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[LastFootnote]

So the other day, I was thinking about all the fan cards that are some variation of "Blood Money"; a powerful card that's either worth negative VP or gains you a Curse when you gain it. The problems with such a card are documented by rinkworks in his Fan Card Creation Guide (Part II, #5). I've never been enamored of this sort of card. I felt like Cache (and more recently, Death Cart) was sufficiently filling this role.

However, with the advent of Dark Ages, which brought with it on-trash effects and Ruins, I've come up with what I hope is a fresh take on this sort of card. It's a new "penalty" card called Cave-In, which you gain when you buy certain, powerful cards.

Cave-In
Types: Cave-In
Cost: $0*
When you trash this, put it on top of your deck. (This is not in the Supply.)

It doesn't incur a VP penalty. Instead, it just takes up space in your deck. It's sort of like a tenacious Confusion. When I thought about it, I realized that the mechanic is very similar to Potions in Alchemy, but instead of having to buy an alternate currency, you pick up a Cave-In as part of the "cost" of the card.

Here are a few sample cards. I'm not sure they're balanced, but I'm mostly looking for feedback on whether this idea interests people. Of course, if you have criticism of specific cards, I'd love to hear that too.

Spelunker
Types: Action
Cost: $3
+1 Action. Reveal cards from your deck until you reveal a Cave-In. Put one of the revealed cards into your hand and discard the rest.
-------------------------------------------------
When you gain this, gain a Cave-In from the Cave-In pile.

Mining Team
Types: Action
Cost: $4
+3 Cards. +1 Action. Reveal your hand. If you revealed any Cave-Ins, discard 3 cards.
-------------------------------------------------
When you gain this, gain a Cave-In from the Cave-In pile.

Diamond Deposit
Types: Treasure
Cost: $5
Worth $1. When you play this, reveal your discard pile. +$1 per Victory card revealed. –$1 per Cave-In revealed, to a minimum of $0.
-------------------------------------------------
When you gain this, gain a Cave-In from the Cave-In pile.

Fortify
Types: Action
Cost: $5
+1 Action. Reveal the top card of your deck. Trash it and gain a card costing up to $3 more than it.
-------------------------------------------------
When you gain this, gain a Cave-In from the Cave-In pile.

Architect
Types: Action
Cost: $5
Look at the top 3 cards of your deck. Choose one: trash them; or draw them; or put them back on your deck in any order.
-------------------------------------------------
When you gain this, gain a Cave-In from the Cave-In pile.

As you can see, I'm trying to balance these cards such that you have to be mindful about how many you buy. They're powerful, but if you get too many, the Cave-Ins start to pile up and get in their way.

Anyhow, please let me know what you think. Thanks in advance!

EDIT: Additional Cards

Boomtown
Types: Action
Cost: $4
+2 Cards. +2 Actions.
-------------------------------------------------
When you gain this, gain a Cave-In from the Cave-In pile.

[Graystripe77]

Dude, I love this idea. It seems like it has a lot of potential too.

[eHalcyon]

Idea seems good; I like it.  Cave-In itself is a bit bland.

Spelunker looks OK.  I think it is similar to Scavenger and Sage.  More immediate than Scavenger (not to mention action instead of coin), more control than Sage.  $3 seems alright, especially because there is a tension between balancing number of Spelunkers and number of Cave-Ins.

Mining Team is a bit tricky.  It is REALLY powerful draw.  If you reveal a Cave-In, it is still a Warehouse, which costs $3 on its own.  Still not that bad (especially because you have at least one dead card to discard -- that Cave-In you drew).  Then again, having that Cave-In in your deck at all is a penalty.  $4 might be OK.

Diamond Deposit feels too swingy.  Might still be OK though?  I have this feeling that it could probably be abused in certain combos, but I'm not sure.

Fortify is another super swingy card.  No negative side to using it, really, since you can usually replace the card you trashed.  But say one person hits a $5 to get a Province while you hit a Cave-In and don't even get to remove it from the top of your deck. 

Architect is probably OK as well...








