined Village could be +1 Action, but that's a card you almost never have any incentive to play. It's incredibly uninteresting. I'd prefer +2 Actions; Discard a card.
Ruined Chapel seems like it would be much more powerful than the others, especially in a Dark Ages-heave setup, so it's the least likely.

[Voltgloss]

Ruined Chapel: Reveal three other Ruins cards from your hand.  If you do, trash this and the revealed cards. 

[Dsell]

Feodum is great with watchtower in hand. Buy feodum, trash it, gain 3 silvers, topdeck them all!

Edit: nooooo I was ninja'd a page ago.

Page 7 and no one has said it:

1. Buy Feodom
2. Reveal Watchtower
3. Trash Feodom
4. Profit!

EDIT: And the profit goes on top of your deck.

[cooperaa]

I still don't know how these Ruins cards aren't going to completely screw up your deck.  Shelters seem like the most likely answer.

Others have suggested Shelters might allow you to trash Ruins or protect you from Ruins, but what if the Shelters simply give you actions so that you can play the Ruins?

Shelter - $2
Action / Victory
+ 2 Actions
0 VP

[werothegreat]

I'll take a shot at predicting the other Ruins.

Ruined Smithy: +1 Card.
Ruined Village: +2 Actions.
Ruined Woodcutter: +1 Coin.
Ruined Chapel: Trash a card from your hand.

Ruined Smithy might be +2 Cards and still be sufficiently bad.
Ruined Village could be +1 Action, but that's a card you almost never have any incentive to play. It's incredibly uninteresting. I'd prefer +2 Actions; Discard a card.
Ruined Chapel seems like it would be much more powerful than the others, especially in a Dark Ages-heave setup, so it's the least likely.

Ruined Chapel: Gain a card from the Trash costing $0.

[LastFootnote]

How about opening Trader/Embargo, embargoing the Feoda (I just looked up the plural), picking up more Traders and then get a free Silver on most Feoda buys?

A free Silver? You want to buy the Feoda first, then Embargo the Silver pile 10 times, and then somehow get like $9 and 3 buys with Trader in hand.  Not exactly practical, but definitely awesome.

You're still thinking too small. Embargo the Copper or Curse pile so that you can gain multiple Silvers with each buy without having to spend $3 on each one.

[GendoIkari]

I'll take a shot at predicting the other Ruins.

Ruined Smithy: +1 Card.
Ruined Village: +2 Actions.
Ruined Woodcutter: +1 Coin.
Ruined Chapel: Trash a card from your hand.

Ruined Smithy might be +2 Cards and still be sufficiently bad.
Ruined Village could be +1 Action, but that's a card you almost never have any incentive to play. It's incredibly uninteresting. I'd prefer +2 Actions; Discard a card.
Ruined Chapel seems like it would be much more powerful than the others, especially in a Dark Ages-heave setup, so it's the least likely.

I think Ruined Smithy will be called Ruined Library. And if it is, perhaps it will actually say "draw until you have at least 5 cards in hand."

I think Ruined Village giving +2 Actions is just too good for a Ruins. In almost any Kingdom without a Village; you will be happy to get those.

[GendoIkari]

I'll take a shot at predicting the other Ruins.

Ruined Smithy: +1 Card.
Ruined Village: +2 Actions.
Ruined Woodcutter: +1 Coin.
Ruined Chapel: Trash a card from your hand.

Ruined Smithy might be +2 Cards and still be sufficiently bad.
Ruined Village could be +1 Action, but that's a card you almost never have any incentive to play. It's incredibly uninteresting. I'd prefer +2 Actions; Discard a card.
Ruined Chapel seems like it would be much more powerful than the others, especially in a Dark Ages-heave setup, so it's the least likely.

Ruined Chapel: Gain a card from the Trash costing $0.

Wouldn't that be a Ruined Graverobber?

[LastFootnote]

I think Ruined Village giving +2 Actions is just too good for a Ruins. In almost any Kingdom without a Village; you will be happy to get those.

Not in most games with junk-giving Attacks, you wouldn't. For instance, any game with Ruins.

[werothegreat]

I'll take a shot at predicting the other Ruins.

Ruined Smithy: +1 Card.
Ruined Village: +2 Actions.
Ruined Woodcutter: +1 Coin.
Ruined Chapel: Trash a card from your hand.

Ruined Smithy might be +2 Cards and still be sufficiently bad.
Ruined Village could be +1 Action, but that's a card you almost never have any incentive to play. It's incredibly uninteresting. I'd prefer +2 Actions; Discard a card.
Ruined Chapel seems like it would be much more powerful than the others, especially in a Dark Ages-heave setup, so it's the least likely.

Ruined Chapel: Gain a card from the Trash costing $0.

Wouldn't that be a Ruined Graverobber?

No.  It's doing the opposite of what you want Chapel to do.

By the way, I kind of really want Graverobber as my avatar.  Add these to the Avatar library, theory!

[pauley_walnuts]

I still don't know how these Ruins cards aren't going to completely screw up your deck.  Shelters seem like the most likely answer.

Others have suggested Shelters might allow you to trash Ruins or protect you from Ruins, but what if the Shelters simply give you actions so that you can play the Ruins?

Shelter - $2
Action / Victory
+ 2 Actions
0 VP

Aren't there other cards that you can use to protect you from gaining Ruins though? Watchtower, Trader, Moat, etc. I'm kind of hoping Shelters are completely unrelated to Ruins and do their own thing.

[wrathofmine]

I still don't know how these Ruins cards aren't going to completely screw up your deck.  Shelters seem like the most likely answer.

Others have suggested Shelters might allow you to trash Ruins or protect you from Ruins, but what if the Shelters simply give you actions so that you can play the Ruins?

Shelter - $2
Action / Victory
+ 2 Actions
0 VP

Shelter - $2
Action / Victory
+ 1 action
Tou may play a Ruin from your hand

Would be more logical like that. You can play a ruin for free but not any other action

[eHalcyon]

I'll take a shot at predicting the other Ruins.

Ruined Smithy: +1 Card.
Ruined Village: +2 Actions.
Ruined Woodcutter: +1 Coin.
Ruined Chapel: Trash a card from your hand.

Ruined Smithy might be +2 Cards and still be sufficiently bad.
Ruined Village could be +1 Action, but that's a card you almost never have any incentive to play. It's incredibly uninteresting. I'd prefer +2 Actions; Discard a card.
Ruined Chapel seems like it would be much more powerful than the others, especially in a Dark Ages-heave setup, so it's the least likely.

Ruined Chapel: Gain a card from the Trash costing $0.

Wouldn't that be a Ruined Graverobber?

No.  It's doing the opposite of what you want Chapel to do.

By the way, I kind of really want Graverobber as my avatar.  Add these to the Avatar library, theory!

Ruined cards don't do the opposite of their unruined counterparts.  They are a much weaker version of another card.  Ruined Market doesn't say "you can't buy anything this turn."

Besides, those are cards which you would simply never play.  Ruined Market you could still use, sometimes.

[GendoIkari]

I think Ruined Village giving +2 Actions is just too good for a Ruins. In almost any Kingdom without a Village; you will be happy to get those.

Not in most games with junk-giving Attacks, you wouldn't. For instance, any game with Ruins.

Actually I would say the exact opposite! A +2 actions cards lets you play those Ruined Markets and Ruined Libraries; making them less painful to have in your deck.

[jotheonah]

Maybe shelters are like Native Villages for Ruins. Like if you get hit by a ruin, you can reveal a shelter to store it instead, and then use shelters to play them at will. Or maybe not.

[Dsell]

Also, I predict:

Ruined Market: +1 Buy

Ruined Laboratory (Maybe Council Room): +1 Card

Ruined Village: +1 Action

Ruined Festival: +$1

The other is tricky, but I suppose I'll go with Ruined Workshop: Gain a card costing up to $2.

[werothegreat]

Maybe shelters are like Native Villages for Ruins. Like if you get hit by a ruin, you can reveal a shelter to store it instead, and then use shelters to play them at will. Or maybe not.

No mats in this set.

[pauley_walnuts]

I wonder if there's a balance to the Ruins. If Ruined Village with only +1 action, then that would be the worst Ruin. The others at least give you something if you have extra actions in hand.

[KingsSkort]

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

IT JUST DAWNED ON ME

SHELTERS PROTECT YOU FROM LOOTERS
i.e.

Shelter
Victory-Reaction
$2
0 VP

When another player plays a Looter card, you may reveal this from your hand.  If you do, you are unaffected by that Looter.

This seems likely, but Shelter should still give 1VP. I don't know why it can't just be a strictly better estate that keeps the otherwise-OP looters in check.

[shMerker]

Ruined Treasure Map: Trash this card and another ruined treasure map from your hand. If you do gain an Island.
Ruined Mint: You may reveal a treasure card from your hand. If you do gain a copper.
Ruined Mine: Trash a treasure from your hand. Gain a treasure card costing up to $1 more than the it.

[jotheonah]

Page 7 and no one has said it:

1. Buy Feodom
2. Reveal Watchtower
3. Trash Feodom
4. Profit!

EDIT: And the profit goes on top of your deck.

I saw steps 1-3 in another thread.
It is a really interesting combo though, maybe as good (at least close) as the trader one.

It's like a mini-treasure map but a lot less work.

[Voltgloss]

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

IT JUST DAWNED ON ME

SHELTERS PROTECT YOU FROM LOOTERS
i.e.

Shelter
Victory-Reaction
$2
0 VP

When another player plays a Looter card, you may reveal this from your hand.  If you do, you are unaffected by that Looter.

This seems likely, but Shelter should still give 1VP. I don't know why it can't just be a strictly better estate that keeps the otherwise-OP looters in check.

Agreed.  Ruins are only used if a Looter is in play, right?  So how about: if a Looter is in play, the Estate stack is replaced with the Shelter stack.  (And starting Estates are replaced with starting Shelters.)

[zahlman]

oh, and Ruined Tournament is how you get the booby prizes, like Pony and Bag of Copper.

Pony - choose two: +1 Card, +1 Action, +$1, or gain 4 Coppers and put your deck into your discard pile.
Bag of Copper - +1 action; gain a Copper on your deck.
Trinket - Worth $1, plus $0 for each unused Action.
Snotty Little Brat - +1 Buy, +$4. While this is in play, cards cost $2 more. At the end of your Buy phase: for each unused Buy, gain a Curse.
Wannabes - +1 Card. Gain a Ruins. Each opponent gains a Ruins and discards down to 5 cards in hand.

