Print

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

[Tombolo]

This card is worth 1 VP for every copy of this card in your deck at the end of the game. (this copy included)

Good idea?  Bad idea?  Cost?  I think 5 sounds about right.  You need to take the lion's share to equal Provinces, and your opponent can pick up just three to stop you and they'd work as Duchies for them.

[Grujah]

Been suggested before.

Problem:
4-4 split means equal points. 3-5 means 16 points advantage for a guy that got 5 copies.

[eHalcyon]

This is the original version of Duke.  It's been tested and it doesn't work.  Read Donald X's Secret Histories to learn more.

[Archetype]

This was my submission for the Design Contest, is a current submission, and a card in my set.

I think it can work, just the cost has to scale too.

Here's the way I did it. I priced it at 9*. And put: In games with the card (I named it Plantation) each player starts with 10 tokens. The card costs 1$ less for every 2 Tokens you have, rounded down. Whenever you gain a Plantation, you remove a token.

It works well, but if one person does go for them, and has enough money to consistently buy one, you have to buy some to stop them.

[WanderingWinder]

This was my submission for the Design Contest, is a current submission, and a card in my set.

I think it can work, just the cost has to scale too.

Here's the way I did it. I priced it at 9*. And put: In games with the card (I named it Plantation) each player starts with 10 tokens. The card costs 1$ less for every 2 Tokens you have, rounded down. Whenever you gain a Plantation, you remove a token.

It works well, but if one person does go for them, and has enough money to consistently buy one, you have to buy some to stop them.

Which is almost the definition of an overpowered card. Even as you have it, it's too strong, for sure.

[Titandrake]

1 VP for $4
3 VP for $5
5 VP for $5
7 VP for $6
9 VP for $6
etc.

So it's as least as cost efficient as Duchy starting from the 2nd copy, and more cost efficient than Colony from the 3rd. Admittedly, you need 4 copies or more to want it over Duchy, but it still scales far too quickly. Basically, the problem is that I don't see a reason why you would ever want to buy a Province while the pile isn't empty.

[Archetype]

Hm yeah. I guess my math was off when making it.

This card probably can't be done then

[Kirian]

Yeah... basically the problem is that all alt VP cards count something else.  And most alt-VP cards only do better than Province at the extremes; Gardens needs 39 cards in deck to be a better buy than Province, Fairgrounds needs 15 uniques, Silk Road needs 15 VP cards, Duke needs 4 Duchies, etc.  On the other hand, all (except Duke) are better than Duchy even at moderate values: 19 cards, 10 uniques, 8 VP cards, respectively.

So now you have a card that counts itself and must use itself as an extreme.  But you don't have to buy both the card and the counted card, you only have to make one purchase.  To make this work well, the first couple of buys can't really be worth much, if anything.  You might be able to get away with decreasing every bonus, so something like this:

Card
$5*
When you gain this, gain a token.  At the end of the game, remove two tokens from your mat.  This card is worth 1 VP per token on your mat.
---
This card's cost is increased by $1 per token on your mat.

1 Card: 0 VP
2 Cards: 0 VP
3 Cards: 3 VP ($7 for 3 VP)
4 Cards: 8 VP ($8 for 5 VP - better than Duchy)
5 Cards: 15 VP ($9 for 7 VP - better than Province)
6 Cards: 24 VP ($10 for 9 VP)
7 Cards: 35 VP ($11 for 11 VP - better than Colony)
8 Cards: 48 VP

And I think even that is stretching the bounds of fitting the game well.  The first two purchases are worth nothing in order to balance the insane strength of having lots of them.

[Dubdubdubdub]

I've toyed around with this idea, based on the Unicorn in one of the first fan expansions to appear on BGG, back in the day (which was exactly what the OP suggested).
I based the penalty on the fact that Unicorn are usually solitary:

1VP for each Unicorn in your deck. When you gain this, reveal your hand. Gain a curse for each revealed Unicorn.

Untested, though.

[Rush_Clasic]

Random idea:

Natural Reserve (5)
Victory
As an additional cost to buy this, trash a Victory card from your hand.
Worth 1 VP per Natural Reserve you have.

