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[Destierro]

Lately, I've been thinking more and more about cursers that give options. Some ideas:

$4
Debt Collector
Each other player may choose: Gain a curse; or the person who played this gains a Silver, putting it in hand.
Action-Attack

A card where you are stuck between slowing yourself down, and speeding your opponent up. If they dont take the curse it's a terminal silver, and once the curses are gone, it's completely useless.

$5
Poisoned Chalice
+2$
Each other player may choose: Gain a curse; or gain two Coppers, putting one on top of their deck and the other in hand.
Action-Attack

This one gives an interesting choice. You can get +1$ for this turn, but add two junk cards to your deck, one of which you will see instantly, or gain the curse.

3$
Salted Field
2VP
+2 buys
You may gain a curse. If you do, +1$
__________________________________________________________________________________________
At the end of the game, if there are no curses left in the supply, each curse is worth 1 VP instead of -1 VP
Action-Victory

This gives a second pile of estates that can run extremely quickly, but aren't worth anything unless they are all gone. Too weak? Perhaps, but I like the concept below the line.

[eHalcyon]

Consider how the cards behave with more than 2 players.  Debt Collector may become too powerful.

Not sure how I feel about Salted Field.  It nerfs other Cursers on the same board, but maybe it's still OK.  Estates are still junk... eh.  I don't know.

[Awaclus]

Debt Collector is political in games with three or more players. It could work if it was "Gain a curse; or each other player gains a Silver, putting it in his hand".

[jackelfrink]

One that I have been playtestinig a lot recently is this

Old Gypsy Woman
Action
Cost:3

+1 action
+1 buy

Each other player may put a treasure card from their hand into your hand. If they don't, they gain a curse. If the curse pile is empty, trash this and gain a card costing up to 5.

Mechanic wise, its kind of a cross between Beggar and Familiar. The junk cards go into your hand for increased buying power, and the cursing is non-terminal so you can be hit with this multiple times in a single turn. But as far as the spirit of the game goes, it feels more like a Torturer deck. The other players are gleefully trashing either coppers, trimming down to a super efficient deck, But the moment they run out of coppers is usually right around the same moment that the other player gets a deck of 30 with 10 Old Gypsy Woman cards in it. Then things go haywire.

I programmed this in to the simulator and the average victory point graph is bananas. The opponent graph usually goes up gradually until turn 10 and at that time no other progress is ever made. Old Gypsy Woman decks are flat up until around turn 20 or so and then they turn nearly at a right angel and go straight up.

[XerxesPraelor]

That reminds me, how do you run Dominate with fan cards? I can't figure how to make it work.

[jackelfrink]

That reminds me, how do you run Dominate with fan cards? I can't figure how to make it work.

I downloaded it and have a copy running on my local machine. Cards have to be programmed in coffeesacript but they just get added to cards.coffee using a text editor.

While we are at it, do you know how to run fan-cards in Geronimoo?

[XerxesPraelor]

no, but i can't really figure out how to do anything with it, so yeah.

I was just testing to see if it worked, and programmed it in fine into cards.coffee, but I don't know how to run the program now. Can you help me there?

After the beginning, Gypsy woman seems quite powerful, especially versus a strategy that gets lots of silver. It's very close to Familiar then, and without the potion cost.

[eHalcyon]

One that I have been playtestinig a lot recently is this

Old Gypsy Woman
Action
Cost:3

+1 action
+1 buy

Each other player may put a treasure card from their hand into your hand. If they don't, they gain a curse. If the curse pile is empty, trash this and gain a card costing up to 5.

Mechanic wise, its kind of a cross between Beggar and Familiar. The junk cards go into your hand for increased buying power, and the cursing is non-terminal so you can be hit with this multiple times in a single turn. But as far as the spirit of the game goes, it feels more like a Torturer deck. The other players are gleefully trashing either coppers, trimming down to a super efficient deck, But the moment they run out of coppers is usually right around the same moment that the other player gets a deck of 30 with 10 Old Gypsy Woman cards in it. Then things go haywire.

I programmed this in to the simulator and the average victory point graph is bananas. The opponent graph usually goes up gradually until turn 10 and at that time no other progress is ever made. Old Gypsy Woman decks are flat up until around turn 20 or so and then they turn nearly at a right angel and go straight up.

Well, how did the bots play with it?  This is a card that gives choices, and bots tend to be bad at making choices.

Old Gypsy Woman (I recommend changing this name -- it may be construed as rather offensive) looks fairly weak to me.  Early on it just lets opponents Ambassador their Copper to you, which speeds them up and slows you down.  They eventually should take the Curses instead, but by that time their deck should be humming along nicely.

[jackelfrink]

Can you help me there?