Or you can just take an Estate.

So what's the fastest way to empty Feoda and silvers?  How many turns does it take in solitaire?  Sounds like a solo challenge!  You could use Gardens as a stand-in on Iso.

But Iso won't give you Silvers for trashing Gardens...

[GendoIkari]

Also! I noticed that Donald basically said that there were 3 looter cards in Dark Ages.  Yay.

I thought at first he meant there were 3 ways to get / give Ruins cards, one of which were Looters.. but he confirmed what you said on BGG:

There are three Looter cards.

[jotheonah]

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

IT JUST DAWNED ON ME

SHELTERS PROTECT YOU FROM LOOTERS
i.e.

Shelter
Victory-Reaction
$2
0 VP

When another player plays a Looter card, you may reveal this from your hand.  If you do, you are unaffected by that Looter.

This seems likely, but Shelter should still give 1VP. I don't know why it can't just be a strictly better estate that keeps the otherwise-OP looters in check.

Agreed.  Ruins are only used if a Looter is in play, right?  So how about: if a Looter is in play, the Estate stack is replaced with the Shelter stack.  (And starting Estates are replaced with starting Shelters.)

then you have the Baron problem.

[ftl]

Ruins games look awesome. I'm really looking forward to them.

The cultist vs witch debate... On second thought, I think the answer will be "it depends".

In a mostly BM game, Witch will hold its own because of 3-pile endings on ruins, curses, duchies and win on the extra +10 points from giving out curses. You'll have to play it a little differently than standard BM+Witch and get extra witches because you'll have extra ruins in your deck and you won't want to let the ruins player snowball into a big cultist engine. However, in a setup with trashing, or any engine potential, cultists will win - it'll be pretty easy to transition into a big drawing engine off of village/cultist/trashed cultist that'll let you find Witch's curses and trash them, whereas the post-cursing transition will be a lot harder with Witch.

[Destry]

Ruined Lookout - Trash the top card of your deck

[ednever]

Ruinses, it turns out, are a pile of cards like Curses, with three ways to get them, besides just buying them or something. They only show up in games with a Looter, which is a word you may have been wondering about on Cultist.

Prediction:
(1) More than one type of Shelter (like more than one type of Ruin)
(2) You play with shelters instead of Estates whenever a Looter is present (Start conditions)
(3) "Three ways to gain Ruins" -> I'll bet it's not "Three cards that give Ruins", but rather "Three ways"
     Way #1: Other player gives them to you like a curse
     Way #2: You give them to yourself as a penalty for a card that would otherwise be too good (We've seen lots of fan cards like this before that have been poo-poo'd. Just like $1 cards and card that take from the trash were poo-poo'd)
     Way #3: Something else? Maybe you start with Ruins? Or cards get transformed into Ruins?

I could be very wrong, but it seems to me only three cards that let you get Ruins ever is pretty limiting. There are 35 cards with DA's which means even a 100% DA's game would only have Ruins in it (and if my theory is right Shelters) in about a third of games (35% if I did my math right?) (vs. all of 100% prosperity games having  Platinum/Colony). And it would mean overall if you played randomly you would barely ever play with Ruins -> 3 cards in ~200?

It would seem like a bit of a waste to have 50 Ruins and 50 Shelters (?) out of a 400 card set that only get played once in a blue moon...

Ed

[jotheonah]

Ruined Bridge - All cards cost the same as they did before.

[GendoIkari]

(3) "Three ways to gain Ruins" -> I'll bet it's not "Three cards that give Ruins", but rather "Three ways"
     Way #1: Other player gives them to you like a curse
     Way #2: You give them to yourself as a penalty for a card that would otherwise be too good (We've seen lots of fan cards like this before that have been poo-poo'd. Just like $1 cards and card that take from the trash were poo-poo'd)
     Way #3: Something else? Maybe you start with Ruins? Or cards get transformed into Ruins?

No, see my post above; Donald confirmed that there are 3 Looter cards.

And it would mean overall if you played randomly you would barely ever play with Ruins -> 3 cards in ~200?

According to the BGG thread, this gives you about a 15% chance of having Ruins in a completely random game. It's identical to the chance of needing VP tokens.

[werothegreat]

(3) "Three ways to gain Ruins" -> I'll bet it's not "Three cards that give Ruins", but rather "Three ways"
     Way #1: Other player gives them to you like a curse
     Way #2: You give them to yourself as a penalty for a card that would otherwise be too good (We've seen lots of fan cards like this before that have been poo-poo'd. Just like $1 cards and card that take from the trash were poo-poo'd)
     Way #3: Something else? Maybe you start with Ruins? Or cards get transformed into Ruins?

No, see my post above; Donald confirmed that there are 3 Looter cards.

And it would mean overall if you played randomly you would barely ever play with Ruins -> 3 cards in ~200?

According to the BGG thread, this gives you about a 15% chance of having Ruins in a completely random game. It's identical to the chance of needing VP tokens.

If Guilds gives 13 Kingdom cards, it will be exactly a 15% chance.

[philosophyguy]

I think Cultist is going to be net weaker than Witch in most situations. Chaining Cultists is exactly like trying to chain Laboratories. It's hard to buy enough 5s to consistently draw your deck without strong trashing, and the fact that psuedo-curses are flying means that it's even harder. Ergo, you're probably only going to get a massive Cultist chain running if there's strong trashing—in which case, the Ruin attack is not going to be that significant. Add in that Ruins just slow your deck building and don't actually hurt your score, unlike Curses, and Witch is going to be superior in most situations.

[Insomniac]

Ruins games look awesome. I'm really looking forward to them.

The cultist vs witch debate... On second thought, I think the answer will be "it depends".

In a mostly BM game, Witch will hold its own because of 3-pile endings on ruins, curses, duchies and win on the extra +10 points from giving out curses. You'll have to play it a little differently than standard BM+Witch and get extra witches because you'll have extra ruins in your deck and you won't want to let the ruins player snowball into a big cultist engine. However, in a setup with trashing, or any engine potential, cultists will win - it'll be pretty easy to transition into a big drawing engine off of village/cultist/trashed cultist that'll let you find Witch's curses and trash them, whereas the post-cursing transition will be a lot harder with Witch.

I have to disagree here I've been thinking about it and I think it will consistently beat witch in the head to head. Cultist engine will give out junk faster because anytime a culstist meets another one its bad times, where as Witch collision is the worst. Now in the end game where curses and ruins are out your both junky but witch collision is bad. Cultist colision is good. If you as the cultist player line up your cultists even once you probably get a province and thats -4vp. win the duchy split or line the cultists up again and its gg

[WanderingWinder]

(3) "Three ways to gain Ruins" -> I'll bet it's not "Three cards that give Ruins", but rather "Three ways"
     Way #1: Other player gives them to you like a curse
     Way #2: You give them to yourself as a penalty for a card that would otherwise be too good (We've seen lots of fan cards like this before that have been poo-poo'd. Just like $1 cards and card that take from the trash were poo-poo'd)
     Way #3: Something else? Maybe you start with Ruins? Or cards get transformed into Ruins?

No, see my post above; Donald confirmed that there are 3 Looter cards.

And it would mean overall if you played randomly you would barely ever play with Ruins -> 3 cards in ~200?

According to the BGG thread, this gives you about a 15% chance of having Ruins in a completely random game. It's identical to the chance of needing VP tokens.

If Guilds gives 13 Kingdom cards, it will be exactly a 15% chance.

Actually, that's not right. There would be 3 cards out of 200 kingdom cards, but because of how combinatorics work, if we excuse possible YW bane considerations and Black Market issues, plucking perfectly randomly, a kingdom of 10 would have a 14.33% (okay, I rounded there) chance to get a ruin-er. The quick way to realize why it's not 15%, even though you expect 1.5 of your 10 cards to be ruin-ers (what are the called anyway? Oh, looters), is because sometimes you are going to have more than one, and while that doesn't happen often, it does sometimes.

[philosophyguy]

Statistics. Not even once.

[LastFootnote]

(3) "Three ways to gain Ruins" -> I'll bet it's not "Three cards that give Ruins", but rather "Three ways"
     Way #1: Other player gives them to you like a curse
     Way #2: You give them to yourself as a penalty for a card that would otherwise be too good (We've seen lots of fan cards like this before that have been poo-poo'd. Just like $1 cards and card that take from the trash were poo-poo'd)
     Way #3: Something else? Maybe you start with Ruins? Or cards get transformed into Ruins?

No, see my post above; Donald confirmed that there are 3 Looter cards.

And it would mean overall if you played randomly you would barely ever play with Ruins -> 3 cards in ~200?

According to the BGG thread, this gives you about a 15% chance of having Ruins in a completely random game. It's identical to the chance of needing VP tokens.

If Guilds gives 13 Kingdom cards, it will be exactly a 15% chance.

Are you including the promo cards in your count?

[Kuildeous]

Ruined Feast.

That's what you get for wanting your pudding when you don't eat your meat.

[werothegreat]

(3) "Three ways to gain Ruins" -> I'll bet it's not "Three cards that give Ruins", but rather "Three ways"
     Way #1: Other player gives them to you like a curse
     Way #2: You give them to yourself as a penalty for a card that would otherwise be too good (We've seen lots of fan cards like this before that have been poo-poo'd. Just like $1 cards and card that take from the trash were poo-poo'd)
     Way #3: Something else? Maybe you start with Ruins? Or cards get transformed into Ruins?

No, see my post above; Donald confirmed that there are 3 Looter cards.

And it would mean overall if you played randomly you would barely ever play with Ruins -> 3 cards in ~200?

According to the BGG thread, this gives you about a 15% chance of having Ruins in a completely random game. It's identical to the chance of needing VP tokens.

If Guilds gives 13 Kingdom cards, it will be exactly a 15% chance.

Are you including the promo cards in your count?

Nope.  Apparently my statistics is faulty, but if you ignore Promos, all the sets together should yield 200 Kingdom cards.

[Davio]

Okay, the problem with Feodum is that you need 9 Silvers to get it up to Duchy level, which is always a good benchmark.