Forces you to buy other Victories in order to make this work. There's a lot of ways you can implement this type of self-regulation, but trashing greens seems the nicest idea.

[eHalcyon]

I had a similar idea a while ago.  I submitted a reversed version of it to the mini-set design contest, which turns out actually makes it a broken card (reversed being that it got CHEAPER as you bought more of them, while also growing in VP worth).

Here is the original I had:

Enchanted Forest
$4* -- Victory

This is worth 1 VP per Forest token you have.

This costs $1 more per Forest token you have.  When you buy this, gain a Forest token.

------

Here is a chart for how it grows.  Apologies for the misalignment -- tabs don't carry over well.

$ ($total)   points each (total points)
4         1
5 (9)         2 (4)
6 (15)      3 (9)      with 3 purchased, equivalent to having purchased 3 duchy
7 (22)      4 (16)
8 (30)      5 (25)
9 (39)      6 (36)   with 6 purchased, worth 6 provinces but costs much less overall
10 (49)      7 (49)
11 (60)      8 (64)


I think this might actually work.  It gets expensive enough that you can't piledrive everything unless you have a real game plan to get there.

[ConMan]

I've toyed around with this idea, based on the Unicorn in one of the first fan expansions to appear on BGG, back in the day (which was exactly what the OP suggested).
I based the penalty on the fact that Unicorn are usually solitary:

1VP for each Unicorn in your deck. When you gain this, reveal your hand. Gain a curse for each revealed Unicorn.

Untested, though.

Still pretty crazily overpowered, especially on certain boards - if it's a strong trashing board, then don't worry about the Curses; if it's a Cursing board, you're going to get them anyway so don't worry about them (unless you can hand them out faster so you don't even gain any when you pick up Unicorns); if there aren't any big card drawing Actions or some discarders like Warehouse you can filter them out of your hand so you never get Curses. In all of those cases, the Unicorn is no worse than the non-Cursing version of the card. Without those cards, then the loss of momentum involved in getting both Unicorns and Curses might be enough to make it a non-dominant strategy, but I'm still not convinced that there's a good price point for it.

[Kirian]

I had a similar idea a while ago.  I submitted a reversed version of it to the mini-set design contest, which turns out actually makes it a broken card (reversed being that it got CHEAPER as you bought more of them, while also growing in VP worth).

Here is the original I had:

Enchanted Forest
$4* -- Victory

This is worth 1 VP per Forest token you have.

This costs $1 more per Forest token you have.  When you buy this, gain a Forest token.

------

Here is a chart for how it grows.  Apologies for the misalignment -- tabs don't carry over well.

$ ($total)   points each (total points)
4         1
5 (9)         2 (4)
6 (15)      3 (9)      with 3 purchased, equivalent to having purchased 3 duchy
7 (22)      4 (16)
8 (30)      5 (25)
9 (39)      6 (36)   with 6 purchased, worth 6 provinces but costs much less overall
10 (49)      7 (49)
11 (60)      8 (64)


I think this might actually work.  It gets expensive enough that you can't piledrive everything unless you have a real game plan to get there.

But again, the important thing is marginal VP/$, not total.  The third purchase of this card ($6 = 5 VP) is better than a Province in terms of efficiency.  The fourth purchase ($7 = 7 VP) is better than a Colony.  This is disastrously overpowered.

[One Armed Man]

Why marginal and not total? You don't buy the first one because it is efficient. You buy the first one because it makes the other buys efficient. 7VP for 7$ isn't better than a Colony, since it takes up more space in your deck than Colony (especially because you have 3 copies).

Note that I still dislike recursive victory because it is hard to transition into and out of.

[eHalcyon]

I had a similar idea a while ago.  I submitted a reversed version of it to the mini-set design contest, which turns out actually makes it a broken card (reversed being that it got CHEAPER as you bought more of them, while also growing in VP worth).

Here is the original I had:

Enchanted Forest
$4* -- Victory

This is worth 1 VP per Forest token you have.

