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[blueblimp]

...what would you say? Would you vote for them?

[blueblimp]

Day 1: I might reject Graverobber immediately: a lot of text, gaining from the trash, and the weird lower bound on 3-to-6. Poor House is so strange, breaking so many rules, that I'd probably be confused and skip over it. Sage would get a vote, because hey, it's pretty harmless-looking.

Day 2: Feodum seems simple enough to get a vote, and it's an obviously-good realization of alt-VP-based-on-treasure. Cultist has a lot of text, and I'd be confused by the chaining mechanic, and the somewhat odd on-trash effect; and then introducing 5 new card types with it? No way it gets a vote.

Day 3: Squire looks complicated, and trash-to-gain-an-attack is weird, so I'd probably prefer a simpler card. Hermit/Madman even more complicated-looking!

Day 4: Rats is clever and simple-looking, so it might get a vote. Pillage/Spoils has a lot of text, so it might not.

This shows me how much faith I put in Donald X's playtesting...

[Dsell]

I would vote for sage. That card is so simple and brilliant.

Most of the rest of the cards are either attached to other cards (I'm not sure if this is allowed for the contests? I guess I should find out) or seem like high-skill cards. This is a really really good thing and I'm excited to learn how to use them really well! But, I think that also means they're harder to judge off the bat, which for me can be a point in its favor or it can cause to me pass over the card because I'm not sure.

I expect most people here would think squire was underpriced at $2, but I'm betting it's not! 

[ftl]

A lot of them wouldn't make it, because they really need to work as a set. They all combo with trashers and with each other, and looking at them individually, we'd probably think they're too niche. We'd probably be wrong, I bet Donald's tested them out and knows better, but I think that would be people's impressions around here. 

[ftl]

Also, looking through the mini-set-design contest results, it seems to me that this community shies away from power a little. Like, people are so worried about cards being broken, they make sure that the cards are never too exploitable. Whereas looking at a few of the recent Dark Ages cards, you immediately think "Wow, this could be awesome if you did ... ". T3 goons after a chapel/squire opening. A deck of only 2-cost cards that can buy colonies, Hamlet/Poorhouse/Chapel/Courtyard. Cultist chains - an attacking laboratory! I never got that impression from the community's victors. None of them stood out as "Hey, I would totally love to build a really powerful deck around this!"

It might be a side effect of designing cards without playtesting, or trying to get them right "the first time". Whereas the better way is probably to just design the card that looks awesome, and then playtest and find ways to make it not-broken if it is broken, and still keep it awesome, rather than trying to come up with a balanced card right off the bat, because an easy way to make a card balanced is to not push the envelope too much.

Just my thoughts. I'm not at all a card designer, so maybe I'm way off-base, please don't take this as me criticizing all the people who are, I know it's not easy!

[werothegreat]

This is not an expansion for new players.  This is an expansion full of tricky cards that will trip you up and sometimes outright destroy you (see: Rats) if you don't know what you're doing, but which will probably rule the game if you know how to play them correctly.  I've always loved obscene engines, and this set is where that love of obscenity translates into a viable strategy.

So yes, this involves breaking most of the rules that the community has come up with for fan cards.  Now notice that if Donald X ever made comments on these rules, it was usually to say "It's very difficult to make a balanced version of this" and never "You should never make a card like this."  Perhaps one reason why he discouraged such cards (if that's what he was going for) was so that we'd all have our socks blown off when we finally got Dark Ages.

[eHalcyon]

Something to keep in mind is that our fan cards (for this contest) are individual cards, whereas the DA cards being previewed are part of a full set.  Designing a single card, you want it to be relevant to something that already exists, whether it be cards in the set or cards in released sets.  This restriction keeps us from doing something far out (like the introduction of Ruins). 

Donald X. has the big picture -- actually, he creates the big picture -- so it's different for him.  He can introduce a new concept that makes no sense in the context of the existing cards and then make it relevant through some other cards in the same set.

As a community project, the only way we'd be able to do this is if we first agreed on some special theme or mechanic.  Otherwise, our individual submissions will almost always relate back to existing cards and mechanics.

[Titandrake]

The Dark Ages cards so far are yelling "HEY BUILD AROUND ME, I CAN BE THE CENTERPIECE", and the card design contest cards are saying "Oh hey, so I can fulfill this role in a strategy you're familiar with."

It's hard to make interesting cards that aren't horribly broken and impossible to cost

[theory]

I do think we tend to err on the side of caution partially because we introduce cards one by one.  Whereas if you get to pick out all 25 cards at once, you're more willing to stick in cards like Wharf and Mountebank and Goons, knowing that not every card is going to be that strong.

[rinkworks]

It's probably worth mentioning that Donald probably previewed the most game-defining DA cards.  Certainly all the weird things we knew about (Ruins, Shelters, self-upgrading cards, cards interacting with the trash, cards with on-trash abilities) are accounted for, and then some other weird things as well ($1-cost card, targeted discard, self-perpetuating card).  I recall this being roughly the case with Hinterlands too:  the previewed cards were things like Mandarin, Border Village, and Trader, rather than Cartographer, Oasis, and such.