9 Silvers may be no problem with Trader, which can get you that by trashing a Platinum, but with cards that just gain one Silver at a time, it's going to be a real task.

And if we look at Jack, it's very good at getting Provinces, so why would you want to go full throttle on Feoda?

I don't like that it's specific to Silver.
It seems like a missed opportunity to me.
The card from the fan contest which gives 1 VP for every separate set of Copper-Silver-Gold seems more fun to me and more useful.

[Voltgloss]

Okay, the problem with Feodum is that you need 9 Silvers to get it up to Duchy level, which is always a good benchmark.

9 Silvers may be no problem with Trader, which can get you that by trashing a Platinum, but with cards that just gain one Silver at a time, it's going to be a real task.

What Feodum needs is to always appear in conjunction with a card that can net you 3 Silvers a pop.

[werothegreat]

Okay, the problem with Feodum is that you need 9 Silvers to get it up to Duchy level, which is always a good benchmark.

9 Silvers may be no problem with Trader, which can get you that by trashing a Platinum, but with cards that just gain one Silver at a time, it's going to be a real task.

What Feodum needs is to always appear in conjunction with a card that can net you 3 Silvers a pop.

Trader/Cache.

[Davio]

Okay, the problem with Feodum is that you need 9 Silvers to get it up to Duchy level, which is always a good benchmark.

9 Silvers may be no problem with Trader, which can get you that by trashing a Platinum, but with cards that just gain one Silver at a time, it's going to be a real task.

What Feodum needs is to always appear in conjunction with a card that can net you 3 Silvers a pop.

Yes, but that's quite a niche and the more cards come out, the less (barring Dark Ages helpers) likely it is that you will have Trader or something else.

It just seems a bit like Tunnel without the reaction to me in that you will likely grab it over Estate as it's almost always going to be at least one point, but you won't often create a strategy especially for it.

[LastFootnote]

Okay, the problem with Feodum is that you need 9 Silvers to get it up to Duchy level, which is always a good benchmark.

9 Silvers may be no problem with Trader, which can get you that by trashing a Platinum, but with cards that just gain one Silver at a time, it's going to be a real task.

What Feodum needs is to always appear in conjunction with a card that can net you 3 Silvers a pop.

Trader/Cache.

That gets you 2 Silvers, maximum. Also, please tell me you got Voltgloss's clever joke.

[jonts26]

Yeah, you realize he's talking about Feodum itself, right?

[werothegreat]

Okay, the problem with Feodum is that you need 9 Silvers to get it up to Duchy level, which is always a good benchmark.

9 Silvers may be no problem with Trader, which can get you that by trashing a Platinum, but with cards that just gain one Silver at a time, it's going to be a real task.

What Feodum needs is to always appear in conjunction with a card that can net you 3 Silvers a pop.

Yes, but that's quite a niche and the more cards come out, the less (barring Dark Ages helpers) likely it is that you will have Trader or something else.

It just seems a bit like Tunnel without the reaction to me in that you will likely grab it over Estate as it's almost always going to be at least one point, but you won't often create a strategy especially for it.

Rush Silver/Feodum.  See if that can beat big money.  Once Feodums are gone, get Silver/Duchy (or Province if you've got 4 Silvers).

[werothegreat]

Okay, the problem with Feodum is that you need 9 Silvers to get it up to Duchy level, which is always a good benchmark.

9 Silvers may be no problem with Trader, which can get you that by trashing a Platinum, but with cards that just gain one Silver at a time, it's going to be a real task.

What Feodum needs is to always appear in conjunction with a card that can net you 3 Silvers a pop.

Trader/Cache.

That gets you 2 Silvers, maximum. Also, please tell me you got Voltgloss's clever joke.

3.  Trader the Cache as well, not just the two Coppers.  And yes, I got the joke.

Never mind that - but at least the Cache will give you good fodder for the Trader's Action.

[HiveMindEmulator]

(3) "Three ways to gain Ruins" -> I'll bet it's not "Three cards that give Ruins", but rather "Three ways"
     Way #1: Other player gives them to you like a curse
     Way #2: You give them to yourself as a penalty for a card that would otherwise be too good (We've seen lots of fan cards like this before that have been poo-poo'd. Just like $1 cards and card that take from the trash were poo-poo'd)
     Way #3: Something else? Maybe you start with Ruins? Or cards get transformed into Ruins?

Way #1: Given by looter
Way #2: Gain with workshop
Way #3: Buy them

[Cuzz]

Hey, does the Cultist remind anyone else of this guy?.

[WheresMyElephant]

You guys are in luck because I found out what Donald's super-secret Ruins is. It's the ruined horse, "Tasty Stewed."

[ChocophileBenj]

I was about to post it in the "really bad card ideas" topic, but I thought it wouldn't be relevant.

Let's ruin everything !

-Ruined Tribute- (Action)
The player to your left reveals and discards the top card of his deck. If it is...
an action card, +1 action
a treasure card, +$1
a victory card, +1 card

-Ruined Coppersmith- (Action)
The first copper you play this turn produce an extra $1

-Ruined Contraband- (Treasure)
+$1
When you play this, reveal your hand. The player to your left names two cards, you can't buy those cards this turn.

[Insomniac]

Ruined Counting House
0 - Action
Take up to 1 Copper from your discard pile and place it on top of your deck.

[werothegreat]

I was about to post it in the "really bad card ideas" topic, but I thought it wouldn't be relevant.

Let's ruin everything !

-Ruined Tribute- (Action)
The player to your left reveals and discards the top card of his deck. If it is...
an action card, +1 action
a treasure card, +$1
a victory card, +1 card

-Ruined Coppersmith- (Action)
The first copper you play this turn produce an extra $1

-Ruined Contraband- (Treasure)
+$1
When you play this, reveal your hand. The player to your left names two cards, you can't buy those cards this turn.

Ruined Thief - Each other player puts their deck in their discard.  They then go through their discard, and trash any and all Treasures they like.

[DWetzel]

Ruined Ruin:

(this space intentionally left blank)

[Cuzz]

Ruined Thief - Each other player puts their deck in their discard.  They then go through their discard, and trash any and all Treasures they like.

You gain all of the trashed treasures if and only if Counting House, Coppersmith, Apothecary, Gardens, Trader and Watchtower are not in the supply.

[jotheonah]

Ruined Workshop

Gain a Ruined Workshop
________

When you gain this, gain a Ruined Workshop

[rinkworks]

I think the distinction is that "+1 Buy" enables you to get some benefit out of having the card in your deck, however niche a situation it might be when you want it.  But "+1 Card" (combos with specific other cards aside) only ever gives you what you would have had if you hadn't had it in the first place, so it doesn't really help.

+1 Card - Eats your action.
+1 Action - Eats a card slot.
+1 Buy - Gives you +Buy!  Now I can get two Provinces!
+$1 - Gives you a coin!  Now I can afford one Province!

Now, nothing says that all the Ruins cards have to be potentially useful, nor that they need to be roughly equivalent in strength.  But there IS a fundamental difference between the first two, which require combos to do anything for you, and the last two, which are simply meager benefits.

I'm not sure what you're saying here. All of them but the +1 Action one "eat" your action. And all but the + Card one "eat a card slot. All of them need some sort of combo to actually be useful. I don't see why +$1 is considered a "meager benefit" and +1 Card isn't. +$1 might be better than +1 Card most of the time, since it won't draw your other ruinses dead, but it's not a ton better, though I guess you might also buy it in a Minion or other draw-up-to-X deck with enough villages. But it's not fundamentally a whole lot different.

Ok, if you have a card that has "+1 Card" on it, then playing it will draw the card you would have had anyway if you hadn't had that that Ruins in your deck.   Thus, in the absence of specific combos (e.g., KC), the only real effect is to take something away from you:  your Action, specifically, or your card slot should you refrain from playing it at all.

But a card saying "+1 Buy" gives you something you might not have been able to have otherwise.  It takes away a card slot and your action, but you get a buy that you would not have had had you not had the Ruins in your deck.  It may or may not be a trade-off you would welcome, but it is a trade-off, as opposed to purely a negative.

[Voltgloss]

Ruinn:

+1 Card
+1 Action
Discard 1 card.
----------
When you gain this, look through your discard pile (including this), reveal any number of Ruins cards from it, and shuffle them into your deck.

[jotheonah]

But you're thinking of it as getting a ruin compared to getting nothing.

I think +1 Card, and even +1 Action are both better than a truly blank card (or a Curse or an Estate).

So maybe the rule for Ruins is more utility than a curse, less utility than a card you would spend money on.

[Asklepios]

Late to the party here, but I also laughed out loud at Ruined Chancellor. Actually, literally did so, which is a real rarity for me reading the internet. Well done.

Don't know if its true globally, but in colloquial English in England, ruined also means very drunk. So a Ruined Bishop would be pretty amusing to my game group.

Wonder if there'll be a Ruined Attack of some sort. Like Ruined Militia, that makes everyone discard down to 5 cards. Or maybe a Ruined Black Market that only sells Scouts.

[Warrior]

If a cultist chain is set up correctly (we'll figure out how to do that in a couple weeks),

1. Buy lots of Cultists.
2. Play one.
3.
4. Profit!

would be roughly my guess.  Seriously, aside from the obvious tricks to top-deck stuff, "buy more cultists" and "have less other cards in your deck" would pretty much be the gist of how to chain them.

It seems to really be a card that will snowball to a ridiculous degree though, possibly even worse than cursing attacks, and I think I'll despise games playing with it.



 

I agree with the way to chain the cultist chains but you would have to remember to build up a decent economy at the same time. This seems like a true example of a snowball card. An annoying one

[werothegreat]

Query:  Are all the Looters going to be Action-Attacks as well?

Because if Shelters do protect against Looters, as I expect they will, it would be more interesting if there were some Looters that only Shelters could protect you against, and not Moat or Lighthouse.

[ftl]

I agree with the way to chain the cultist chains but you would have to remember to build up a decent economy at the same time. This seems like a true example of a snowball card. An annoying one

I would guess that building up an economy could be obvious - just buy silvers whenever you can't make $5 for a cultist. With ruins flying around, you'll be stuck in sub-5 land often enough.