This costs $1 more per Forest token you have.  When you buy this, gain a Forest token.

------

Here is a chart for how it grows.  Apologies for the misalignment -- tabs don't carry over well.

$ ($total)   points each (total points)
4         1
5 (9)         2 (4)
6 (15)      3 (9)      with 3 purchased, equivalent to having purchased 3 duchy
7 (22)      4 (16)
8 (30)      5 (25)
9 (39)      6 (36)   with 6 purchased, worth 6 provinces but costs much less overall
10 (49)      7 (49)
11 (60)      8 (64)


I think this might actually work.  It gets expensive enough that you can't piledrive everything unless you have a real game plan to get there.

But again, the important thing is marginal VP/$, not total.  The third purchase of this card ($6 = 5 VP) is better than a Province in terms of efficiency.  The fourth purchase ($7 = 7 VP) is better than a Colony.  This is disastrously overpowered.

Hm, OK, that's a different way of counting.  I'm still not sure it's the better way to look at it though.  But what if the base cost was increased?

[zahlman]

Been suggested before.

Problem:
4-4 split means equal points. 3-5 means 16 points advantage for a guy that got 5 copies.

So... they're effectively worth 8VP each assuming the pile is reliably drained. That isn't by itself what I'd call a problem, seeing as Colony exists.

[eHalcyon]

Been suggested before.

Problem:
4-4 split means equal points. 3-5 means 16 points advantage for a guy that got 5 copies.

So... they're effectively worth 8VP each assuming the pile is reliably drained. That isn't by itself what I'd call a problem, seeing as Colony exists.

The problem is how do you price it?

[zahlman]

Natural Reserve (5)
Victory
As an additional cost to buy this, trash a Victory card from your hand.

A little better Dominion-wording, I think:

When you buy this, trash a Victory card from your hand. If you don't, return this to the Supply.

The problem is how do you price it?

At $9.5, clearly.

I see your point, though. If you make it expensive, you remove the ability to assume that it'll reliably get piled.

[eHalcyon]

From the secret histories:

Duke: Another card added when the set went to 25 cards. I picked this particular card for this set to round out the victory card theme. Baron makes Estates matter, Duke makes Duchies matter.

This card started its life in another set as a victory card worth one point per copy of it you had. That just varied way too much. You have to charge enough for it to be fair when you get a lot of them, and then it's horrible when you don't. The fix was to have it count another card. The other card had to be one that was always out, and Duchy was the obvious choice.

[petrie911]

My version of this card went like this

1VP
Worth an additional 1VP for every 2 of this card in your deck.

This means the 3-5 split is only a 9 point gap and the 6-2 split a 22 point gap, both less than the corresponding province splits.  It was priced at $6.

[NoMoreFun]

Why not something like

Red:
Worth 1VP for every Blue in your deck
In games using this, add the "Blue" supply pile to the kingdom

Blue:
Worth 1VP for every Red in your deck

[zahlman]

Because with both of them depending on the other (unlike Duke/Duchy), if they're cheap enough to encourage piling them, then they basically become a single pile of 16 8VP cards (if I win the split 9/7, it doesn't matter whether I have 8 Reds and 1 Blue, or 5 Reds and 4 Blues; either way, I got 16 more VP than you). If you make it only go one way, then the value drops in half, making them more reasonable (it's okay to require them to pile to reach full value if the full reached value isn't too high; that avoids the swinginess problem observed with the original Duke).

This sort of thing should be fairly intuitive to people familiar with Stone Age, btw.

[AJD]

Natural Reserve (5)
Victory
As an additional cost to buy this, trash a Victory card from your hand.

A little better Dominion-wording, I think:

When you buy this, trash a Victory card from your hand. If you don't, return this to the Supply.

It'd better be "when you gain", actually. Remember that on-buy effects technically happen before the gain—so with the above "when you buy" language, you'd actually still end up gaining the card.

[zahlman]

Really? I thought "buy" was a subset of "gain", not a separate thing that happens first :/ Thanks for the heads-up.

[Rush_Clasic]

Using "additional cost" is such a cleaner process, though.