With the on-trash mechanics, you could be more direct with this too.  rinkworks' article mentions that a popular solution to Blood Money is to make the cursed card untrashable.  The main complaint about that is that "this cannot be trashed" does not seem to jive well with existing Dominion rules.  Fortress is an example of how it can be phrased to fit.  So you could make a powerful card that comes with a VP penalty and is "untrashable" in the same way as Fortress. 

Or you could make it trashable, but have the on-trash be a penalty. 

"When you trash this, gain a Curse."
"when you trash this, gain 3 Coppers."
"When you trash this, each other player may gain a card costing up to X."

[zahlman]

>This is not in the Supply.

Good; this protects against Ambassadoring them away.

[eHalcyon]

>This is not in the Supply.

Good; this protects against Ambassadoring them away.

But you could still Masq it.

[yudantaiteki]

>This is not in the Supply.

Good; this protects against Ambassadoring them away.

But you could still Masq it.

That seems OK to me -- having one card that creates an unusual interaction is fine, and Masquerade already does that with other cards.

[SirPeebles]

That seems OK to me -- having one card that creates an unusual interaction is fine, and Masquerade already does that with other cards.

Island, and to a lesser extent Native Village, can also get Cave-Ins out of your deck. There's also Trader, which allows you to forego Cave-In for a Silver.

[LastFootnote]

>This is not in the Supply.

Good; this protects against Ambassadoring them away.

But you could still Masq it.

That seems OK to me -- having one card that creates an unusual interaction is fine, and Masquerade already does that with other cards.

Right, I figured that the Masquerade interaction wouldn't be a deal breaker, espeicially since repeated plays of the Masquerade may cause Cave-Ins to come back to you. Unlike a Curse that you get passed, you can't immediatley trash the Cave-In.

Island, and to a lesser extent Native Village, can also get Cave-Ins out of your deck. There's also Trader, which allows you to forego Cave-In for a Silver.

Island I'm OK with. I didn't even think of the Native Village interaction, but I'm fine with that one, too.

Trader is the only one that gave me pause, and I had considered having using "move a Cave-In to your discard pile" rather than "gain a Cave-In". For the OP, I decided to post the simpler gain wording and let the Trader interaction ride for now. Just as Watchtower can do some crazy things with several Dark Ages cards, I could live with Trader being crazy good with these cards. If in playtesting it turns out not to be fun, I'll revisit it.

Idea seems good; I like it.  Cave-In itself is a bit bland.

Spelunker looks OK.  I think it is similar to Scavenger and Sage.  More immediate than Scavenger (not to mention action instead of coin), more control than Sage.  $3 seems alright, especially because there is a tension between balancing number of Spelunkers and number of Cave-Ins.

Mining Team is a bit tricky.  It is REALLY powerful draw.  If you reveal a Cave-In, it is still a Warehouse, which costs $3 on its own.  Still not that bad (especially because you have at least one dead card to discard -- that Cave-In you drew).  Then again, having that Cave-In in your deck at all is a penalty.  $4 might be OK.

Diamond Deposit feels too swingy.  Might still be OK though?  I have this feeling that it could probably be abused in certain combos, but I'm not sure.

Fortify is another super swingy card.  No negative side to using it, really, since you can usually replace the card you trashed.  But say one person hits a $5 to get a Province while you hit a Cave-In and don't even get to remove it from the top of your deck. 

Architect is probably OK as well…

Thanks for the detailed feedback! I'm glad you like most of the cards. As for your criticisms, I agree that Diamond Deposit is swingy, but I'm guessing it'll be Counting House-style swingy, which I'm fine with. Fortify almost definitely needs work, though. I mean, it might turn out to be fine, but you're almost certainly right about it being way too swingy. Originally, I was going to have it be, "Trash the top 2 cards of your deck. For each one, gain a card costing up to $1 more than it." But that has its own set of issues. I'll work on other ideas for a Remodel variant. Thanks!

With the on-trash mechanics, you could be more direct with this too.  rinkworks' article mentions that a popular solution to Blood Money is to make the cursed card untrashable.  The main complaint about that is that "this cannot be trashed" does not seem to jive well with existing Dominion rules.  Fortress is an example of how it can be phrased to fit.  So you could make a powerful card that comes with a VP penalty and is "untrashable" in the same way as Fortress. 