I would guess that you want one cultist before getting gold, but I don't have an intuition whether you want to get a gold before your second cultist (if you can) or whether you want to drive the cultists until the ruins are all gone and only switch to Gold afterwards. My intuition is that stackable spammable attacks should be stacked and spammed, dammit, and that I'd probably pass on gold unless I expected the cultist I'm buying to not get played before ruins are out.

So I guess in that sense it would play sort of like a familiar, in how spammable it is. So three cultists before gold maybe?

[metzgerism]

Ruined Island

Set aside this and another card from your hand. Return them to your deck at the end of the game.
0 VP.

EDIT: Heck, in that vein, Ruined Monument: +1 VP.

Seems imbalanced at $0 though.

[rinkworks]

But you're thinking of it as getting a ruin compared to getting nothing.

I think +1 Card, and even +1 Action are both better than a truly blank card (or a Curse or an Estate).

So maybe the rule for Ruins is more utility than a curse, less utility than a card you would spend money on.

Agreed, certainly.  They're all better than Curses.  But that wasn't my point.  The point of my original post (which Hive asked me about, which is why I further clarified) was how the Ruins cards are different from each other.  The "+1 Buy" and presumed "+$1" ones are potentially useful on their own, while the presumed "+1 Card" and "+1 Action" ones cannot be in the absence of specific combos.

[grep]

Why looters should always be attacks? Consider something like:

Treasure Hunter
Action - Looter
$4
You may trash a Ruins. If you do, gain a treasure card of your choice.
Otherwise gain a Ruins.

[HiveMindEmulator]

But you're thinking of it as getting a ruin compared to getting nothing.

I think +1 Card, and even +1 Action are both better than a truly blank card (or a Curse or an Estate).

So maybe the rule for Ruins is more utility than a curse, less utility than a card you would spend money on.

Agreed, certainly.  They're all better than Curses.  But that wasn't my point.  The point of my original post (which Hive asked me about, which is why I further clarified) was how the Ruins cards are different from each other.  The "+1 Buy" and presumed "+$1" ones are potentially useful on their own, while the presumed "+1 Card" and "+1 Action" ones cannot be in the absence of specific combos.

So what you're saying is that the +Buy and +$ ones are the only ones you'd actually buy with "non-specific" combos? Because when given as a ruin, you'd probably more often want +1 Card than +1 Buy...

[mnavratil]

So what you're saying is that the +Buy and +$ ones are the only ones you'd actually buy with "non-specific" combos? Because when given as a ruin, you'd probably more often want +1 Card than +1 Buy...

I disagree. +buy can be a big help on an engine board, to the point where you might plan on buying one anyway. I can't envision a scenario where I'd ever want the +1 card type ruin.

[petrie911]

I'm pretty sure +1 Buy is the only one you might buy, seeing as it's the only one not every board has.  +$1 is a worse copper, +1 Card wastes your action, +1 Action wastes a card.

So, how will Chapel/Cultist compare to Chapel/Witch and Chapel/Mountebank as opening?

[WanderingWinder]

I'm pretty sure +1 Buy is the only one you might buy, seeing as it's the only one not every board has.  +$1 is a worse copper, +1 Card wastes your action, +1 Action wastes a card.

Pedantic Man!
Not every board draws you cards. Well, you say, it only gets the one card back, so that does nothing - true... normally! But there are two cards for which you actually get to draw EXTRA cards this way: Golem and King's Court. So, with no other +cards, but you COULD build some enormous actiony enginey awesomesauce, except that there are NO +CARDS CARDS AT ALL (like, no cantrips, no nothin' - I guess there are some kinds of +action cards that aren't cantrips, a la lighthouse, festival, fishing village), and there is at least one of golem and king's court, in that situation, you might want those ruined smithies (or whatever they will be called.






What do you mean that will never happen? Didn't stop them from printing Scout!

[HiveMindEmulator]

So what you're saying is that the +Buy and +$ ones are the only ones you'd actually buy with "non-specific" combos? Because when given as a ruin, you'd probably more often want +1 Card than +1 Buy...

I disagree. +buy can be a big help on an engine board, to the point where you might plan on buying one anyway. I can't envision a scenario where I'd ever want the +1 card type ruin.

By "given as a ruin", I mean in a looter game. Those games are probably going to be junkier (like curse games) in which case you're unlikely to be building an engine that needs +buy. +1 card at least gets your ruins out of the way on turns where you can spare an action.

[werothegreat]

I'm pretty sure +1 Buy is the only one you might buy, seeing as it's the only one not every board has.  +$1 is a worse copper, +1 Card wastes your action, +1 Action wastes a card.

Pedantic Man!
Not every board draws you cards. Well, you say, it only gets the one card back, so that does nothing - true... normally! But there are two cards for which you actually get to draw EXTRA cards this way: Golem and King's Court. So, with no other +cards, but you COULD build some enormous actiony enginey awesomesauce, except that there are NO +CARDS CARDS AT ALL (like, no cantrips, no nothin' - I guess there are some kinds of +action cards that aren't cantrips, a la lighthouse, festival, fishing village), and there is at least one of golem and king's court, in that situation, you might want those ruined smithies (or whatever they will be called.






What do you mean that will never happen? Didn't stop them from printing Scout!

Hey, in Harem/Nobles games, you'll be very glad of a Scout.  And they can help you get those Estates in hand for Chapel/Remodel/Ambassador.

[petrie911]

guys, guys, I know what the last ruin is.

Ruined Throne
Choose an action card in your hand. Play it once.

[eHalcyon]

But you're thinking of it as getting a ruin compared to getting nothing.

I think +1 Card, and even +1 Action are both better than a truly blank card (or a Curse or an Estate).

So maybe the rule for Ruins is more utility than a curse, less utility than a card you would spend money on.

IMO, +1 Action is just barely better than a blank card.  It is only better in edge cases -- TR, KC, Conspirator, HoP, etc.  Otherwise, it is functionally equivalent to a Confusion.  You might as well not be able to play it.

+1 Card is better than +1 Action in that, if you have an extra Action at the end, you can play it and get the next card.  It eats an action, sure, but it still hurts less than a Confusion that just takes up room.

+$1 is similar in that it eats your action in exchange for a Copper.

+1 Buy gives something potentially useful as well.

+1 Action is the worst one in almost all cases and would basically be a Confusion card.

[WanderingWinder]

I'm pretty sure +1 Buy is the only one you might buy, seeing as it's the only one not every board has.  +$1 is a worse copper, +1 Card wastes your action, +1 Action wastes a card.

Pedantic Man!
Not every board draws you cards. Well, you say, it only gets the one card back, so that does nothing - true... normally! But there are two cards for which you actually get to draw EXTRA cards this way: Golem and King's Court. So, with no other +cards, but you COULD build some enormous actiony enginey awesomesauce, except that there are NO +CARDS CARDS AT ALL (like, no cantrips, no nothin' - I guess there are some kinds of +action cards that aren't cantrips, a la lighthouse, festival, fishing village), and there is at least one of golem and king's court, in that situation, you might want those ruined smithies (or whatever they will be called.






What do you mean that will never happen? Didn't stop them from printing Scout!

Hey, in Harem/Nobles games, you'll be very glad of a Scout.  And they can help you get those Estates in hand for Chapel/Remodel/Ambassador.

Hey, you know what, I've actually played a billion, er, around 11,000 games, and you know what, even in these situations, the vast majority of the time, no, no I wasn't glad of scout. Or a couple times I was glad that my opponent wanted it.
But I'm not so much saying that it never ever ever happens, only that a hypothetical free terminal +1 card card is good as often.
Yeah.

Okay, almost as often.

[jotheonah]

Whoever suggested Ruined Black Market (which only and always contains Scout) already won this game.

[jotheonah]

Breaking News from RGG guys:

There is going to be one more Dominion Expansion following the Guilds. It will be called Dominion: Scout Still Sucks. It will contain 500 cards with the theme "Cards that don't make Scout any better" and the subthemes of "Cards that don't care about Scout" and "Cards that actually make buying Scout a lot worse."

[rinkworks]

Ruined Envoy?  Reveal the top card of your deck.  The player to your left chooses one to discard; put the rest in your hand?

[werothegreat]

Ruined Possession.  The player to your left takes an extra turn after this one, in which you can see all cards he does, just to spite you.  When he trashes a card, he can choose to set it aside, putting it in his discard at the end of his turn, if he feels like it.  Also, he can play Outpost to infinity.

[Insomniac]

Insomniac plays a Graverobber
...trashing a Cultist
......Drawing 3 Cards
......Gaining a province
Insomniac buys a province.

[jotheonah]

I mentioned this before, but I'm intrigued by the Ruins/ Scrying Pool interaction. Coupled with some villages, or failing that Vaults, I could see it as a way to make your deck being flooded with tiny terminal actions into an asset.

[clb]

I mentioned this before, but I'm intrigued by the Ruins/ Scrying Pool interaction. Coupled with some villages, or failing that Vaults, I could see it as a way to make your deck being flooded with tiny terminal actions into an asset.

And Poor Houses! (which I think you mentioned before, and also counts as a tiny terminal, along with the ruins.)

[Listerfiend]

Ruins are better than curses for your opponent much of the time because they are actions.

Library can skip over ruins but not curses. Seems like a decent counter to them in general.
Transmute can trash them for Duchys.
They power up Vineyard.
Scrying Pool likes them.
Graverobber can trash them.
In general they are a little better for Cornucopia cards that care about differently named cards. Menagerie, Harvest, Fairgrounds.

They are worse for a few cards.

Shanty Town is worse than it already is.
Farming Village and Golem pass over curses but hit ruins.
Rabble will discard your opponents ruins.
Hunting Party won't skip over differently named ruins.

[jotheonah]

Ruins should give us a new Max Fairgrounds score, if anyone cares to calculate it. And Menagerie is gonna be a decent counter to ruins attacks.

[werothegreat]

Ruins should give us a new Max Fairgrounds score, if anyone cares to calculate it. And Menagerie is gonna be a decent counter to ruins attacks.

10 + 1 (bane) + 4 (treasures) + 4 (victory) + 1 (potion) + 5 (tourney) + 5 (ruins) + 1 (curse) = 31

31/5*2=12 each.

I'm ignoring Black Market for sanity's sake.

[GendoIkari]

Ruins should give us a new Max Fairgrounds score, if anyone cares to calculate it. And Menagerie is gonna be a decent counter to ruins attacks.

