I've ordered and reworded your cards before critiquing them, but I don't believe I've changed any functionality.
Barricade
Types: Action – Duration
Cost: $2
+1 Buy. +$1. At the start of you next turn, +1 Card.
While this is in play, when another player plays an Attack card, you may gain a card costing up to $2. If you do, you are not affected by that Attack.
This is sort of an oddball card. Obviously it's going to be very popular in games with Attacks and $2 cards you want a lot of, like Fool's Gold, Native Village, etc. Unfortunately, t's probably powerful enough in those games to deter people from buying Attacks at all. In games without powerful $2 cards, it seems incredibly weak. I don't think I want a ton of Barricades in my deck most of the time, although I could be wrong about that.
I'd take off the bit about the Attack not affecting you and raise the limit of the gained card to $3. That makes it more useful in more games and should deter Attacks much less.
I do really like how it interacts with cost-decreasers that other players play. "Oh, you played 3 Highways and then a Militia? I'll just gain a Wharf."
Academy
Types: Action – Reaction
Cost: $3
+$2
When you play an Action card, you may discard this. If you do, +2 Cards.
I think this is probably undercosted and incentivizes Academy rushes too much. If I play an Academy, I can then discard an Academy from my hand to draw two cards. If one (or both) of those is an Academy, I can then discard that one for two more cards. There's no way to tell if I had it in my hand initially, after all. So as long as you buy no other Action cards, they're basically incredibly cheap Laboratories except the first one, which is worth $2. It might work at $4, but it might need tweaking before it can work at any cost.
Scholar
Types: Action – Reaction
Cost: $3
Look at the top 4 cards of your deck. Put one into your hand, then put the rest back in any order.
When you gain an Action card, you may discard this. If you do, gain a Books from the Books pile.
Seems solid enough. You'd have to playtest it to make sure the cost is right, but I don't think the concept is fundamentally flawed. The reaction portion seems a bit tacked on, though. Scholar doesn't really seem as built to work with Books as Librarian does.
Town Commons
Types: Action
Cost: $3
+2 Actions. +1 Buy.
When you buy or trash this card, gain a differently named Action card costing up to $4.
Interesting. It's sort of a reversed Border Village. Seems…powerful. It's a pretty weak card in your deck, but it does let you open $4/$4/Town Commons, which seems pretty darn good. I like the strategy space it opens, but I wouldn't be surprised if testing revealed it to be too powerful in a lot of games.
Cafe
Types: Action – Victory
Cost: $4
You may play an Action card from your hand. +1 Card.
Every Cafe in your deck after the first is worth 3 VP.
I'm not terribly fond of either half of this one. The interactions with Action cards that reorder the top of your deck are cute, but I don't think it's worth the potential confusion and tracking issues. When you start chaining and Throning them, it just gets more confusing.
As for the bottom half, it just doesn't really seem interesting to me. Maybe I'm judging it too quickly. Can you try to sell me on it?
Librarian
Types: Action
Cost: $4
Choose one: Gain a Books from the Books pile; or reveal cards from you deck until you reveal a Books, put it into your hand, and discard the other revealed cards.
You may play a Books.
You must have an Action card in play to buy this.
When you gain this, trash an Action card you have in play.
Books
Types: Action
Cost: $0*
+1 Action. Look at the top 3 cards of your deck. Trash one and put the rest into your hand.
(This is not in the supply.)
So, let's talk about Books. Librarian/Scholar/Books remind me of similar cards in my Enterprise expansion,
Barracks and
Conscripts. One of the key differences is that Books isn't a one-shot. Books is like a Super-Lookout in a lot of ways. You look at the top 3 cards of your deck and trash one, but instead of discarding one and putting one back, you draw them both. That's incredibly powerful, like a Laboratory-Lookout! But like Lookout, I'm guessing that you don't want many Books, because once you've trashed most of your junk, playing Books is a bad idea. In games without junking Attacks, you probably want one Books. With junking Attacks, two or maybe three.
So the interesting interactions that Books has with Librarian sort of go to waste if you're only gaining one Books per game. It might take the strategy out of it, because you probably know exactly how many Books you want, you'll get them ASAP, and then you'll never need any more.
You could have Librarian "re-shelve" the Books (return them to the Books pile) for a bonus. That could be cool and thematic.
