Actually, I think Villa might be the most deserving of the Berserker wording. We can get rid of the "put this into your hand, +1 Action" middleman and just play it.
Looks nice.
Why did Urchin not get errata (to line up with Hermit)? Is it because Urchin getting "exchange" doesn't make enough of a difference to justify errata?
It's something I can consider again the next time the set is reprinted. Dark Ages has a trashing theme; it matters if cards go to the trash. That's something to preserve if there isn't a good reason to change it. It's nice to exchange, especially once the word is in the set; it's more what was meant in the first place (the Urchin turns into a Mercenary, he doesn't die), and works cleanly. Once you know what it is. Ultimately it's a question as to which is better.
Why do Tax, Defiled Shrine Messenger need to be "in your buy phase" and not "during your turn"? Of all the when-buy to when-gain changes, those are the only ones which I think may be unnecessarily conservative.
For Tax, I'd be punishing Action Workshops if I made it "turn"; on a card that I'm just fixing, not making from scratch, there's sure no call for that.
Defiled Shrine could possibly be "turn." It would let you Workshop the Curse but that's not so bad. It doesn't make much of a difference for Black Cat.
Incidentally! Basilica and Colonnade are both getting "in your Buy phase" added. I tried for the simplest versions of the cards, and let them be more different to get there, but a bunch of people complained, and while they don't seem super reasonable to me, them being unhappy with this change is real, and the intention was to fix cards not make them as if new cards, and "in your Buy phase" is not the mess that "that you bought" is.
And! Donate will somehow get more different at the same time, it will trigger at the start of your next turn, that's right. This has played great. It's a little weird since you're not used to it, but is as close as possible to the original while getting rid of rules problems. Yes "first" means before other start-of-turn stuff. And we can cite how e.g. it means you're immune to Militia for a turn. But it's very close to the original. It even gets rid of some unintentional changes the other versions had, like being able to trash everything with Tomb on your last turn.
Donate: Event, 8D
At the start of your next turn, first, put your deck and discard pile into your hand, trash any number of cards from it, then shuffle the rest into your deck and draw 5 cards.
Basilica: Landmark
When you gain a card in your Buy phase, if you have $2 or more, take 2VP from here.
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Setup: Put 6VP here per player.
Colonnade: Landmark
When you gain an Action card in your Buy phase, if you have a copy of it in play, take 2VP from here.
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Setup: Put 6VP here per player.
And these changes will appear in the next release of the TGG version, and I mean whenever Stef puts them in for dominion.games.
And I will go report this on the discord too, and figure that Nick / Punchball / Jeebus will see it here.
What do you think of the concept of cards that "bundle" a bunch of other cards (like Tournament and Page)? Other than being intimidating for casual players, I think they (usually) have the problem of one bad apple spoiling the rest (e.g. Warrior)?
I'm not sure what you mean by "bundle" there; Allies is not so far in the past, and obv. I was pleased enough with what Allies did then. I am still pleased with it. The big problem is "read these three other cards to understand this card." With the split piles, casual players can reduce that to, "this will give me control of the pile and that's probably something"; I don't think they read all the cards. I mean they didn't, when I played with them. And then they were more likely to rotate just to see what was next, and you know, the cards to read end up spaced out some. So it's not as bad as it sounds. And I mean there the set is, saying I approve. Now that it's out, no change there. And more-than-ideally complex for casual players, but not too much to want to print, and I think they're good times for casual players.
Page is like that but less so. Tournament isn't like that at all; you can ignore Prizes until you win one, but then you have to read five cards. It's certainly a burden. Tournament is one of the most complex cards in the game - figure out this 2x2 payoff grid, then read 5 more cards. Really that should have been two different cards. And then, having to read 5 cards at once is bad, and there are various things you can do to improve that.
The secret history says that Trail got its when-trash ability late. And from what I've seen, Trail jumping out of the trash was unintuitive for a lot of people (fortunately it's in the rulebook). Was this a concern at all (I can't really think of a better wording to solve this though)?
No, I mean if I'd thought "people won't understand this" I would have tried to make it clearer. Probably a parenthetical could have addressed the trash-jump, if nothing else did the trick.
Do you think that 3-cost cards are the most likely to go wrong? It seems like raising Urchin/Ambassador/Stockpile to 4 would solve (not all, but most) of their problems.
I don't think $3 is especially a problem. Sure it means you can open with two copies of the card; $4 is in some sense safer. But $2 means you can empty the pile quickly sometimes, and $5 means someone can open it with a 5/2. Those are probably both bigger issues.
Stockpile should be $4, and then might be fine. I don't think that fixes Ambassador. It's hard to know how Urchin plays out then, but it would be worth trying.
In general, how good are you at predicting "a lot of casuals will hate this card" and "a lot of experts will hate this card"?
If I think a lot of players will hate a card, it tends not to get published, and then I don't find out if they actually would have. So I mean, there's a lack of data here!
There are a few general trends though, visible in published cards, that tend to hold true but don't quite kill cards. Knights will have a group of people who hate them; attacks in general are less-liked by some players, but extra-liked by others. Simple cards will have a group of people who would rather have had some more novel unplayably complex card.