Dominion > Variants and Fan Cards

Interacting with the Trash

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Hamlet:
And I mean that in the best possible way.
Anyhow, I was thinking about a card that allows players to draw old cards from the trash. What good would that be? How about keeping curses in play? Now this could lead to longer games, but I think this is an interesting area to investigate.
Here's a sample card for the idea.

[Shinigami]
Action
Cost: 5
+2 Cards
Shuffle the trash pile and place it upside down. Each player draws two cards from it and adds to their hand. Replace the trash pile face up. You may trash up to two cards.

Obviously not perfect (and possbly even broken,) but what do you think? Should trashed curses and coppers stay trashed?

guided:
Even more situational than Counting House and extremely, pointlessly high-variance even when useful  :-\

Off the top of my head, I can't think of any way to fish cards out of the trash that would actually be good for the game of Dominion.

play2draw:
What guided said. Also, if this card is in a game where there is no trashing, then this card is most definitely taking up space; a $5 moat when there are no attack cards.

Also, immediately shuffling a deck every time a card is played is not an especially good idea. Philosopher's Stone, while a neat card, is almost reviled for this very reason.

rinkworks:
My thoughts at the very end of the first post here:  http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=699.0

The problem is such a card would be useless on boards with no trashing and useless on most boards WITH trashing (because only junk winds up there).  On boards with Salvager/Remodel/other-trash-for-benefit, it's useless until people have built up their hands to be able to trash good cards, at which point trash-retrieval becomes insanely overpowered.   Or...still useless, if the very presence of such a card dissuades people from trashing stuff for benefit in the first place.  I guess Saboteur/Swindler would synergize with such a thing.  But a well-designed card works on any board, not just a board with only a single-digit number of other particular kingdom cards present.

If you're REALLY determined to try to make a trash-retrieval card work, the only way to do it I can conceive of is to make an alternate function of the card allow people to trash stuff for benefit -- and somehow make that worth their while, even at the risk of an opponent later acquiring the valuable card they trashed.  If both features were combined on the same card, you could -- at least in theory -- come up with something that would work in any kingdom, not just one with the right other trashers also in it.

And even then, the presence of other trashers could still unbalance the thing.

As an example of what I'm thinking, it might be something like this:

Garbage
$? - Action
Choose one:
- Trash a card from your hand.  If you do, +3 Cards, and +$ equal to the coin cost of the trashed card.
- Or, gain a card from the trash and discard your hand.

Disclaimer:  I'm sure that card doesn't work either!  This is just a top-of-my-head idea that I don't think could actually work and don't intend to put any effort into trying to make work.  But in theory, an idea like that might be tweakable into working condition.  The idea is to provide a really good incentive for people to trash stuff for benefit, so people will trash cards worth having, AND to penalize pulling cards out of the trash, so as not to disincentivize people from trashing stuff in the first place.  It's a tough proposition.

chwhite:

--- Quote from: guided on September 26, 2011, 10:29:42 pm ---Off the top of my head, I can't think of any way to fish cards out of the trash that would actually be good for the game of Dominion.

--- End quote ---

There's got to be a way to do it.  My thinking is that perhaps you could buy cards out of the trash Black Market-style, and attach it to a card that trashes, so that there's sure to be a trash to buy stuff out of.  Here's a possible basic implementation.

Rag-And-Bone Man
Cost 4
$1, Trash a card from your hand.  You may choose to look through the Trash and buy a card from it immediately, putting it in your hand.

I was also thinking about a version which gave you $2 and didn't let you put the trash in your hand, but that might be a bit strong just for the trashing (compare with Salvager or Moneylender).  This version is a weak trasher but may do a better job enabling trash shenanigans, especially for, say, picking up Silvers which have been Salvaged or Apprenticed.  It shouldn't be too weak of a trasher, though, since most of time it's going to get bought for the trashing ability.  And, heck, picking up a Copper might actually be useful for those $7 hands.  The parameters have to be futzed with, and maybe it's too boring, but I'm pretty certain it's not bad for Dominion.

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