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[WanderingWinder]

So we all know that balance is a huge issue when designing dominion cards. You can't make a card that is so powerful that you play it all the time, and it totally dominates everything (even though it might be fair, because everyone has equal access), because that makes things very formulaic, and not very fun. Similarly, you can't make a card that's so weak that you never ever ever use it, because that's really boring too. Okay, scout got printed. But you know what I mean.
But there is this other issue that is absolutely related to this, which might even be worse. And that is the card which, most of the time, is basically worthless, but in that pretty rare occasion where it's useful, it's game-warpingly dominant. This is what I call FBI - fancy balance issues. I know from first-hand experience, this is really easy to do. And the tricky thing is that, on average, the card is at a reasonable power level. It's just that in any individual game, in every individual game, it is not.
This leads to another tidbit of note about power levels; there are ten kingdom cards in every game, and most often, most of them are not going to be used in the optimum strategy, and that's okay. If a card is useful in half the kingdoms it is in, that's great design. If it's only good a quarter of the time, that's fine too. So long as it's not degenerate in those cases.

[NoMoreFun]

What printed cards would you say have FBI?

[blueblimp]

What printed cards would you say have FBI?

Maybe Treasure Map? Though Warehouse/TMap is merely good, not game-warpingly dominant.

Outpost is another candidate, since it's usually awful, but when it's good, it's a must-buy. That's also sort of true of Possession. I like both of these cards though.

[qmech]

It's fine to have cards which are very powerful some of the time because part of the skill of the game is recognising those situations when they occur.  Outpost, Possession and IGG are all good examples of potentially strong cards that aren't always worth buying (some are worth buying more often than others).

I don't think there are any (pre-DA) cards that are unbalanced in the way you suggest, but it's certainly something frequenters of this sub-forum need to bear in mind.

[Grujah]

Develop. 

[Eevee]

I don't think any of the existing cards suffer from this tbh. Common problem with fan made cards though.

[WanderingWinder]

What printed cards would you say have FBI?

None. These have been tested well enough. I see it all the time with fan cards though (including my own). I'm sure Donald had his share, but they got weeded out or fixed during testing.

[DStu]

What printed cards would you say have FBI?

None. These have been tested well enough. I see it all the time with fan cards though (including my own). I'm sure Donald had his share, but they got weeded out or fixed during testing.

But this also shows that there is a lot of tolerance. 

Outpost was already mentioned, but anyway, you only want one of it. So it might almost double the power of your deck, but it's not that dominating the game, as you still have to play correctly with the 9 other cards to get the use out of Outpost.
Counting House is probably even more niche, and has a stronger influence on the gameplay, as say a counter to MB, you might end up just buying CH, Coppers and VPs.
Coppersmith is easily a terminal +$7, or even more, when the engine supports it.

[WanderingWinder]

What printed cards would you say have FBI?

None. These have been tested well enough. I see it all the time with fan cards though (including my own). I'm sure Donald had his share, but they got weeded out or fixed during testing.

But this also shows that there is a lot of tolerance. 

Outpost was already mentioned, but anyway, you only want one of it. So it might almost double the power of your deck, but it's not that dominating the game, as you still have to play correctly with the 9 other cards to get the use out of Outpost.
Counting House is probably even more niche, and has a stronger influence on the gameplay, as say a counter to MB, you might end up just buying CH, Coppers and VPs.
Coppersmith is easily a terminal +$7, or even more, when the engine supports it.

There's a difference between a card being strong, or game-changing, and it being game-warping.

[Robz888]

I think Fool's Gold is close to suffering from FBI. It's very, very dominant, or ignorable, basically every time.

[Jfrisch]

I think game-warping might be the wrong word here. Game warping is good, game trivializing is bad. It's also not just a function of power level. KC and Goons are both absurdly, absurdly powerful. But they still require interesting strategy in the game's where they are involved. 3 cost treasure-map may very well be weaker than goons... but it tends to lead to much more boring strategies. A card is game-destroying if it encourages strategies which don't require hard decisions. This is rather different than just plain strength.

[blueblimp]

I think game-warping might be the wrong word here. Game warping is good, game trivializing is bad. It's also not just a function of power level. KC and Goons are both absurdly, absurdly powerful. But they still require interesting strategy in the game's where they are involved. 3 cost treasure-map may very well be weaker than goons... but it tends to lead to much more boring strategies. A card is game-destroying if it encourages strategies which don't require hard decisions. This is rather different than just plain strength.

This is also why I still like Possession. OK, it may be game-warping when it shows up with King's Court and trashing (also Amb/Masq), but playing correctly in those games is tricky and interesting.

[Kahryl]

Torturer. Useless without a village, too strong with one.

