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[ChaosRed]

Testing your expansion is hard, one of the things that makes it hard is assessing just how well a card performs and judging its utility and balance.

Has anyone tested their expansions in earnest? I've learned some things along the way, but don't want to prattle on about it, if most people just design a card or two and never really get into testing an entire set of variant cards.

[dondon151]

Not true, you could buy a curse to ambass it.

Hence why I said 99.9% of the time: the 0.1% refers to the cases where a player buys a Curse in order to Ambassador it. I don't think that's usually, if at all, a good strategy. If you Ambassador Curses, the opposing player can also Ambassador them right back once he's forced to pick up a couple.
You could hypothetically also buy a Curse in order to Masquerade it away. That's also probably a terrible idea.

[ftl]

It's powerful to buy curses to Ambassador them when you've already set up your deck so that it will draw itself every turn. It's a bad idea if you're just hoping to draw your Ambassador with your Curse, but a good idea when you are guaranteed to.

[dondon151]

I'd think that generally, at that point, the game's in the bag anyway, and handing out Curses with Ambassador is adding insult to injury.

[WanderingWinder]

I'd think that generally, at that point, the game's in the bag anyway, and handing out Curses with Ambassador is adding insult to injury.

Not at all. There are lots of times when a heavily ambassadoring player will have a much trimmer deck than a non-ambassadoring opponent, without the non-amb player having a really bad deck, just one that's a bit more sluggish. Well, the non-amb player can often get a pretty decent lead while this is going on, and being able to reliably and pretty quickly hand out all the curses to your opponent here can not only really slow them down, but also give you some extra VP breathing room. I've been in a few games where it was absolutely key for me to do so, more where I needed to in order to have a chance, and a heckuva lot where I've beaten amb-ing opponents that I think I would've lost (or at least had a good chance of losing) had they gone for giving out these curses. But it's key to be able to do it fast - we're talking two amb plays every turn dishing out those curses, and it's much more effective if you're opponent hasn't gone amb at all than if he's only dishing more slowly than you.
In brief, there are a lot of Amb/Amb vs no ambs battles where it's much more necessary than salt in the wound, but it's pretty rarely a significant factor in a double amb mirror or even Amb/Amb vs single Amb. And I'd guess (without really knowing) that it's probably just a terrible idea in multiplayer.

[ftl]

I had a game when both me and my opponent went double-ambassador, we both got our decks pretty slim, pretty even. I went for Minions, thinking it would be faster. He went for City/Wharf. I greened first, and thought I'd made the right choice when I had four provinces before he got any. That was the point where he drew his whole deck and proceeded to buy a third ambassador and a curse. I never got another province, and resigned after getting all 10 curses and realizing I was never again gonna get to 5 coin, much less 8. I'm never gonna underestimate late-game ambassadors after that, especially when playing a strategy that requires a dense deck...

[dondon151]

Hm. I stand corrected, then.

[kn1tt3r]

Here's game where I lost also due to a cursing Ambassador:
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110923-094002-bcb92172.html

I had a 5/2 start and tried to avoid Ambassador. I've played not perfectly (probably even buying Treasuries was bad), but what really killed me in the end were those curses.

[Reyk]

I've played not perfectly

Me neither ;-): Not opening Ambassador with 3/4 (it simply didn't look fair against 2/5 ;-)), buying Curse for 3$ and Courtyard for 9$ (There was no +buy, but still ...)
It's often funny and strange to look at old games and this one isn't even that old.

[Titandrake]

Wow this has gone completely off topic hasn't it.

Anyways, with all the talk about Ambassador, might as well talk a bit about the design of it. It is absurdly powerful, is very game-warping, and yet it exists. I suspect that it's for similar reasons as to why Chapel exists. Ambassador is a card that plays differently as a player's experience with the game increases. It is only game-warping when you realize it is. Personally, I didn't realize how good Ambassador was until Obi Wan Benogi opened Amb/Amb against my Chapel/Silver and crushed me. It doesn't say "trash" anywhere on the card, does it? Just some mentions about "returning to the supply"...

So, it appears that from Chapel and Ambassador, we can derive a general rule.

"If a card has to be overpowered, it should be overpowered in a subtle way"

A major component of Dominion is the puzzle aspect, where the players try to figure out interesting card interactions and how to best exploit them. So if cards you design all have a straightforward purpose, that's not good. Multipurpose cards => more interesting cards. Don't let complexity creep sneak up on you though.

And just for fun, here's the opposite of that statement, which has some element of truth.

"If a card is underpowered, make the card seem overpowered."

[ChaosRed]

Ambassador is a card that plays differently as a player's experience with the game increases. It is only game-warping when you realize it is. Personally, I didn't realize how good Ambassador was until Obi Wan Benogi opened Amb/Amb against my Chapel/Silver and crushed me.

This is PRECISELY why it is important to test things though. We are, (believe it or not), almost as unfamiliar with our own expansions as we were with Hinterlands. We have some IDEA of what cards are strong and which are not, but we don't really know until we play with the set.

Consider JoaT in Hinterlands. The impressive power of this card wasn't really exposed until we all started actively playing with the card.

Play testing your set will reveal which card in your expansion is your JoaT. Yes, your own variant set, can actually deceive you, or at least can uncover secrets you'll only see when you actually play test it out. You'll also find deadly combos, cards that aren't that great until they have a specific kind of support and then they shine. You need to know all these things and become just as familiar with your own expansion, as you are with the subtleties of cards like Ambassador.

[danshep]

The other thing to note is that all of the official sets are balanced for a 3 player game. Ambassador is only as game warping as it is in a 2 player game. Once you add more players, the risk of being left behind in points as the game 3-piles increases dramatically.