No point to calculating Fairgrounds at the moment; in the middle of a new set being previewed. How many cards would you count from the new set? We don't yet know how many differently named cards Dark Ages has for sure.

[werothegreat]

Odd thing - Poor House cannot serve as a Bane...

[ftl]

I bet this has been mentioned, but ruins are going to be an amazing pile to pile out with goons. Costs 0 and doesn't give negative VP like curses!

[play2draw]

Ruins should give us a new Max Fairgrounds score, if anyone cares to calculate it. And Menagerie is gonna be a decent counter to ruins attacks.

No point to calculating Fairgrounds at the moment; in the middle of a new set being previewed. How many cards would you count from the new set? We don't yet know how many differently named cards Dark Ages has for sure.

True. Considering that this set has 35 kingdom cards instead of the usual 25, and five of these cards are Ruins, it wouldn't surprise me if another five cards are Shelters.

[werothegreat]

Ruins should give us a new Max Fairgrounds score, if anyone cares to calculate it. And Menagerie is gonna be a decent counter to ruins attacks.

No point to calculating Fairgrounds at the moment; in the middle of a new set being previewed. How many cards would you count from the new set? We don't yet know how many differently named cards Dark Ages has for sure.

True. Considering that this set has 35 kingdom cards instead of the usual 25, and five of these cards are Ruins, it wouldn't surprise me if another five cards are Shelters.

Ruins aren't Kingdom cards.

[LastFootnote]

True. Considering that this set has 35 kingdom cards instead of the usual 25, and five of these cards are Ruins, it wouldn't surprise me if another five cards are Shelters.

Ruins aren't Kingdom cards.

Yeah, the 35 Kingdom cards don't include Ruins or Shelters.

[play2draw]

Good point. I take it back.

[aaron0013]

Not sure if anyone has suggested this yet but a ruined gardens would be awesome!
-1 point for every 10 cards in your deck.

It's like a sometimes-super curse!

[jonts26]

But the ruins do partially explain why we need 500 cards for only  35 kingdom cards. Still 100 MIA, though.

[jsh357]

Didn't Donald say Dark Ages would have cards you can only get from other cards?  I'm guessing that explains the missing ones...

[WanderingWinder]

But the ruins do partially explain why we need 500 cards for only  35 kingdom cards. Still 100 MIA, though.

Well, some of those 100 are victory cards, which get 12 instead of 10.

[WanderingWinder]

Didn't Donald say Dark Ages would have cards you can only get from other cards?  I'm guessing that explains the missing ones...

This was largely speculated, but I don't remember Donald ever saying it.

[jsh357]

Here it is:

This is the 7th addition to the game of Dominion. It is 500 cards but is not a standalone. It adds 35 new Kingdom cards to Dominion, plus new bad cards you give to other players (Ruins), new cards to replace starting Estates (Shelters), and cards you can only get via specific other cards.

[jonts26]

But the ruins do partially explain why we need 500 cards for only  35 kingdom cards. Still 100 MIA, though.

Well, some of those 100 are victory cards, which get 12 instead of 10.

Well even if the other 30 kingdom cards are all victory types, we are still missing a ton.

[jonts26]

Here it is:

This is the 7th addition to the game of Dominion. It is 500 cards but is not a standalone. It adds 35 new Kingdom cards to Dominion, plus new bad cards you give to other players (Ruins), new cards to replace starting Estates (Shelters), and cards you can only get via specific other cards.

Also this:

There are cards that do something when trashed, cards that care about the trash, cards that upgrade themselves, and ways to upgrade other cards.

So this seems like you trash a card to gain a better card that cant be gotten any other way. A few of those cards would certainly help to round out the 500.

[clb]

But the ruins do partially explain why we need 500 cards for only  35 kingdom cards. Still 100 MIA, though.

Well, some of those 100 are victory cards, which get 12 instead of 10.

Well even if the other 30 kingdom cards are all victory types, we are still missing a ton.

Which is what I think ties into the idea of cards being gained only through other cards - I think there are piles of 10 cards (or some other number) that, like prizes, are not part of the kingdom, but can be gained by specific in-game actions; trash a squire, gain a knight; trash a knight, gain a crusader, etc - knights and crusaders cannot be bought and would have a price (0?) that excludes them or includes them, at Donald's perogative, in grave-robber-like actions.

ninja'ed by Jonts. oh well.

[sherwinpr]

But the ruins do partially explain why we need 500 cards for only  35 kingdom cards. Still 100 MIA, though.

Well, some of those 100 are victory cards, which get 12 instead of 10.

Well even if the other 30 kingdom cards are all victory types, we are still missing a ton.

Which is what I think ties into the idea of cards being gained only through other cards - I think there are piles of 10 cards (or some other number) that, like prizes, are not part of the kingdom, but can be gained byt specific in-game actions; trash a squire, gain a knight; trash a knight, gain a crusader, etc - knights and crusaders cannot be bought and would have a price (0?) that excludes them or includes them, at Donald's perogative, in grave-robber-like actions.

ninja'ed by Jonts. oh well.

Although it's not really adding much to the discussion there will probably also be at least 35 randomizer cards, at 5 victory cards in the set (and I won't be surprised if there are no others, but 5 seems like a round number), that makes exactly 55 cards MIA.

[jonts26]

I don't remember from other sets, but do blank cards count towards the total?

[WanderingWinder]

But the ruins do partially explain why we need 500 cards for only  35 kingdom cards. Still 100 MIA, though.

Well, some of those 100 are victory cards, which get 12 instead of 10.

Well even if the other 30 kingdom cards are all victory types, we are still missing a ton.

Hence the "some".

[bedlam]

Probably the "cards that can only be gained via other specific cards" refers to the looters handing out the ruins, right?

[WanderingWinder]

Probably the "cards that can only be gained via other specific cards" refers to the looters handing out the ruins, right?

Except that the ruins are listed separately in the same list, with the whole 'and' thing implying that they are different.

But I had the same thought at first.

[jonts26]

Probably the "cards that can only be gained via other specific cards" refers to the looters handing out the ruins, right?

Unlikely since you are free to just buy them.

[DG]

The ruins are quite interesting and I wouldn't make any assumptions yet about which would be the worst ruin. If we compare ruins with curses then +1 action or +1 card doesn't seem so bad at all and might allow you to sustain a deck with ruins. A major difficulty could be building a deck that can progress despite ruins when you don't know which specific ruins will be gained. Very simple or very complex decks might be the best, with anything in between getting into a mess.

There's also a consideration about cultists and villages. Cultists look as if they can be played without villages, however you would rarely have spare actions to to get any value from your own ruins so the ruins would be most detrimental.

Ruined cellar (discard 1, draw 1), Ruined estate (1 vp for 2 of them), ruined mine (add a copper to your hand) could all be possible ruins.

[CaptainNevada]

So, is the Cultist play another Cultist a one-time-only chance or can you go back to it if you draw another Cultist later on in your turn?  Mining Village is phrased so you must trash it immediately to gain the benefit of the $ (and yes, I except there might be some neat Mining Village / Graverobber tricks as Mining Village gives the draw and actions no matter what; I predict we will see a bit of cycling them in and out of the Trash on some boards). 

Cultist doesn't seem to have a time restriction on it though.  Possibilities?

[eHalcyon]

So, is the Cultist play another Cultist a one-time-only chance or can you go back to it if you draw another Cultist later on in your turn?  Mining Village is phrased so you must trash it immediately to gain the benefit of the $ (and yes, I except there might be some neat Mining Village / Graverobber tricks as Mining Village gives the draw and actions no matter what; I predict we will see a bit of cycling them in and out of the Trash on some boards). 

Cultist doesn't seem to have a time restriction on it though.  Possibilities?

Pretty sure it's restricted to immediately after you play the first Cultist.

You play Cultist.  You carry out everything you can on the card:

- draw 2
- distribute ruins
- play another Cultist, if you want to

If you don't do the third thing, then it's over and you continue with your turn as normal.

[engineer]

SO you can actually buy ruins if you want, right? Like in a Goons or Garden deck? Could this make Goons-Scrying Pool viable?

 Ruins are Actions so they're much worse than curses in any of the following decks: Golem, Farming Village, Hunting Party (imagine having 5 different kinds of ruins thrown at your HP deck!)

Man, I think the mere presence of looters in a kingdom will make Golem and HP worthless.  Just a couple of ruins in your deck basically causes these cards to completely dud quite often.  Once it happens a few times, there will be a snowball effect as the looting player keeps adding ruins to the Golem (or HP) deck.  I guess with 200 different types of cards, it's inevitable that the presence of a few cards could render a few other cards obsolete.  (Can anybody think of an example where that happens already? Lighthouse vs Sea Hag maybe?)

On the other hand, maybe I'm wrong, and the effect of ruins won't be as significant as it seems.  Or maybe there are other DA cards that help the situation, if they're available, such as ones that specialize in hunting for and trashing ruins.  Or maybe there's a +actions card which trashes ruins.

[engineer]

So, is the Cultist play another Cultist a one-time-only chance or can you go back to it if you draw another Cultist later on in your turn?  Mining Village is phrased so you must trash it immediately to gain the benefit of the $ (and yes, I except there might be some neat Mining Village / Graverobber tricks as Mining Village gives the draw and actions no matter what; I predict we will see a bit of cycling them in and out of the Trash on some boards). 

Cultist doesn't seem to have a time restriction on it though.  Possibilities?

Pretty sure it's restricted to immediately after you play the first Cultist.

You play Cultist.  You carry out everything you can on the card:

- draw 2
- distribute ruins
- play another Cultist, if you want to

If you don't do the third thing, then it's over and you continue with your turn as normal.

I agree.  To put it simply, you always have to resolve an action card (as much as possible) before you move on. 

For example, you can't play a Village, then a Spice Merchant, then a Conspirator, pick up a copper, and then trash it using the Spice Merchant.  If you played the SM before the Conspirator, then either you trash a treasure at that point or you move on to the Conspirator.

[ftl]

Man, I think the mere presence of looters in a kingdom will make Golem and HP worthless.  Just a couple of ruins in your deck basically causes these cards to completely dud quite often.  Once it happens a few times, there will be a snowball effect as the looting player keeps adding ruins to the Golem (or HP) deck.  I guess with 200 different types of cards, it's inevitable that the presence of a few cards could render a few other cards obsolete.  (Can anybody think of an example where that happens already? Lighthouse vs Sea Hag maybe?)

