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[eHalcyon]

There's also...

Vault, which is a Secret Chamber without the reaction ability and $3 more expensive... except it gets +2 Cards. Vault is awesome but Secret Chamber is horrible.

And adding +2 Cards to Cellar gives it a jump of at least $4, because at $5 it would be strictly better than Lab.

[Robz888]

Bazaar is just Village except $2 more expensive... and with a measly +$1. Village is meh while Bazaar is pretty great.

I don't see what's so great about Bazaar. There's almost always better 5's out there, and village is nice when you're trying to build an engine cheaply. I pretty much only buy Bazaar if there's no other village on the board, and I really need an engine. But most often the 5 is better spent elsewhere.

Forge is just an unlimited Chapel that can gain a single card depending on what you trash, and is $5 (!) more expensive... and not nearly as good as Chapel.

You can't use chapel to turn otherwise crappy cards into great cards by being creative. I don't know how many times I've forged estates and silvers to make awesome cards, or just for points. Not to mention the time-honored strategy of forging provinces into provinces just for kicks. Or even new strategies like forging fortresses into fortresses, then forging multiple fortresses into provinces. Forge takes longer to get, but, even taking the price into consideration, it is pretty much just as good a card.

I disagree on Bazaar. Yes, it's an expensive village, and yes it depends on the kingdom, but it's pretty useful. it's not a Top 10 $5 card though, no.

I STRONGLY disagree on Forge. It's manifestly not "pretty much just as good a card." If it cost the same thing, then yeah, it wuld be a better card. But it doesn't and you often times can't get it until you don't need it. I mean the thing with Chapel, you don't actually need strong draw to make use of the trashing because you get Chapel your first turn, and you have like one other card in your deck that's bad. So you can just trash away. By the time you get Forge, well you already have a bloated deck at least somewhat, so now you have to be hoping draw Forge with the stuff you want to trash, instead of with the good cards you bought in order to get the purchasing power to afford Forge. I mean, Forge isn't a bad card really, nothing at the +$6 price range is really actively bad (except Adventurer), but it's less accessible, and has less of a strategic impact on the game, than Chapel. By like a mile.

[ashersky]

Bazaar is just Village except $2 more expensive... and with a measly +$1. Village is meh while Bazaar is pretty great.

I don't see what's so great about Bazaar. There's almost always better 5's out there, and village is nice when you're trying to build an engine cheaply. I pretty much only buy Bazaar if there's no other village on the board, and I really need an engine. But most often the 5 is better spent elsewhere.

Forge is just an unlimited Chapel that can gain a single card depending on what you trash, and is $5 (!) more expensive... and not nearly as good as Chapel.

You can't use chapel to turn otherwise crappy cards into great cards by being creative. I don't know how many times I've forged estates and silvers to make awesome cards, or just for points. Not to mention the time-honored strategy of forging provinces into provinces just for kicks. Or even new strategies like forging fortresses into fortresses, then forging multiple fortresses into provinces. Forge takes longer to get, but, even taking the price into consideration, it is pretty much just as good a card.

I disagree on Bazaar. Yes, it's an expensive village, and yes it depends on the kingdom, but it's pretty useful. it's not a Top 10 $5 card though, no.

I STRONGLY disagree on Forge. It's manifestly not "pretty much just as good a card." If it cost the same thing, then yeah, it wuld be a better card. But it doesn't and you often times can't get it until you don't need it. I mean the thing with Chapel, you don't actually need strong draw to make use of the trashing because you get Chapel your first turn, and you have like one other card in your deck that's bad. So you can just trash away. By the time you get Forge, well you already have a bloated deck at least somewhat, so now you have to be hoping draw Forge with the stuff you want to trash, instead of with the good cards you bought in order to get the purchasing power to afford Forge. I mean, Forge isn't a bad card really, nothing at the +$6 price range is really actively bad (except Adventurer), but it's less accessible, and has less of a strategic impact on the game, than Chapel. By like a mile.

I don't know Robz, I don't think you are taking into account combo-ability with Scout enough in your Forge vs. Chapel analysis...

[qmech]

I STRONGLY disagree on Forge. It's manifestly not "pretty much just as good a card." If it cost the same thing, then yeah, it wuld be a better card. But it doesn't [...]

Not even this weak claim is obvious.  Early on the gaining is a hindrance rather than a help, and you don't get any benefit from the unlimited trashing.  Neither dominates the other, which is a good thing.

[Davio]

I don't think you can think linearly about card costs.

I mean, getting a Colony is much much harder than getting a Province ($3 difference), but getting a Silver isn't much harder than getting a Copper.

So while adding a small bonus to a low costing card can bump it from $2 to $5, adding the same bonus to a $7 card may only bump it to $8. And not all bonuses are created equally, the card that it's applied to matters a lot.

Imagine that there would be a card called Palace or something that's basically a King's Court with an extra Action, it doesn't need to cost a lot more because King's Courts themselves are often used in engine-y games which already give you plenty of actions. So that extra Action doesn't give you much extra benefit over a regular King's Court. On the other hand, if we make it a +1 Card King's Court, its usefulness does increase substantially as the gist of a KC-engine is to KC into other KCs. If you Palace one Palace you already end up with 4 extra cards which makes it a lot more easy to find other Palaces and action cards.

And as mentioned going from terminal to non-terminal is huge, because cantrips and extra Actions are the heart and soul of an engine. So it really depends on the card what small bonus would give a huge boost to a card's ability and cost. Engine cards need to find other engine cards, that's why giving them +1 Card is huge for them. They usually provide coins in some way so adding +$1 isn't all that extra powerful. On the other hand, adding +1 Action to terminals is huge because it makes them much more viable in engines.

I tend not to look at costs as absolute power indications, more as a way to control the availability of such cards. Chapel is $2 so it's available for every player at the start, that's probably a good thing. Goons is $6 so it's very hard to get on your opening turns or even the second shuffle. The power $5s are bad if your opponent starts 5/2, but if you both start 4/3 you have to invest during your first turns to be able to get $5 reliably on your first reshuffle. Why is Forge $7? Well, maybe because in games in which Forge is actually useful (big hands), you're able to draw $7 easily anyway. So by making it $7 it actually tries to make sure it's only used in decks in which it's useful. I've never thought about it this way, but it seems pretty clever. Expand is a $3 jump over Remodel because of its much increased potential. As there are likely more $5 cards in your deck than $6s, being able to turn them into Provinces instead of just Golds is a pretty big upswing. For example if you have 3 Golds and 6 $5s you're looking at a 200% increase in "cards that can be converted into Provinces".

[Jimmmmm]

I don't think you can think linearly about card costs.

I think that's the whole point of this thread.

[GendoIkari]

I don't think you can think linearly about card costs.

I think that's the whole point of this thread.

Close; the point was intended to be more than you can't think linearly about card bonuses.

[Jimmmmm]

Or rather, you can't think linearly about the relationship between card costs and card bonuses.

[GendoIkari]

Or rather, you can't think linearly about the relationship between card costs and card bonuses.

Or rather, it can be quite fun to think linearly about the relationship between card costs and card bonuses, because it leads to silly results.

[eHalcyon]

For those who haven't, you might be interested in reading the fan cards creation guide by rinkworks, stickied in the fan cards and variants thread. This concept of cards costs is already covered.