I have learned through hard experience not to do specific computer advice. Anything breaks and I am the one that gets blamed. I think the best option to do at this point is just direct you to the readme file at https://github.com/rspeer/dominiate/blob/master/README.md

Well, how did the bots play with it?  This is a card that gives choices, and bots tend to be bad at making choices.

I did it two ways. First was to say hand over copper but nothing else, the second I copied over the code from Spice Merchant and all its rules about being willing to trash silvers if so and so much money was in your deck and keeping such and such amount of coppers at hand all the time so they should use up extra buys grabbing coppers every now and then. The first option boted generally better.

Intuition told me the exact same thing you said. This is a self-junking card and self junking while at the same time letting your opponent trash is an outlandishly stupid idea. But both in the bots and with playtesting groups this turned out not to be the case. Mostly it is due to three-pile endings happening much sooner than expected. This card can pile drive not only Curses, but also pile drive the Duchys. And the extra +buy helps piledrive Estates. So in that way at least it is like Ill-Gotten Gains, in that it adds coppers to my hand to boost my buying power and rushes to a three pile ending. If I play an Ill-Gotten Gains deck with the intent of trying to get the most Providences, then Ill-Gotten Gains is going to look rather weak as well.

Something else I noticed is that tossing a curse to your opponent when they have a ten card deck is much more brutal an attack than tossing them a curse when they have a thirty card deck.

Someone could have a deck "humming along nicely" to the point that they could gain two Providences per turn starting on turn 15, but that will be worthless if the game ends on turn 14.

[eHalcyon]

Someone could have a deck "humming along nicely" to the point that they could gain two Providences per turn starting on turn 15, but that will be worthless if the game ends on turn 14.

That is not humming along nicely.  If you aren't gaining Provinces until turn 15, you've played a rather slow game.  With the opponent helping you trash, you really should be gaining Provinces much earlier.  Depends on the board though, of course.

[jackelfrink]

~sigh~

Ya know what. Ok then. I give up. You are right. The card sucks and the idea sucks. And all that play testing I did that demonstrated the sharp (and unexpected) twist that happens at mid-game is just a total figment of my imagination.

If you are just so eager to prove me wrong without bothering to playtest the card first, then fine. You win.

Im out.

[eHalcyon]

~sigh~

Ya know what. Ok then. I give up. You are right. The card sucks and the idea sucks. And all that play testing I did that demonstrated the sharp (and unexpected) twist that happens at mid-game is just a total figment of my imagination.

If you are just so eager to prove me wrong without bothering to playtest the card first, then fine. You win.

Im out.

Please don't take it the wrong way.  I did not actually say that the idea would not work, or even that it was bad -- just that the card looks weak.  Weak doesn't mean it can't be an interesting card.  My point about the speed of the game is more of a question about your playtesting.  You did not give very many details about the setup or how it actually played out.  You say that it can drain piles quickly -- how?  Are Curses going that quickly?  If other players are loading you up with lots of Copper, how are you cycling enough to actually drain the Curse pile?  While you are buying out the Duchies, what are opponents doing?  Why haven't they bought any Provinces, or bought some Duchies themselves?  The few details you give don't really tell the story, and saying that you can end the game on turn 14 with a win doesn't mean much when many engines could have gained several Provinces by then.

[ashersky]

Lately, I've been thinking more and more about cursers that give options. Some ideas:

$4
Debt Collector
Each other player may choose: Gain a curse; or the person who played this gains a Silver, putting it in hand.
Action-Attack

A card where you are stuck between slowing yourself down, and speeding your opponent up. If they dont take the curse it's a terminal silver, and once the curses are gone, it's completely useless.

$5
Poisoned Chalice
+2$
Each other player may choose: Gain a curse; or gain two Coppers, putting one on top of their deck and the other in hand.
Action-Attack

This one gives an interesting choice. You can get +1$ for this turn, but add two junk cards to your deck, one of which you will see instantly, or gain the curse.

3$
Salted Field
2VP
+2 buys
You may gain a curse. If you do, +1$
__________________________________________________________________________________________
At the end of the game, if there are no curses left in the supply, each curse is worth 1 VP instead of -1 VP
Action-Victory

This gives a second pile of estates that can run extremely quickly, but aren't worth anything unless they are all gone. Too weak? Perhaps, but I like the concept below the line.

Both Debt Collector and Poisoned Chalice, as worded, do nothing if your opponents don't choose anything.  I says your opponents "may" choose, so they don't have to.

[GendoIkari]

Debt collector sounds really weak (considering only 2 player games right now). It's basically a weaker version of Explorer that costs $4 instead of $5. The only time I could see choosing to take the curse is if it's pretty much the end game and I know that the extra $2 can get you the last Province. I don't think that a card that just said "Gain a Silver, putting it in your hand" would be too strong for $4, and this is a worse version of that (unless your opponent makes stupid choices).

[ta56636]

What about making it a gold not a silver?