As far as Librarian itself goes, I'm not sure it needs the buy restrictions. What's your logic there?
Rebel Village
Types: Action – Attack – Looter
Cost: $4
+2 Actions. Each other player with at least 5 cards in hand trashes a Copper from his hand or reveals a hand with no Copper and gains a Ruins.
When you gain this, gain 2 Coppers.
I generally don't like fan cards that require you to own a specific expansion, and this is no exception. That aside, I think this card has other issues. In a 2-player game, this is almost always going to help your opponent. However, in a multiplayer game where everybody opens with this, I worry that economies will just be destroyed before they can get off the ground, gained Coppers notwithstanding. Cutpurse is at least terminal. Once your opponents trash your Copper, you could have a hand (and deck!) that consists only of your Estates, a Silver, and two Rebel Villages. Then you destroy the other players' turns. It could easily be a vicious circle.
I don't really have any suggestions on fixing it. If my concerns turn out to be correct, I don't think there's a way to fix the card without fundamentally changing it.
Tavern
Types: Action
Cost: $4
Choose one: +2 cards and put a patron token onto your Tavern mat; or gain an Action card costing up to $3 per patron token on your Tavern mat, then remove all tokens from your Tavern mat.
Seems cool. Might need tweaking after playtesting, but I can't see anything wrong with it.
Headmistress
Types: Action
Cost: $5
Choose three: +1 Card; +1 Action; +1 Buy; +$1; trash a card from your hand; gain a Silver. (The choices must be different.)
If you have more than one Headmistress in play, discard a card.
I am not a fan of this one. I don't like that there are 20 different combinations to choose from, I don't like that each individual option is boring, and I don't like the heavy-handed way it limits itself. Sorry!
Poet
Types: Action
Cost: $5
+2 Cards. +1 Action. +$1. Put this card on your Poet mat.
You may buy cards from your Poet mat for $1 during your buy phase.
Cool idea. It could easily be balanced as-is, but of course playtesting could reveal otherwise. I wouldn't mind if the effect was a little snazzier than just three vanilla bonuses.
Private Funds
Types: Treasure
Cost: $5
When you play this, it's worth $1 for every Action card you have in play. If this is worth $5 or more, trash this.
Interesting. I wonder if it incentivizes not playing a fifth Action. Even if it does, I don't think it's a dealbreaker. It overlaps with
one of my own fans cards a bit, in both name and effect, but that's the way the cookie crumbles. It also has obvoius parallels with Horn of Plenty, but time and testing will tell if plays differently enough to be interesting. I think it probably will.
Revolutionary
Types: Action – Attack
Cost: $5
Choose one: Each other player discards down to 3 cards in hand; or each other player gains a Curse.
Each other player may trash a Treasure from his hand.
If this is the first time you played a Revolutionary this turn, +$2.
I don't know quite what to make of this one, but my overall reaction is negative. For one thing, it might create politics in the same way that early versions of Goons did. If the player to your right just played a discard Attack, your discard attack will only hit that player and the effect you choose may be driven by how well that player is doing. On the other hand, given the choice between these two two attack effects, I think you're usually going to choose the cursing until the Curses run out, then choose the discarding. On the third hand, discarding Attacks tend to lose a lot of oomph in Curse-heavy games, so the discard option seems a little superfluous.
Looking at the rest of the card, I feel like it has too many moving parts and that most of the parts won't matter most of the time. As others have said, I don't think you'll be seeing many opponents trashing Treasures from their hands in a Curse-heavy game. I've already mentioned that the discard Attack probably won't end up mattering much. In a Curse-heavy game, you're unlikely to play more than one Revolutionary in a turn, so the self-limiting effect probably won't matter much, either.
Philosopher
Types: Action
Cost: $6
Choose one: Trash up to 4 cards from your hand. Gain a card costing up to $2 more than the number of cards you trashed; or trash this; if you do, gain a card costing up to $6.
Seems too swingy. If you get lucky, you get to trash more cards and get a better card in return. If you get unlucky, you don't get to trash many cards and you get a mediocre card in return. It's a double whammy. That's one more whammy than I can stand.
Thanks for posting your expansion. You have a lot of creative ideas, which I appreciate. Even if half of them don't work out, after several iterations you'll probably end up with an interesting, sold set of cards.