[WanderingWinder]

I think game-warping might be the wrong word here. Game warping is good, game trivializing is bad. It's also not just a function of power level. KC and Goons are both absurdly, absurdly powerful. But they still require interesting strategy in the game's where they are involved. 3 cost treasure-map may very well be weaker than goons... but it tends to lead to much more boring strategies. A card is game-destroying if it encourages strategies which don't require hard decisions. This is rather different than just plain strength.

This. This a hundred times.

[popsofctown]

I don't think the problem is being defined correctly.  If a card is really strong when it's strong and really weak when it's weak, that's okay, the question is whether in games where decisionmaking is trivialized by a card very clearly saying, "Yes, you are going to want to buy me this game, and you don't have to decide whether you should", are there still other choices to be made?  Is the Federal Agent deck easy to build?

Outpost is not a problematic card, and nothing like it can be, because you can't stack the card, and therefore there are other choices that must be made.  Fool's Gold is a problematic card because it is very straightforward to build in boards that support it - open with the +buy source, buy nothing but Fool's Golds, then buy Provinces, maybe buying a Smithy variant on one of the turns you miss 8$.

I was quite perturbed when my Outpost variant, the infamous Boysinberry, was accused of being too strong when it's strong and too weak when it's weak (it's actually weak all around, I just priced it that way because I knew people would complain about strength, and complain they did).  The card had an anti-stack mechanic and unclear decisions remained, at the very least for the opponent.

JoaT does not dominate many games but is so difficult a strategy to vary when it is dominant that it is a very crappy card.

[eHalcyon]

I don't think the problem is being defined correctly.  If a card is really strong when it's strong and really weak when it's weak, that's okay, the question is whether in games where decisionmaking is trivialized by a card very clearly saying, "Yes, you are going to want to buy me this game, and you don't have to decide whether you should", are there still other choices to be made?  Is the Federal Agent deck easy to build?

Outpost is not a problematic card, and nothing like it can be, because you can't stack the card, and therefore there are other choices that must be made.  Fool's Gold is a problematic card because it is very straightforward to build in boards that support it - open with the +buy source, buy nothing but Fool's Golds, then buy Provinces, maybe buying a Smithy variant on one of the turns you miss 8$.

I was quite perturbed when my Outpost variant, the infamous Boysinberry, was accused of being too strong when it's strong and too weak when it's weak (it's actually weak all around, I just priced it that way because I knew people would complain about strength, and complain they did).  The card had an anti-stack mechanic and unclear decisions remained, at the very least for the opponent.

JoaT does not dominate many games but is so difficult a strategy to vary when it is dominant that it is a very crappy card.

I think Boysenberry was panned because of just how crazy it was.  Did people say it was too strong?  I didn't think it was.

[popsofctown]

Someone said it was too strong when it's strong and too weak when it's weak.
People who actually took the time to think about it realized that it was weak.  I think it would have been perfect as a weak 4$. 

Even the people who said nice things about the card didn't give it an approval vote at the end.  It's kinda frustrating for a card to get butted out because it's too unique in a contest about creating something new..

It's not just hubris either, I voted for a lot of the novel card submissions that got very low scores because they change the way we think about Dominion. 

[eHalcyon]

Someone said it was too strong when it's strong and too weak when it's weak.
People who actually took the time to think about it realized that it was weak.  I think it would have been perfect as a weak 4$. 

Even the people who said nice things about the card didn't give it an approval vote at the end.  It's kinda frustrating for a card to get butted out because it's too unique in a contest about creating something new..

It's not just hubris either, I voted for a lot of the novel card submissions that got very low scores because they change the way we think about Dominion.

I think you have to tread the line carefully.  You want something novel so that it is interesting, but not something too far out.  The latter makes it really hard to judge balance.

[WanderingWinder]

Someone said it was too strong when it's strong and too weak when it's weak.
People who actually took the time to think about it realized that it was weak.  I think it would have been perfect as a weak 4$. 

Even the people who said nice things about the card didn't give it an approval vote at the end.  It's kinda frustrating for a card to get butted out because it's too unique in a contest about creating something new..

It's not just hubris either, I voted for a lot of the novel card submissions that got very low scores because they change the way we think about Dominion. 

Part of it is an inherent thing with the structure of such a contest - it's very hard to know how good or bad something novel is without extensive playtesting, so it's really hard to give such a thing a green light (clearly nobody actually has the time to extensively test ALL the submissions, so I expect that at least the vast majority of people test none of them). It's a lot easier to gauge the power of simple things, so there you go.