Which is not to understate how dramatically Dark Ages has obviously already rocked the world of Dominion.  But I doubt the remaining unrevealed cards with average the same degree of distinctiveness as the previewed cards.

[werothegreat]

It's probably worth mentioning that Donald probably previewed the most game-defining DA cards.  Certainly all the weird things we knew about (Ruins, Shelters, self-upgrading cards, cards interacting with the trash, cards with on-trash abilities) are accounted for, and then some other weird things as well ($1-cost card, targeted discard, self-perpetuating card).  I recall this being roughly the case with Hinterlands too:  the previewed cards were things like Mandarin, Border Village, and Trader, rather than Cartographer, Oasis, and such.

Which is not to understate how dramatically Dark Ages has obviously already rocked the world of Dominion.  But I doubt the remaining unrevealed cards with average the same degree of distinctiveness as the previewed cards.

Also remember that Haggler, Jack of all Trades, Silk Road and Scheme were NOT previewed.

[rinkworks]

It's probably worth mentioning that Donald probably previewed the most game-defining DA cards.  Certainly all the weird things we knew about (Ruins, Shelters, self-upgrading cards, cards interacting with the trash, cards with on-trash abilities) are accounted for, and then some other weird things as well ($1-cost card, targeted discard, self-perpetuating card).  I recall this being roughly the case with Hinterlands too:  the previewed cards were things like Mandarin, Border Village, and Trader, rather than Cartographer, Oasis, and such.

Which is not to understate how dramatically Dark Ages has obviously already rocked the world of Dominion.  But I doubt the remaining unrevealed cards with average the same degree of distinctiveness as the previewed cards.

Also remember that Haggler, Jack of all Trades, Silk Road and Scheme were NOT previewed.

I'm not really sure what the point is, but Haggler didn't need showing off with Border Village representing that kind of mechanic.  Jack isn't anything to look at; it takes actual play to figure that one out.  Silk Road is a Gardens variant.  Scheme, on the other hand, does introduce a brand new game-changing mechanic that the previews hadn't covered, but I didn't rule out unpreviewed cards being game-changing -- only that the selection of cards previewed would be ones particularly worth showing off.

[GendoIkari]

It's probably worth mentioning that Donald probably previewed the most game-defining DA cards.  Certainly all the weird things we knew about (Ruins, Shelters, self-upgrading cards, cards interacting with the trash, cards with on-trash abilities) are accounted for, and then some other weird things as well ($1-cost card, targeted discard, self-perpetuating card).  I recall this being roughly the case with Hinterlands too:  the previewed cards were things like Mandarin, Border Village, and Trader, rather than Cartographer, Oasis, and such.

Which is not to understate how dramatically Dark Ages has obviously already rocked the world of Dominion.  But I doubt the remaining unrevealed cards with average the same degree of distinctiveness as the previewed cards.

Also remember that Haggler, Jack of all Trades, Silk Road and Scheme were NOT previewed.

I'm not really sure what the point is, but Haggler didn't need showing off with Border Village representing that kind of mechanic.  Jack isn't anything to look at; it takes actual play to figure that one out.  Silk Road is a Gardens variant.  Scheme, on the other hand, does introduce a brand new game-changing mechanic that the previews hadn't covered, but I didn't rule out unpreviewed cards being game-changing -- only that the selection of cards previewed would be ones particularly worth showing off.

Also remember that Donald had planned for a couple more days of previews than actually happened. When the entire list was spoiled; he stopped the previews.

[werothegreat]

It's probably worth mentioning that Donald probably previewed the most game-defining DA cards.  Certainly all the weird things we knew about (Ruins, Shelters, self-upgrading cards, cards interacting with the trash, cards with on-trash abilities) are accounted for, and then some other weird things as well ($1-cost card, targeted discard, self-perpetuating card).  I recall this being roughly the case with Hinterlands too:  the previewed cards were things like Mandarin, Border Village, and Trader, rather than Cartographer, Oasis, and such.

Which is not to understate how dramatically Dark Ages has obviously already rocked the world of Dominion.  But I doubt the remaining unrevealed cards with average the same degree of distinctiveness as the previewed cards.

Also remember that Haggler, Jack of all Trades, Silk Road and Scheme were NOT previewed.

I'm not really sure what the point is, but Haggler didn't need showing off with Border Village representing that kind of mechanic.  Jack isn't anything to look at; it takes actual play to figure that one out.  Silk Road is a Gardens variant.  Scheme, on the other hand, does introduce a brand new game-changing mechanic that the previews hadn't covered, but I didn't rule out unpreviewed cards being game-changing -- only that the selection of cards previewed would be ones particularly worth showing off.

Also remember that Donald had planned for a couple more days of previews than actually happened. When the entire list was spoiled; he stopped the previews.

Those would have been Tunnel and Inn, and he released the text he would have accompanied them with.