Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Warfreak2]

Name a card, look through your deck, discard any number of that card from it, then shuffle your deck. By itself, it filters Copper/Estate/Curse out of your deck (it doesn't work on Ruins as they have different names). However, you will have to track your deck very carefully, so that you don't accidentally trigger a reshuffle during your turn and get a deck full of Copper/Estate/Curse. It has the not-always-useful problem of Counting House, but in reverse - it's better when your discard pile is empty - so it combos with Counting House to make it reliable.

Thoughts?

[KingZog3]

I feel this would be really really good. Would the card simply be that ability? Or will it have +action or $ or +cards? If so, I don't think it should. This could be really good for lining up combos and engine parts.

[Asper]

Speaking from a solely technical point, i think the card needs to tell the player to shuffle his deck afterwards. Otherwise he would not only know what cards are in there, but also where.
Edited this for my stupidity.

It generally would be the first card that lets players look through their deck, when another card would have put the deck in the discard to look through the discard after that. I see this is not your cards intention, as you mentioned the part with the reshuffle.

Actually, i think this is quite strong. If you manage to get it early after reshuffle and only invest in 1 or 2 different victories, your game will be VP-free most of the time. It also makes Islands basically useless, which is a point i admit i really dislike.

[Warfreak2]

Yep, that's why I said you have to shuffle your deck afterwards. I think it should be terminal, with no other bonuses; it has the potential to be too strong otherwise. Its main uses would be in slogs where your deck is full of junk, in which case you aren't going to be drawing it with other actions normally anyway, so making it terminal doesn't hurt that much. It makes combos harder to set up since you need a village too, but I feel like that's appropriate.

Island has a bunch of advantages:
1) You don't need to play the same Island once per reshuffle to keep the cards on your mat, they're there forever
2) If Island ends up near the bottom of your deck, it's not totally useless
3) When playing Island, you can trigger reshuffles mid-turn without worrying, and getting Spy-ed or Council Room-ed isn't an issue
4) Island is cheap so you can get the benefits very early
5) Island is worth 2VP!
Not to mention a whole lot of edge-cases to do with Silk Road, Ironworks, Possession, etc. Actually that's a thought, if you get Possessed, you'll be made to discard all of your most important engine components!

I feel like it's a $5 card due to the similar unreliability problem as Counting House. At $6 it would be unattainable in slogs where it would be most useful.

[Asper]

Yep, that's why I said you have to shuffle your deck afterwards. I think it should be terminal, with no other bonuses; it has the potential to be too strong otherwise. Its main uses would be in slogs where your deck is full of junk, in which case you aren't going to be drawing it with other actions normally anyway, so making it terminal doesn't hurt that much. It makes combos harder to set up since you need a village too, but I feel like that's appropriate.

Island has a bunch of advantages:
1) You don't need to play the same Island once per reshuffle to keep the cards on your mat, they're there forever
2) If Island ends up near the bottom of your deck, it's not totally useless
3) When playing Island, you can trigger reshuffles mid-turn without worrying, and getting Spy-ed or Council Room-ed isn't an issue
4) Island is cheap so you can get the benefits very early
5) Island is worth 2VP!
Not to mention a whole lot of edge-cases to do with Silk Road, Ironworks, Possession, etc. Actually that's a thought, if you get Possessed, you'll be made to discard all of your most important engine components!

I feel like it's a $5 card due to the similar unreliability problem as Counting House. At $6 it would be unattainable in slogs where it would be most useful.

Sometimes i'm just stupid. I totally missed you had the shuffle in there ^^'

I admit most points you made are valid, but i don't think the first two are.
1. You do not need to play the same Island once per reshuffle. Instead, you need to buy, gain, draw and play a new Island once per card.
2. If Island ends up at the bottom of your deck, it's not completely useless - unless you don't draw it without a card you want to remove from your deck, in which case Island is useless no matter when you draw it.

So your card lost the collision problem and adds the problem of unwanted reshuffles, which is less unpleasant. Probably it's indeed balanced at 5$ - maybe a buff would still be okay. At least it's not Rebuild.

Also: Play it and say "Tunnel".

[KingZog3]

Also: Play it and say "Tunnel".

Rebuild: name Tunnel.

[AJD]

Also: Play it and say "Tunnel".

Rebuild: name Tunnel.

AJD plays Rebuild.
...naming Tunnel.
...AJD reveals an Overgrown Estate from the top of the deck.

(The solution is for Inverse Counting House to say "put them in your discard pile" instead of "discard them".)

[DG]

I think it would be better if you could look through your hand and put your treasures into the discard pile.

[Warfreak2]

1. You do not need to play the same Island once per reshuffle. Instead, you need to buy, gain, draw and play a new Island once per card.
2. If Island ends up at the bottom of your deck, it's not completely useless - unless you don't draw it without a card you want to remove from your deck, in which case Island is useless no matter when you draw it.

[...]

Also: Play it and say "Tunnel".

Right, no way is Island unilaterally better, but it has significant advantages, and I think you're underestimating how gutting the drawing-it-near-the-end-of-your-deck would be - on average, you will draw it half-way through your deck, meaning you get fewer than 50% of your hands clean of Coppers (after you take out the Coppers, your deck contains fewer cards and therefore cards for fewer hands).

I didn't consider Tunnel, but I'm not sure I mind it as a Tunnel-enabler. Again, on average it activates only half of them at once, Rebuild is similar at the same cost, and Golem is a powerful Tunnel-enabler at $4+p which is roughly equivalent to $6. If playtesting showed it to be too powerful combined with Tunnel, it could be "put in your discard pile" rather than "discard", sure.