On the other hand, maybe I'm wrong, and the effect of ruins won't be as significant as it seems.  Or maybe there are other DA cards that help the situation, if they're available, such as ones that specialize in hunting for and trashing ruins.  Or maybe there's a +actions card which trashes ruins.

You're overreacting, I think. First, at WORST, Hunting Party will be a $5 Lab. Lab is already a $5 card. It'll ruin the traditional Hunting Party DECK (1 silver, 1 gold, 1 terminal silver, lots of HPs) but HP as a card will still be fine even in the presence of ruins. Whenever you get a Laboratory in a ruins-infested deck, HP would probably work no worse. It'll still skip over coppers and estates pretty well.

Likewise, you won't be able to make a "Golem Deck" where you get one or two actions and lots of golems. But there's nothing wrong with using Golem in a more standard way, as an engine component - it's still basically equivalent to Village+Lab (Draw 2 cards which are guaranteed to be actions and play them immediately) with, admittedly, a little less control. You'll want to play a Village before the golem because you won't have as much control over the outcome. But it'll still be playable. Perhaps a little too expensive, but still  reasonable.

They won't be worthless. They'll be weaker, but by no means worthless.

(And, BTW, Masquerade does shut down, like, Sea Hag or something. It's not unprecedented.)

[chesskidnate]

Hm... I wonder if cultist's ability of rapidly junking is strong enough to open silver/silver on an ambassador board(assuming amb can return ruins but would need multiples with same name in hand to return 2 at a time). The idea is that you can probably still hit early 5s against amb to buy cultists and the junking from the cultist happens more rapidly than cursers along with the effect of making the amb take longer to send junk back since it will probably be at a rate of 1 per turn ambassador is played if he's sending ruins

[david707]

My speculation:
Ruined Chapel: Trash a card
Shelter (replaces starting estates in a game with a looter):
Victory Reaction Cost 2
1 VP
Reveal to be unaffected by a looter.

[AJD]

First, at WORST, Hunting Party will be a $5 Lab.

I mean, that's not quite true. Lab won't go skipping over Silvers to hunt down your Ruins just because you already have Silver in hand, for instance.

[sherwinpr]

I don't remember from other sets, but do blank cards count towards the total?

Yes, they do.  Typically they're used for the leftover excess that nothing can be done with.  I think only one set had 11 or more blank cards (and hence, could have had an extra kingdom card, that didn't; the secret histories mention this): Seaside with 288 Kingdom Cards (and randomizers) and 12 blank cards.

[rinkworks]

First, at WORST, Hunting Party will be a $5 Lab.

I mean, that's not quite true. Lab won't go skipping over Silvers to hunt down your Ruins just because you already have Silver in hand, for instance.

On the other hand, they might skip a Silver and pick up your Gold instead.  Pretty sure it's a wash between the two possibilities most of the time, the exception being if you're reliant on a single stack of something, like Minions, and don't care about anything else.  Then HP is inferior to Lab.  But bottom line, HP is still a solid $5 card even when an HP stack can't work.

[ftl]

On the other hand, if you're aiming to have a varied engine with different components, HP is still better for putting it together. If you have a villages in hand, HP has a higher chance of finding you a smithy instead of a village, and vice versa.

[shMerker]

How many hands do you people have?

[ftl]

At the moment, three. Dominion: Appendages came with 20 limbs of which I randomly pick four every day!

[play2draw]

So there are 500 cards in the set:
352 cards are Kingdom cards, assuming Feodum is the only Victory card (which seems unlikely).
35 cards are randomizer cards: 387.
50 are Ruins. It's likely that these too have randomizer cards, just as every other supply pile in the game.
Shelters replace the initial Estates. Thus, there are at least 18.

We've now accounted for 460 of the cards.

What follows is obviously silly speculation:

Take for instance, if there are two different types of shelter cards, then there would have to be at least another 18 in the set. If then these cards are also available in the supply, then you'll need another 20 cards + 2 for randomizer cards. This brings us to exactly 500. This, of course, only works if Feodum is the only Victory card in the set.

Alternatively, three different Shelters that are not supply cards would add an additional 54 instead of 18. This brings us to 496 cards. This means that we could have three more victory cards in the set to round out the expansion.

Edit: Alternatively, there could just be 40 blank cards in the set.

[AJD]

Man, Donald X has clearly been waiting eagerly to use the card name "Feodum" since, like, day one:

You want a Dominion!  In all directions lie fiefs, freeholds, and feodums.

[werothegreat]

Man, I think the mere presence of looters in a kingdom will make Golem and HP worthless.  Just a couple of ruins in your deck basically causes these cards to completely dud quite often.  Once it happens a few times, there will be a snowball effect as the looting player keeps adding ruins to the Golem (or HP) deck.  I guess with 200 different types of cards, it's inevitable that the presence of a few cards could render a few other cards obsolete.  (Can anybody think of an example where that happens already? Lighthouse vs Sea Hag maybe?)

On the other hand, maybe I'm wrong, and the effect of ruins won't be as significant as it seems.  Or maybe there are other DA cards that help the situation, if they're available, such as ones that specialize in hunting for and trashing ruins.  Or maybe there's a +actions card which trashes ruins.

You're overreacting, I think. First, at WORST, Hunting Party will be a $5 Lab. Lab is already a $5 card. It'll ruin the traditional Hunting Party DECK (1 silver, 1 gold, 1 terminal silver, lots of HPs) but HP as a card will still be fine even in the presence of ruins. Whenever you get a Laboratory in a ruins-infested deck, HP would probably work no worse. It'll still skip over coppers and estates pretty well.

Likewise, you won't be able to make a "Golem Deck" where you get one or two actions and lots of golems. But there's nothing wrong with using Golem in a more standard way, as an engine component - it's still basically equivalent to Village+Lab (Draw 2 cards which are guaranteed to be actions and play them immediately) with, admittedly, a little less control. You'll want to play a Village before the golem because you won't have as much control over the outcome. But it'll still be playable. Perhaps a little too expensive, but still  reasonable.

They won't be worthless. They'll be weaker, but by no means worthless.

(And, BTW, Masquerade does shut down, like, Sea Hag or something. It's not unprecedented.)

Masquerade shuts down Torturer.  "Oh?  I can take a Curse in hand?  Why thank you!  Just the perfect thing to pass to you via Masquerade!"

[werothegreat]

Also - what the hell is on the Cultist's face?

[blueblimp]

Man, I think the mere presence of looters in a kingdom will make Golem and HP worthless.  Just a couple of ruins in your deck basically causes these cards to completely dud quite often.  Once it happens a few times, there will be a snowball effect as the looting player keeps adding ruins to the Golem (or HP) deck.  I guess with 200 different types of cards, it's inevitable that the presence of a few cards could render a few other cards obsolete.  (Can anybody think of an example where that happens already? Lighthouse vs Sea Hag maybe?)

On the other hand, maybe I'm wrong, and the effect of ruins won't be as significant as it seems.  Or maybe there are other DA cards that help the situation, if they're available, such as ones that specialize in hunting for and trashing ruins.  Or maybe there's a +actions card which trashes ruins.

You're overreacting, I think. First, at WORST, Hunting Party will be a $5 Lab. Lab is already a $5 card. It'll ruin the traditional Hunting Party DECK (1 silver, 1 gold, 1 terminal silver, lots of HPs) but HP as a card will still be fine even in the presence of ruins. Whenever you get a Laboratory in a ruins-infested deck, HP would probably work no worse. It'll still skip over coppers and estates pretty well.

Likewise, you won't be able to make a "Golem Deck" where you get one or two actions and lots of golems. But there's nothing wrong with using Golem in a more standard way, as an engine component - it's still basically equivalent to Village+Lab (Draw 2 cards which are guaranteed to be actions and play them immediately) with, admittedly, a little less control. You'll want to play a Village before the golem because you won't have as much control over the outcome. But it'll still be playable. Perhaps a little too expensive, but still  reasonable.

They won't be worthless. They'll be weaker, but by no means worthless.

(And, BTW, Masquerade does shut down, like, Sea Hag or something. It's not unprecedented.)

Masquerade shuts down Torturer.  "Oh?  I can take a Curse in hand?  Why thank you!  Just the perfect thing to pass to you via Masquerade!"

Not in my experience. Since Masquerade trashes fairly slowly, a Torturer chain increases your deck size a lot faster than Masquerade can trim it. That's bad news, because the Torturer-chaining player will have a Masquerade too, and end up with a nice trim deck and a draw engine.

Masquerade does make Torturer less scary, but it definitely doesn't make it ignorable.

[werothegreat]

Man, I think the mere presence of looters in a kingdom will make Golem and HP worthless.  Just a couple of ruins in your deck basically causes these cards to completely dud quite often.  Once it happens a few times, there will be a snowball effect as the looting player keeps adding ruins to the Golem (or HP) deck.  I guess with 200 different types of cards, it's inevitable that the presence of a few cards could render a few other cards obsolete.  (Can anybody think of an example where that happens already? Lighthouse vs Sea Hag maybe?)

On the other hand, maybe I'm wrong, and the effect of ruins won't be as significant as it seems.  Or maybe there are other DA cards that help the situation, if they're available, such as ones that specialize in hunting for and trashing ruins.  Or maybe there's a +actions card which trashes ruins.

You're overreacting, I think. First, at WORST, Hunting Party will be a $5 Lab. Lab is already a $5 card. It'll ruin the traditional Hunting Party DECK (1 silver, 1 gold, 1 terminal silver, lots of HPs) but HP as a card will still be fine even in the presence of ruins. Whenever you get a Laboratory in a ruins-infested deck, HP would probably work no worse. It'll still skip over coppers and estates pretty well.

Likewise, you won't be able to make a "Golem Deck" where you get one or two actions and lots of golems. But there's nothing wrong with using Golem in a more standard way, as an engine component - it's still basically equivalent to Village+Lab (Draw 2 cards which are guaranteed to be actions and play them immediately) with, admittedly, a little less control. You'll want to play a Village before the golem because you won't have as much control over the outcome. But it'll still be playable. Perhaps a little too expensive, but still  reasonable.

They won't be worthless. They'll be weaker, but by no means worthless.