[FishingVillage]

I think game-warping might be the wrong word here. Game warping is good, game trivializing is bad. It's also not just a function of power level. KC and Goons are both absurdly, absurdly powerful. But they still require interesting strategy in the game's where they are involved. 3 cost treasure-map may very well be weaker than goons... but it tends to lead to much more boring strategies. A card is game-destroying if it encourages strategies which don't require hard decisions. This is rather different than just plain strength.

This. This a hundred times.

So... if I may be humored, where would Laboratory sit?

For the most part there aren't really any difficult decisions to actually playing it; you play it to fetch 2 or you don't. You still have an Action left after playing it so you can keep going (maybe another Lab?), and it's usually better to have more cards than less so why not? It's usually a good idea to pick up a bunch of Labs as well, as Labs can't screw up other Labs and putting them in your own deck will deny them from others if that's really so important to you. Since Lab's got such a low baseline for working remarkably, it's not as though one has to do any special concessions or deck balancing to make them work optimally. You might overdraw eventually from too many Labs... but that's probably for the best, as the overdraw will let you brute force through green cards later.

[rinkworks]

I think game-warping might be the wrong word here. Game warping is good, game trivializing is bad. It's also not just a function of power level. KC and Goons are both absurdly, absurdly powerful. But they still require interesting strategy in the game's where they are involved. 3 cost treasure-map may very well be weaker than goons... but it tends to lead to much more boring strategies. A card is game-destroying if it encourages strategies which don't require hard decisions. This is rather different than just plain strength.

This. This a hundred times.

So... if I may be humored, where would Laboratory sit?

For the most part there aren't really any difficult decisions to actually playing it; you play it to fetch 2 or you don't. You still have an Action left after playing it so you can keep going (maybe another Lab?), and it's usually better to have more cards than less so why not? It's usually a good idea to pick up a bunch of Labs as well, as Labs can't screw up other Labs and putting them in your own deck will deny them from others if that's really so important to you. Since Lab's got such a low baseline for working remarkably, it's not as though one has to do any special concessions or deck balancing to make them work optimally. You might overdraw eventually from too many Labs... but that's probably for the best, as the overdraw will let you brute force through green cards later.

I think the difference is that a Lab chain isn't a complete strategy, as it won't win the game for you on its own.  You have to figure something else to add in, and it isn't necessarily obvious what that something else is.

[jonts26]

I think game-warping might be the wrong word here. Game warping is good, game trivializing is bad. It's also not just a function of power level. KC and Goons are both absurdly, absurdly powerful. But they still require interesting strategy in the game's where they are involved. 3 cost treasure-map may very well be weaker than goons... but it tends to lead to much more boring strategies. A card is game-destroying if it encourages strategies which don't require hard decisions. This is rather different than just plain strength.

This. This a hundred times.

So... if I may be humored, where would Laboratory sit?

For the most part there aren't really any difficult decisions to actually playing it; you play it to fetch 2 or you don't. You still have an Action left after playing it so you can keep going (maybe another Lab?), and it's usually better to have more cards than less so why not? It's usually a good idea to pick up a bunch of Labs as well, as Labs can't screw up other Labs and putting them in your own deck will deny them from others if that's really so important to you. Since Lab's got such a low baseline for working remarkably, it's not as though one has to do any special concessions or deck balancing to make them work optimally. You might overdraw eventually from too many Labs... but that's probably for the best, as the overdraw will let you brute force through green cards later.

Lab/Big Money is a very weak strategy. Likely, if you want to play a money game, there's a better card to get. You might still pick up labs with $5 but maybe not. In an engine, Labs are great, but there's other stuff you want too. So deciding when to get labs vs other things is non-trivial.

[Jfrisch]

Well, lab cost 5. 5 cost cards in general have fairly heavy competition. lab conflicts with terminal drawers so you have to worry about that. Lab also gets weaker during greening. So lab responds differently to different types of decks and has a lot of competition at the price point. It also enables engines in general which (usually) require harder decisions. So I fail to see why lab acts as a counterexample?

[FishingVillage]

Well, lab cost 5. 5 cost cards in general have fairly heavy competition. lab conflicts with terminal drawers so you have to worry about that. Lab also gets weaker during greening. So lab responds differently to different types of decks and has a lot of competition at the price point. It also enables engines in general which (usually) require harder decisions. So I fail to see why lab acts as a counterexample?

Well I figure that Lab is a card that doesn't have a lot of difficult decisions when it comes to buying it or playing it, but is still a fairly powerful card, so why avoid it? My opinion was that Lab is very strong and also not very nuanced, so it would be a no brainer to go and get Labs whenever (and also throw in Gold sometime of course). Seems that I am incorrect in this thinking though, so thanks everyone for humoring me.

[zahlman]

What printed cards would you say have FBI?

Maybe Treasure Map? Though Warehouse/TMap is merely good, not game-warpingly dominant.

City.