Why is the Supply the only "zone" in the game that's capitalized? And why is the trash not capitalized?
Possibly trash the-place should be capitalized. This is one of those things that just happened, it wasn't super thought-through.
Why is Exiling cards capitalized? It always looked weird to me that of all the verbs in the game (gain, draw, etc.), Exile was the only one that's capitalized.
It's just to try to make the cards as readable as possible. It was a question when making Renaissance and that's how it went. It's an expansion-specific word.
Why is it a Triumphal Arch and not just an Arch? And why is it a Defiled Shrine and not just a Shrine?
In the long run I haven't done enough adjectiving; the name space gets tight when you make so many expansions. Adjectives can also help with making it easier to remember what the cards do, with making the names more of a match for the functionality. And they're flavorful. So really it's the opposite; why so many non-adjectived nouns? But then it's nice to have terse names too.
In these particular cases, a Triumphal Arch is a thing, that was the concept, not just an arch. Defiled Shrine was the concept there too. I don't think a plain Shrine would involve buying a Curse.
Would you still put Enchantress/Archive in Empires, and Cargo Ship/Research in Renaissance? I feel like if I only had 2 awesome Duration cards that didn't require the set's mechanics, I would just save them for a future set, with more Duration cards? Kind of like how you said that Flag Bearer and Swashbuckler could have been saved for a future set, when you had more Artifacts that were worthwhile.
Originally all sets from Seaside on were going to have Duration cards; Fishing Village for example was from Prosperity. This didn't happen because of how things went down for Valerie with Seaside; she didn't like Duration cards, and spent a couple pages on the rules for them. My rulebook only spends a short paragraph on Durations, and I like them, and they are very popular with players. They open up card possibilities significantly, especially for Attacks. So, I'm happy having a couple nice ones in an expansion like that, and always have been. And it's no trouble, it's easy to make them.
Artifacts meanwhile were a new thing that was hard to get right. Waiting might have let me get to five good cards to do for them.
What are your thoughts on the recent Command-like cards? Obviously the original versions of Inheritance and Band of Misfits were a mistake, but I think Necromancer, Captain, and Mouse may be the perfect example of "it's nowhere near simple, but it fits the text box so it still gets printed."
I'm not quite sure what you mean. "It fits the text box" isn't the only criteria for how complex a card is, or what justifies making it to print.
Sometimes fun cards make it out because of how fun they are, despite issues. There are some examples! Band of Misfits left Dark Ages due to its rules issues; it came back because people missed it. People liked it when it came out, and often it's not tricky. The original version was a mistake, but I'm not sure that the tweaked version is. It's not the kind of thing I want to do lots of, but it's fun.
Way of the Mouse had the significant issue of, all the other Ways are intentionally worse than whatever non-awful $2 you might buy, but this isn't. It was fun. There wasn't a fix. There it is, spicing up games.
What cards were you surprised to learn were controversial and frequently-banned (Invest is a good example)? There are cards where you knew beforehand that some people would hate (like Knights), so I'm curious about the opposite.
[Knights] are for the people who like this kind of thing, and well some people adore them, slower game and all. Some people are all, my cards, my precious cards, and well there are plenty of other cards in the set for those guys.
In the early days I didn't realize that people would hate "it attacks but doesn't make resources" (Saboteur and Sea Hag, both of which have other problems too). I didn't anticipate hate for Black Market; it's super-fun.
Is Invest so controversial? I think there are just a few discord people who speak out against it. Here's where it lies in the banned lists:
58 [OVERLORD]
61 [VINEYARD, WEREWOLF, CAPTAIN]
62 [SALT_THE_EARTH, INVEST]
63 [ANNEX]
65 [CONSPIRATOR]
It's that card people hate, like they hate Vineyard and Conspirator.
As it happens it's also on 62 Liked lists (also this data is several months old).