(And, BTW, Masquerade does shut down, like, Sea Hag or something. It's not unprecedented.)

Masquerade shuts down Torturer.  "Oh?  I can take a Curse in hand?  Why thank you!  Just the perfect thing to pass to you via Masquerade!"

Not in my experience. Since Masquerade trashes fairly slowly, a Torturer chain increases your deck size a lot faster than Masquerade can trim it. That's bad news, because the Torturer-chaining player will have a Masquerade too, and end up with a nice trim deck and a draw engine.

Masquerade does make Torturer less scary, but it definitely doesn't make it ignorable.

You misunderstand.  If I have a Masquerade in hand when you play Torturer, I'm just going to take the Curse to pass to you.  Obviously if the Masquerade wasn't in my hand, I'd probably seriously consider the discard option.  And at the same time I'd probably be getting Torturers of my own.

[Loschmidt]

My speculation:
Ruined Chapel: Trash a card

Exactly what I was thinking. It can marginally counteract the problem of having heaps of ruins. But if you use your only action to trash a single card things are pretty dire.

[LastFootnote]

Also - what the hell is on the Cultist's face?

A mask, presumably.

[engineer]

You misunderstand.  If I have a Masquerade in hand when you play Torturer, I'm just going to take the Curse to pass to you.  Obviously if the Masquerade wasn't in my hand, I'd probably seriously consider the discard option.  And at the same time I'd probably be getting Torturers of my own.

But the whole power of the torturer chain is that multiple torturers get played each turn.  Sure, you take the first curse, but what about the second?  And the third time around, do you discard the first two curses, or take a third curse so you can pass one of them away with masq?

Also, all those dominant relationships (ooh -- another one: library vs. ghost ship!  That's a hard counter) are dependent on actually having the counter card in hand.  Thus, the countered card could still be useful (though perhaps unadvisable).  With cultist vs. golem, the cultist can wreck the golem deck whenever it's played, no matter the opponent's hand.

Anyway, I'll cop to the fact that I may be overreacting.  But if a couple ruins make a golem whiff, that does definitely handicap the golem deck.

[Loschmidt]

Okay, the problem with Feodum is that you need 9 Silvers to get it up to Duchy level, which is always a good benchmark.

9 Silvers may be no problem with Trader, which can get you that by trashing a Platinum, but with cards that just gain one Silver at a time, it's going to be a real task.

And if we look at Jack, it's very good at getting Provinces, so why would you want to go full throttle on Feoda?

I don't like that it's specific to Silver.
It seems like a missed opportunity to me.
The card from the fan contest which gives 1 VP for every separate set of Copper-Silver-Gold seems more fun to me and more useful.

While 1VP for every set of copper-silver-gold seems cute, I think it will play very similarly to just counting gold. And as donald says, counting gold is a bit too boring because gold is awesome.

I think it'll be interesting to see a card that wants you to megadose on silvers. I think it has the chance to play very differently to gardens/silk road. Because your economy wont be completely trashed if you've got a boat load of silvers once you've emptied the feoda you can compete for the remaining provinces, as opposed to 3-pilling something small.

[trunks_402]

Hi, been lurking, just getting into Dominion last couple of months, and perhaps someone else mentioned this:

If Shelters are a replacement for Estates, and everyone's starting deck has 3 Estates, and Shelters protect you from Looters:

Then in a game with Cultists everyone starts with 3 anti-Looter cards in their deck.  Wouldn't that make Cultists a lot weaker?

[jonts26]

Hi, been lurking, just getting into Dominion last couple of months, and perhaps someone else mentioned this:

If Shelters are a replacement for Estates, and everyone's starting deck has 3 Estates, and Shelters protect you from Looters:

Then in a game with Cultists everyone starts with 3 anti-Looter cards in their deck.  Wouldn't that make Cultists a lot weaker?

Everything about shelters is mostly speculation. All we know is that shelters replace starting estates. And we don't even know if they replace all of them. Or if they really protect against ruins, or at least in the way we think. So, either join in the baseless speculation or just sit tight. We'll know either way soon enough.

[sherwinpr]

50 are Ruins. It's likely that these too have randomizer cards, just as every other supply pile in the game.

It's not true that every supply pile has a randomizer card:

• Potion from Alchemy
• Colony and Platinum from Prosperity
• The base cards from Intrigue
• The base cards from Base Cards

Although the last two are functionally equivalent to the base cards from Dominion, so they don't really count.  It's also worth noting that the prize cards don't have randomizers, although they aren't supply cards.

[dor]

50 are Ruins. It's likely that these too have randomizer cards, just as every other supply pile in the game.

It's not true that every supply pile has a randomizer card:

• Potion from Alchemy
• Colony and Platinum from Prosperity
• The base cards from Intrigue
• The base cards from Base Cards

Although the last two are functionally equivalent to the base cards from Dominion, so they don't really count.  It's also worth noting that the prize cards don't have randomizers, although they aren't supply cards.

Potions, Platinums and the base cards do have randomizers, but not for randomizing. I believe their purpose is to lay face down at the bottom of their supply piles so it would be clearer how many piles have ended.

Prizes don't have those since they are not in the supply.

[eHalcyon]

Potions, Platinums and the base cards do have randomizers, but not for randomizing. I believe their purpose is to lay face down at the bottom of their supply piles so it would be clearer how many piles have ended.

Or maybe it's just easier to print them that way.

[Davio]

50 are Ruins. It's likely that these too have randomizer cards, just as every other supply pile in the game.

It's not true that every supply pile has a randomizer card:

• Potion from Alchemy
• Colony and Platinum from Prosperity
• The base cards from Intrigue
• The base cards from Base Cards

Although the last two are functionally equivalent to the base cards from Dominion, so they don't really count.  It's also worth noting that the prize cards don't have randomizers, although they aren't supply cards.

Fixed that for you.

In fact, at least in the copy I have, the Province, Duchy, Estate, Gold, Silver, Copper and Curse piles all have randomizer cards. You need to be careful not to start with 13 Provinces. Don't know why it keeps putting that tag here ->[/list]

[Asklepios]

Whoever suggested Ruined Black Market (which only and always contains Scout) already won this game.

Thanks! But I still maintain that Ruined Chancellor was funnier. Seriously, I was drinking tea at the time, and it squirted out of my nose.

[Asklepios]

Re: Cultist chaining, its no better than Familiar chaining really. You get the +2 cards instead of +1 card, but the additional "cursing" (or ruinating, I should say, to coin a word) action is conditional on drawing another Cultists.

BUT its a lot less disruptive to your tempo to seek Cultist than Familiar, as $5 is easier to get to than $3P, what with Horse Traders etc, and $5 remains more useful in the later game than $3P. Familiar is very often bypassable on a fast Kingdom - while they arse around getting the potion then the familiar, you can Hunting Party-Gold or FishingVillage-Wharf or whatever to victory. In contrast, a $5 Cultist disrupts your tempo a lot less, and has the side effect of inflicting diversity in an opposing deck, which is weak if they're using fairgrounds or menageries, but strong if they're playing Hunting Parties. In fact, I'm confident that a Cultist or two will demolish a traditional Hunting Party rush deck.

Then, of course, there's the trashing effect, which is an awesome little bonus. One of the main worries with Familiar is that once the curses run out, you're left with a card that does nothing. Sure, if you draw it with an action in hand, you can cycle it, but if you draw it on a terminal draw, its a dead card. Familiar really benefits from a trash-for-benefit buddy to work with. Cultist, otoh, needs just any trashing card to make it trash-for-benefit, and given that you'll likely want the trasher to get rid of ruins anyway, that makes Cultist + Any Trasher a fantastic combo.

On the downside, Cultist is an attack that works strongly in engines, I think, but the very nature of its attack will make engine building harder (a bit like Mountebank or Witch, in that sense). That makes me think that 2 Cultists + BM might be better than trying to build Cultists + most Engines, unless there's Chapels and Fishing Villages and Wharfs and other super strong stuff like that.

Overall I'd rate Cultist as a top tier card, almost up there with the other strong $5 attacks, like Mountebank and Witch. Well, perhaps equal with Witch, and marginally worse than Mountebank. But definitely better than Saboteur, and superior to Familiar by virtue of its cost and built in trash for benefit.

[Thisisnotasmile]

Shelter (replaces starting estates in a game with a looter):
Victory Reaction Cost 2
1 VP
Reveal to be unaffected by a looter.

This seems obsolete to me. Why not just write "Each other player may reveal an Estate from his hand. If he doesn’t..." on each of the Looters and save <however many Estates there are> cards for better uses?


Also, I've been staying out of these discussions as much as possible, but since I'm here now, there was a short discussion a few pages back about the order of operations if you upgrade a Cultist into a Gold with Watchtower in hand. Can you top-deck the gold before you draw 3 or not? My take is this, but I'd like to hear an official answer:

You trash the Cultist with the Upgrade. There are now two things waiting to happen; Gain a card costing 6 AND draw 3. Active player gets to choose which goes first. If they choose to gain Gold first, he may reveal a Watchtower and top-deck it immediately, and then draw it. If he chooses to draw first then he won't get the Gold until afterwards.

The way I see it, the player can choose which way it happens.

[rspeer]

Ruined Wishing Well
Name a card. Reveal the top card of your deck.

[Whitecrow]

My guess on ruins: (serious)

Ruined Village : +2 actions
Ruined Smithy : +2 cards
Ruined Mine : Gain a silver
Ruined Estate : Trash this card. Gain an Estate.

All cards are from the original set.
They should do something good however little it does. So +1 action or +1 card is pointless.
I think above are just enough for $0 cards like copper.

[Thisisnotasmile]

Oh and Develop's not so bad afterall:

Develop Feodum into Silver/Graverobber on deck. Gain 3 Silvers.

Next turn graverob your Feodum back (if it's still there) and use your Silver + whatever else (probably more Silvers) to buy another Feodum/Silver.

Yeah, it's a three card combo but so what.

[ftl]

Also, I've been staying out of these discussions as much as possible, but since I'm here now, there was a short discussion a few pages back about the order of operations if you upgrade a Cultist into a Gold with Watchtower in hand. Can you top-deck the gold before you draw 3 or not? My take is this, but I'd like to hear an official answer:

I think Donald's weighed in on this; you get the cards first.