Or you could make it trashable, but have the on-trash be a penalty. 

"When you trash this, gain a Curse."
"when you trash this, gain 3 Coppers."
"When you trash this, each other player may gain a card costing up to X."

Yeah, these could all definitely work. But once I struck upon the idea of Cave-In and the cool ways cards could interact with it, I was hooked! These other ideas are all very valid, though.

Finally, I had one additional, very simple card idea.

Boomtown
Types: Action
Cost: $4
+2 Cards. +2 Actions.
-------------------------------------------------
When you gain this, gain a Cave-In from the Cave-In pile.

As far as drawing useful cards, this should be more or less equivalent to a vanilla Village. Every shuffle, it draws you one more card than Village would, but you also have one more garbage card to get through each shuffle, so it evens out. In reality, there are lots of cards that benefit from a large handsize, even if several of the cards are useless. Hence, it costs $4 instead of $3.

[LastFootnote]

Oh, something I forgot to mention. I was hoping to get input on how many Cave-In cards should there be in the Cave-In pile? Should it vary based on the number of players? As the cards are worded now, once the Cave-Ins run out, all players can buy these powerful cards without penalty. I'm assuming that will incentivize players not to empty the stack, but who knows?

Ideally, I'd like to have there be no more than 18 Cave-Ins total, so that I can include 12 Kingdom cards in a theoretical set of 150 cards. If I come up with a Victory card to include in the set, that number drops to 16 Cave-Ins. My initial plan is to have 8 Cave-Ins in the pile for a 2-player game, 12 for a 3-player game, and 16 for a 4-player game. Perhaps that's too few? Let me know what you think. Thanks!

[SirPeebles]

The fun thing about the Native Village interaction is that attempting to trash the Cave-In will top-deck it, setting it up for an NV scoop.

Edit: removed my Edit.

[rinkworks]

Love this idea.  You're right, it's sort of like Potions-after-the-fact.  The big difference is that a single Potion can get you multiple Potion-cost cards, whereas getting multiple Cave-In cards incurs multiple Cave-Ins.  That might mean you can make them stronger than comparably priced Potion-cost cards.

I notice that a number of your Cave-In cards discentivize buying multiples, though, so that's an interesting part of the equation too.

[Lhurgoyf]

I'm really torn on Diamond Deposit:
You say it is a bit like Counting House, but it is way worse. You only have 3 VP cards in your deck at the start opposed to 7 Coppers for Counting House. It sufferst the same way from missing the shuffle, so many times it can be really weak.
I don't see how this card could be strong at all, apart from games where you buy multiple Estates and $4 VP cards, but then you would want Duchies for $5.

For a $5 card with a penalty, this sounds to me way too weak.

PS: But I do like the idea and the other cards, especially Fortify (although it might need a "re" in its name somehow).

For Architect, you might want to change the "draw them" into "put them into your hand", because you "put cards somewhere" when they are being revealed. You draw only from the top of your deck without anything revealed.

[LastFootnote]

Love this idea.  You're right, it's sort of like Potions-after-the-fact.  The big difference is that a single Potion can get you multiple Potion-cost cards, whereas getting multiple Cave-In cards incurs multiple Cave-Ins.  That might mean you can make them stronger than comparably priced Potion-cost cards.

I notice that a number of your Cave-In cards discentivize buying multiples, though, so that's an interesting part of the equation too.

rinkworks, great to see you back! Thanks for the feedback.

With the overall positive reaction I'm getting, I think I'll be creating a 150-card set based on the concept, tentatively titled "Dominion: Underground".

I'm really torn on Diamond Deposit:
You say it is a bit like Counting House, but it is way worse. You only have 3 VP cards in your deck at the start opposed to 7 Coppers for Counting House. It sufferst the same way from missing the shuffle, so many times it can be really weak.
I don't see how this card could be strong at all, apart from games where you buy multiple Estates and $4 VP cards, but then you would want Duchies for $5.

For a $5 card with a penalty, this sounds to me way too weak.

