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[werothegreat]

Charity
Action - $1

+1 Buy
Reveal the top 5 cards of your deck.  Discard one revealed card per card in your hand.  Put the remaining revealed cards in your hand.

My intent was to create a $1 card.  Following upon Donald X's comment to my observation that Poor House was the only $1 card in Dark Ages (he said it's hard to make a card cost $1 and still be a card you'd want and yet fair to the price), I thought how best to achieve this, and ended up going with something analogous to Poor House.  In the beginning, this will be +1 Buy, +1 Card, which I think is pretty fairly priced at $1.  Obviously, this card would do best with Fishing Villages and Festivals.

Perhaps something like "Draw 4 cards, then discard down to 5" would have been more homologous to Poor House, but Warehouse already does that.

FAQ: If you have 5 or more cards in hand, just discard the 5 revealed cards, and don't draw anything.  Don't discard anything else.

[NoMoreFun]

This Card:Poor House::Wharf:Merchant Ship

I like it. It doesn't have the crazy potential of Poor House but it's more dependable. I also like how it mildly combos with Upgrade (and to a lesser extent Governor, Develop and Remake) which is important as that's when the card will find itself being unintentionally gained most often.

[Titandrake]

It's not +1 Card +1 Buy, it's +1 Buy, choose 1 card out of 5 while cycling through your deck. I'm not sure how strong that is, but it feels more like a $2 cost. $1 and $2 aren't that different, but someone it doesn't feel quite like Poor House.

[Schlippy]

I personally think the deck cycling with choosing cards would be to strong at $3 even.
Imagine you play Festival (or Fishing Village, or anything else that gives you at least one Action and leaves you with a hand size of 4) and Charity. In that case the Charity is more or less similar to Embassy, with a +Buy on top, and Embassy is so darn strong that it is priced at $5 _AND_ gives the other players a Silver when you buy it.
If you happen to have less cards, it is even better than Embassy.

I would buy a card that is better than Embassy in a lot of cases (and worse in others), has a +Buy on top and does not have the downside of giving my opponents a Silver for $5 in a lot of Kingdoms.


It would be a completely different story if you had to put back the revealed cards that you did not draw. That would be a lot worse, but imho probably still too strong for $1.

[eHalcyon]

This is "draw up to 5" with a filtering mechanic, which I think is actually rather strong.

Schlippy's comparison to Embassy is pretty good.  I would say that Embassy is still better in that you will always get more cards in hand (unless you've already drawn your deck) and you can discard from your hand.  But yeah, this is draw 2/5 if you can even get one other card out of your hand before you play it.  That's really strong.

I would say this card is better at $3 or $4.  Start testing at $3.

[Schlippy]

This is "draw up to 5" with a filtering mechanic, which I think is actually rather strong.

Schlippy's comparison to Embassy is pretty good.  I would say that Embassy is still better in that you will always get more cards in hand (unless you've already drawn your deck) and you can discard from your hand.  But yeah, this is draw 2/5 if you can even get one other card out of your hand before you play it.  That's really strong.

I would say this card is better at $3 or $4.  Start testing at $3.

Of course Embassy is better, but Embassy is also a card that you can not pick up at anytime you want, on the one hand because of its cost and on the other because it may give your opponents an early Silver for free.
It is hard to evaluate without playing with the card, but I think a.E. Fishing Village/Charity or Silver/Charity with Fishing Village on the board is an extremely fast and strong opening. It allows you to spam Fishing Villages and Charities and as soon as you draw Charity without any Estates or with 1-2 (3 when you are very unlucky) Fishing Villages you simply net 2 Fishing villages without even buying a second Silver.
It is probably also unbelievably strong against discard Attacks, as you will discard your bad cards in that case anyways and can choose the three best from your next 5 to supplement that.

[UltimaPenguin]

One thing that Poor House has that this doesn't (and I suspect is a large reason why Poor House ended up at $1) is a interesting interaction with the copper upgrade path. When you play a poor house, it usually doesn't matter if the other cards in your hand are coppers or clashing poor houses. But if you've got actions, swapping coppers for Poor Houses becomes a potentially great deal.

I can't think of anything similar going on with Charity. If you don't have actions, turning your coppers into a terminal $1 is pretty bad. Plus, with the +Buy, if its worth buying at $1, its probably worth buying at $2 as well. So I don't think it really fits in the $1 niche as well as Poor House does.

That said, unless the filtering aspect ends up being way strong, I don't really see anything necessarily problematic with pricing it as $1, it just isn't super interesting to me.

[Schneau]

I think this is an interesting card, but way too powerful for $1. Besides the things that have already been pointed out, this card would be very strong when your opponent plays discard attacks (both Militia and Ghost Ship styles). Let's say your opponent plays a Militia. You get to discard your two worst cards, then play Charity to draw the next best 3 of 5, which is essentially allowing you the best 5 out of 10 cards. In this situation, it is likely better for you if your opponent plays a discard attack, not worse.

I would price it at $2 or $3. Also, I'm not sure if the +1 Buy is important, but you'd have to think very carefully about having a +Buy on a $1 card, since it allows you to buy these much more easily. Not that I think that it's a huge deal on this card, but something to consider.

[werothegreat]

What distinguishes Charity from Embassy is that you can't discard from your hand.  If you've got a hand of four Estates and a Charity, you can't discard those Estates.