You do what upgrade says in order. First, you trash a cultist - but wait! When the cultist is trashed you draw 3 cards! - and then you gain a gold, which you can top-deck. You don't get to wait for something else to happen.

First you trash, then you gain, and the +3 cards happens when you trash, not when you gain.

[Asklepios]

Also, I've been staying out of these discussions as much as possible, but since I'm here now, there was a short discussion a few pages back about the order of operations if you upgrade a Cultist into a Gold with Watchtower in hand. Can you top-deck the gold before you draw 3 or not? My take is this, but I'd like to hear an official answer:

I think Donald's weighed in on this; you get the cards first.

You do what upgrade says in order. First, you trash a cultist - but wait! When the cultist is trashed you draw 3 cards! - and then you gain a gold, which you can top-deck. You don't get to wait for something else to happen.

First you trash, then you gain, and the +3 cards happens when you trash, not when you gain.

(insert blue dog comment here)

[Nimmy]

Ruined Navigator:

Look at the top 4 Ruinses on the Ruins pile.
Either put all of them to the bottom of the pile in any order, or put them back on top of the pile in any order.

[iMystic]

Ruined Workshop:
Gain a card costing up to 0

Ruined Warehouse:
+1 card, discard 1 card

Ruined Chancellor:
+1$
when you play this, you may discard your discard pile. (confusion card indeed)

[Thisisnotasmile]

Ruined Workshop:
Gain a card costing up to 0

Ruined Warehouse:
+1 card, discard 1 card

Ruined Chancellor:
+1$
when you play this, you may discard your discard pile. (confusion card indeed)

Ruined Chancellor is pretty good with Tunnel.

[iMystic]

Ruined Workshop:
Gain a card costing up to 0

Ruined Warehouse:
+1 card, discard 1 card

Ruined Chancellor:
+1$
when you play this, you may discard your discard pile. (confusion card indeed)

Ruined Chancellor is pretty good with Tunnel.

damn right ... didn't think of that ~.~

[LastFootnote]

50 are Ruins. It's likely that these too have randomizer cards, just as every other supply pile in the game.

It's not true that every supply pile has a randomizer card:

• Potion from Alchemy
• Colony and Platinum from Prosperity
• The base cards from Intrigue
• The base cards from Base Cards

Although the last two are functionally equivalent to the base cards from Dominion, so they don't really count.  It's also worth noting that the prize cards don't have randomizers, although they aren't supply cards.

Fixed that for you.

In fact, at least in the copy I have, the Province, Duchy, Estate, Gold, Silver, Copper and Curse piles all have randomizer cards. You need to be careful not to start with 13 Provinces. Don't know why it keeps putting that tag here ->[/list]

Dude, you didn't fix that for him. You broke it. He wasn't referring to the Dominion base set, he was referring to Dominion: Base Cards, which contain the new artwork version of Copper, Silver, Gold, Estate, Duchy, Province, Platinum, Colony, Potion, and Trash. Hence why he capitalized "Base Cards". And he's right, it doesn't include randomizers for any of them.

[mborda]

I have a feeling that in the middle of the Ruins... you could maybe find a Hidden Treasure...

[bedlam]

Is Feodom pronounced Feeodum or Fyodum?

[werothegreat]

Is Feodom pronounced Feeodum or Fyodum?

FEY-oh-dum.

[eHalcyon]

Shelter (replaces starting estates in a game with a looter):
Victory Reaction Cost 2
1 VP
Reveal to be unaffected by a looter.

This seems obsolete to me. Why not just write "Each other player may reveal an Estate from his hand. If he doesn’t..." on each of the Looters and save <however many Estates there are> cards for better uses?

I don't think Shelter will just protect from Looters.  But if it did, the "reveal an Estate" wording would just take too much space on the cards.

[Thisisnotasmile]

Shelter (replaces starting estates in a game with a looter):
Victory Reaction Cost 2
1 VP
Reveal to be unaffected by a looter.

This seems obsolete to me. Why not just write "Each other player may reveal an Estate from his hand. If he doesn’t..." on each of the Looters and save <however many Estates there are> cards for better uses?

I don't think Shelter will just protect from Looters.  But if it did, the "reveal an Estate" wording would just take too much space on the cards.

I copied the wording from Young Witch. If it's not too much space there, why would it be here?

Not that it matters, because it's not what Shelters do (probably).

[eHalcyon]

I copied the wording from Young Witch. If it's not too much space there, why would it be here?

Not that it matters, because it's not what Shelters do (probably).

Because the Looters can have lots of other effects.  Cultist is far more complicated than YW.  Plus, YW is just one card and there are three Looters.

[WheresMyElephant]

I copied the wording from Young Witch. If it's not too much space there, why would it be here?

Not that it matters, because it's not what Shelters do (probably).

Because the Looters can have lots of other effects.  Cultist is far more complicated than YW.  Plus, YW is just one card and there are three Looters.

But moving the text to another card doesn't reduce the complexity. It marginally improves legibility (although cards like Trade Route or Pirate Ship still contain a ton more text than Cultist with one extra sentence would) but it doesn't reduce the number of rules you have to memorize. That would be a pretty lousy reason to print 12 extra cards IMO.

[eHalcyon]

But moving the text to another card doesn't reduce the complexity. It marginally improves legibility (although cards like Trade Route or Pirate Ship still contain a ton more text than Cultist with one extra sentence would) but it doesn't reduce the number of rules you have to memorize. That would be a pretty lousy reason to print 12 extra cards IMO.

But who knows how complex the other two Looters will be?  Maybe they don't have room.  Adding that Estate rule will clutter up not just Cultist but the other two cards as well.  You don't have to memorize any new rule because that rule would be printed on the Shelter card.

I still don't think that's what Shelters will do though.

[werothegreat]

But moving the text to another card doesn't reduce the complexity. It marginally improves legibility (although cards like Trade Route or Pirate Ship still contain a ton more text than Cultist with one extra sentence would) but it doesn't reduce the number of rules you have to memorize. That would be a pretty lousy reason to print 12 extra cards IMO.

But who knows how complex the other two Looters will be?  Maybe they don't have room.  Adding that Estate rule will clutter up not just Cultist but the other two cards as well.  You don't have to memorize any new rule because that rule would be printed on the Shelter card.

I still don't think that's what Shelters will do though.

Also, Shelters may not be a supply pile.  They may just be in your deck, and you only get three.  So as your deck gets thicker, you're less able to block Looters, and gaining Estates won't do anything for you.  There will be a difference between Shelters and Estates.

[Saucery]

Ruined Treasure Map: Trash this and another Ruined Treasure Map. If you do, gain nothing. That didn't work out so well.

Q: If you develop a cultist into a border village and a smithy (gaining a cultist), do you draw 3 cards first or put the BV/smithy on top first?

[werothegreat]

Ruined Treasure Map: Trash this and another Ruined Treasure Map. If you do, gain nothing. That didn't work out so well.

Q: If you develop a cultist into a border village and a smithy (gaining a cultist), do you draw 3 cards first or put the BV/smithy on top first?

Draw 3 cards first.

Easy enough to figure out:

Develop is a series of steps - trash, gain, top-deck.

Cultist has a "when" clause - it occurs simultaneously with the trashing.

So Develop is thinking 1, 2, 3.  The Cultist's under-the-line activates on step 1.  The top-decking is step 3.

[PSGarak]

Ruined Treasure Map: Trash this and another Ruined Treasure Map. If you do, gain nothing. That didn't work out so well.

I think you mean to say: Gain 4 copper, put them on the top of your deck.

Ruined Jack of All Trades: Reveal the top card of your deck, and discard it. Gain a copper. Draw until you have 4 cards in hand. You may discard a card from your hand.

Ruined Watchtower: Draw until you have 4 cards in hand. Reaction: When you gain a card, you may reveal Ruined Watchtower. If you do, you may choose to either trash the Ruined Watchtower, or put it on the top of your deck.

Ruined Minion: +1 Action. All other players discard their hand and draw 5 cards.

Ruined Duchess: +1$. If this card is on top of the Ruins pile, you may choose to gain it when you gain an Estate.

Ruined Council Room: All players draw a card.

Ruined Nobles: Choose one: +1 Action, or +1 Card.

[aaron0013]

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

IT JUST DAWNED ON ME

SHELTERS PROTECT YOU FROM LOOTERS





i.e.

Shelter
Victory-Reaction
$2
0 VP

When another player plays a Looter card, you may reveal this from your hand.  If you do, you are unaffected by that Looter.

Lol......he currently has +9 for a false statement!  Wish I could do that....

[werothegreat]

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

IT JUST DAWNED ON ME

SHELTERS PROTECT YOU FROM LOOTERS





i.e.

Shelter
Victory-Reaction
$2
0 VP

When another player plays a Looter card, you may reveal this from your hand.  If you do, you are unaffected by that Looter.

Lol......he currently has +9 for a false statement!  Wish I could do that....

It was a guess that seemed right at the time. 

[aaron0013]

Yeah I don't blame you.  I was actually thinking the same thing

[feelingzwontfade]

If it's Ruined Chapel I would guess: You may trash a card from your hand costing $0. To prevent getting benefits from the new trash-for-gain cards and limiting you to Copper/Curse/Ruins(although, Highway..).

[LastFootnote]

Another random thought: I think Feoda might be a great defense against Governor.

I just had a game where this proved correct. Please fill my deck with Silver and allow me to trash my Feoda for Governors/Duchies!

[Kirian]

Another random thought: I think Feoda might be a great defense against Governor.

I just had a game where this proved correct. Please fill my deck with Silver and allow me to trash my Feoda for Governors/Duchies!

N-n-n-n-necro!

[LastFootnote]

Yeah, I did a search to see if this was something I'd just discovered. It wasn't, so credit where credit's due!

[WanderingWinder]

I think it's an attempt to get the post count of this thread back into the 'most popular' threads list.

[werothegreat]

Stop posting here!  It highlights the Guilds Speculation subforum, and makes me think some new info has been released.

[Qvist]

Another random thought: I think Feoda might be a great defense against Governor.

I just had a game where this proved correct. Please fill my deck with Silver and allow me to trash my Feoda for Governors/Duchies!

Yeah, I did a search to see if this was something I'd just discovered. It wasn't, so credit where credit's due!

Cool, thanks. Could you post a log?