I was just thinking about how to tweak Diamond Deposit. One other problem with it is that if you haven't been keeping careful track of your discard, you'll be hesitant to play it because it might lose you money. To help remedy this and its overall weakness, I've turned it from a terminal Action into a Treasure. In addition, I think it should give a flat +$1 in addition to its current effect. So the only way you won't want to play it is if you have at least 2 more Cave-Ins in your discard than Victory cards, which is something you should be able to track without too much trouble.

For Architect, you might want to change the "draw them" into "put them into your hand", because you "put cards somewhere" when they are being revealed. You draw only from the top of your deck without anything revealed.

Well, Envoy has you "draw" after revealing, so I use that precedent sometimes when I want to economize on card space. However, if I have enough room on the card without it looking too crowded, I'll change it to "put into your hand" instead.

[Archetype]

What I think is really cool about these cards is, not only the 'Cave-In' card itself, but also how the power of cards is dependent upon how many Cave-Ins you've gotten throughout the game. I like this a lot. Junking your deck with 1 card isn't too bad, but when the card's power fluctuates depending on how much junk you got? That's really, really cool. You definitely got a +1 from me!

[Polk5440]

Love this idea.  You're right, it's sort of like Potions-after-the-fact.  The big difference is that a single Potion can get you multiple Potion-cost cards, whereas getting multiple Cave-In cards incurs multiple Cave-Ins.  That might mean you can make them stronger than comparably priced Potion-cost cards.

I notice that a number of your Cave-In cards discentivize buying multiples, though, so that's an interesting part of the equation too.

The analogy to Potions is interesting. On the other side of it, a $3 Cave-In card is easier to buy than a $3P card and can be bought earlier. With Potion cost cards, the Potion needs to be bought first and in hand.

I'm late to this thread, but I wanted to say that I also like the concept.

[sudgy]

(I haven't read the whole thread, sorry if this has already been mentioned)

This would be interesting for some TfB cards.  Granted, you couldn't use some of them because it has 0 cost and things like Remodel would only give you a 2 cost card.  It would also work well with Gardens, when you buy one of the actions that give cave-ins, you get another card.  And with TfB that gives you cards, you can trash them without losing more points.

Edit: Also, I'm surprised that when Trader was mentioned Watchtower wasn't.  That would also be pretty powerful.

[jamespotter]

Watchtower trashes the card, so it would simply put the Cave-In on top of your deck...not a desirable effect at all.

[LastFootnote]

(I haven't read the whole thread, sorry if this has already been mentioned)

This would be interesting for some TfB cards.  Granted, you couldn't use some of them because it has 0 cost and things like Remodel would only give you a 2 cost card.  It would also work well with Gardens, when you buy one of the actions that give cave-ins, you get another card.  And with TfB that gives you cards, you can trash them without losing more points.

Edit: Also, I'm surprised that when Trader was mentioned Watchtower wasn't.  That would also be pretty powerful.

As jamespotter says, trashing a Cave-In returns it to the top of your deck, so trashing them is usually a bad idea. As for the Kingdom cards, I believe trash-for-benefit cards would actually be some of the worst cards to use with them, since you don't want to trash a card that you had to gain a dead card to pick up. They're worth more than their cost indicates, like Grand Market or Cache.

I agree that Gardens could be a nice combo with them. I've also created a Victory card for the set, which will probably be the only card that rewards you for having Cave-Ins.

Grotto
Types: Victory
Cost: $4
Worth 2 VP, plus 1 VP per 2 Cave-Ins in your deck (rounded down).
When you gain this, gain a Cave-In from the Cave-In pile.

[zahlman]

As jamespotter says, trashing a Cave-In returns it to the top of your deck, so trashing them is usually a bad idea. As for the Kingdom cards, I believe trash-for-benefit cards would actually be some of the worst cards to use with them, since you don't want to trash a card that you had to gain a dead card to pick up. They're worth more than their cost indicates, like Grand Market or Cache.

I think the idea was to repeatedly trash the Cave-in for benefit... but most TfB cards care about the card cost, and Cave-In costs 0, so...