Dominion > Variants and Fan Cards

Empty Supply Piles

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rinkworks:
City is one of the most interesting cards in the game, due to the way it uses empty supply piles.  It got me thinking there is room for more kingdom cards that use this idea -- in particular, cards for which the strategy isn't always quite the same, despite using the same underlying idea of a card that grows in power as supply piles are exhausted.

Investment
$5 - Treasure
Worth $2.  Worth an additional $1 per empty supply pile.

Mad Scientist
$3 - Action
+1 Card, +1 Action.  For each empty supply pile, +1 Card.

Burglar
$5 - Action/Attack
+3 Cards.  For each empty supply pile, +1 Card.
With no empty supply piles, each other player having 5 or more cards discards his hand and draws 5 cards.
With 1 empty supply pile, each other player having 4 or more cards discards his hand and draws 4 cards.
With 2 or more empty supply piles, each other player having 3 or more cards discards his hand and draws 3 cards.

Although these cards all follow a certain pattern -- overpriced at level 1, underpriced at level 2, and crazy powerful at level 3 -- I suspect the strategies you'd use with these cards are quite different.  Whereas a City is still useful as a Village at level 1 and can be bought up before any supply piles are depleted, I suspect you'd never want a Mad Scientist before some other supply pile was gone.  There would also be a difference in how *many* you want to stock up on.  Even at level 3, you'd not want a whole lot of Burglars in a kingdom without extra actions, though two or three would probably be a priority.

There's probably room for a cursing attack of this kind, too.  Maybe something like this:

Sorceress
$5 - Attack
Each other player gains a curse.
If 1 or more supply piles are empty, +2 Cards, +1 Action.
If 2 or more supply piles are empty, +$1.

The idea here would be that the Level 1 card is inferior to Sea Hag, more expensive, and equally useless for your own deck.  But the attack is still powerful and -- more to the point -- helps to exhaust that first pile, at which point a deck overcrowded with terminal Sorceresses suddenly comes alive as a Laboratory deck.  (The Level 3 power-up is an afterthought; I don't know what would be best there.)

I haven't tested any of these ideas yet.  Any thoughts?

chesskidnate:
mad scientist seems like it might be too strong, with ironworks you're probably forced to go for them and with colonies it's probably reasonable opening silver/madscientist and just trying to drain the pile asap.

philosophyguy:
Yeah, Mad Scientist is too cheap. At $3 it's relatively easy to get multiple buys per turn (plus Ironworks, HoP, etc.), and as soon as the pile is empty it becomes a Lab. $4 seems more reasonable.

Jimmmmm:
Some of these "For each empty supply pile" cards would get pretty crazy if you manage to empty a 3rd/4th/5th pile at the start of your turn...

grep:

--- Quote from: Jimmmmm on August 30, 2011, 10:37:02 pm ---Some of these "For each empty supply pile" cards would get pretty crazy if you manage to empty a 3rd/4th/5th pile at the start of your turn...

--- End quote ---
It's really a part of fun. You can plan some really strong superturns based on immediate depleting of several piles. To work well, there should be some helpers:

Prayer Beads
Action, $4
Gain a card with cost $4 or less. For each empty supply pile, gain another card of the same kind.

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