I think it would be better if you could look through your hand and put your treasures into the discard pile.

Yes, that would literally be the opposite of Counting House, I did think about that!

[Warfreak2]

Regarding Island, I think it would even make sense to use both, as your deck starts out with more than just one kind of junk - Island away the Estates or Shelters, and discard the Coppers to ICH.

[qmech]

I think this card is likely to be of comparable strength and utility to Counting House at $5.

The most common uses for this card are going to be filtering Coppers and Curses.  If you have enough of one type of Victory card that the card is likely to remove many of them from your deck then you're either beyond help or don't need it.

I find the Island comment slightly bizarre.  The cards have some relationship: this would remove everything for one shuffle (or half of everything, on average), whereas Island removes one thing from every reshuffle.  Even if you think those are similar roles, they'd be interestingly different ways of achieving the effect.  I don't think there's any more overlap than between, say, Lookout and Forager, or Salvager and Remodel.

[Warfreak2]

Some strategies like Copper in your deck, such as going for Gardens, Silk Road or Duchy/Duke. In either case you'd probably name a green card and keep the Coppers for buying those cheap things you want.

[Asper]

If you have enough of one type of Victory card that the card is likely to remove many of them from your deck then you're either beyond help or don't need it.

That's a fair point...

I've made up my mind, i think 5$ is fine and the card is different enough from Island to stand for itself (and let Island stand).

[eHalcyon]

I didn't consider Tunnel, but I'm not sure I mind it as a Tunnel-enabler. Again, on average it activates only half of them at once, Rebuild is similar at the same cost, and Golem is a powerful Tunnel-enabler at $4+p which is roughly equivalent to $6. If playtesting showed it to be too powerful combined with Tunnel, it could be "put in your discard pile" rather than "discard", sure.

Golem and Rebuild are not comparable in this regard.  Golem is unreliable for activating Tunnel unless you have fewer than 2 non-Golem actions in your deck.  Rebuild is unreliable unless you only have Tunnels in your deck.

[Warfreak2]

Golem and Rebuild are not comparable in this regard.  Golem is unreliable for activating Tunnel unless you have fewer than 2 non-Golem actions in your deck.  Rebuild is unreliable unless you only have Tunnels in your deck.

If you're going the activate-lots-of-Tunnels route, you probably don't mind having only one other Action card anyway, as it's really just a roundabout way to play Big Money - it's a small price to pay to activate all of them every time. Big Money normally just wants two terminal drawers anyway, you get one instead; that hardly matters since your Golems are terminal draw now too.

Rebuild can get snagged on Estates (or your single Overgrown Estate, which is way better), but you turn them into Tunnels! After the first one, you have two Estates left and Rebuild activates about a quarter of your Tunnels, after the second one it activates half of them, and then after the third one it activates all of them. If you draw the Estates in your hand along with Rebuild, that's nice too. Anyway, playing it three times before it activates all your Tunnels every time isn't so bad - once it does, you have three more of those Tunnels to activate! Rebuild being non-terminal definitely helps too.

[Awaclus]

Sometimes i'm just stupid. I totally missed you had the shuffle in there ^^'

You missed the reshuffle!

[eHalcyon]

Golem and Rebuild are not comparable in this regard.  Golem is unreliable for activating Tunnel unless you have fewer than 2 non-Golem actions in your deck.  Rebuild is unreliable unless you only have Tunnels in your deck.

If you're going the activate-lots-of-Tunnels route, you probably don't mind having only one other Action card anyway, as it's really just a roundabout way to play Big Money - it's a small price to pay to activate all of them every time. Big Money normally just wants two terminal drawers anyway, you get one instead; that hardly matters since your Golems are terminal draw now too.

Rebuild can get snagged on Estates (or your single Overgrown Estate, which is way better), but you turn them into Tunnels! After the first one, you have two Estates left and Rebuild activates about a quarter of your Tunnels, after the second one it activates half of them, and then after the third one it activates all of them. If you draw the Estates in your hand along with Rebuild, that's nice too. Anyway, playing it three times before it activates all your Tunnels every time isn't so bad - once it does, you have three more of those Tunnels to activate! Rebuild being non-terminal definitely helps too.

It takes a non-trivial amount of time to set up anything with Golem. If you use it, you really want an engine that can claw back. Golem BM does not sound great.

Similarly, Rebuild is probably too slow if you are turning Estates into Tunnels. In the mean time, your opponent will be draining Duchies and rebuilding them into Provinces.

I mean, sometimes these things are good, but they are not as effective with Tunnel as the proposed card would be.

[LastFootnote]

Wandering Minstrel: In Cornucopia I tried out a card that was +$2, name a type, dig for it, leave the first match on top. It would have been "strictly better" than Chancellor at $3 (since you could name a type that wasn't in your deck), and I didn't want to charge $4 for it or give it an awful condition specifically to make it worse than Chancellor (a card not famous for being strong). So I dropped it.

I'm actually really glad this card never saw the light of day, specifically because of the Tunnel interaction. Normally I don't like to nix a card I'm making just because of an interaction with one other card, but this is ridiculous. +$2, activate every Tunnel not in your hand, and put your deck into your discard pile.

My wife and I playtested a card that searched for Actions to topdeck and she still used it with Tunnel to gain 29 of the Golds and win handily.

[Asper]

Sometimes i'm just stupid. I totally missed you had the shuffle in there ^^'

You missed the reshuffle!

I'm a Duration. This turn, i give + 1 respect.

[GendoIkari]

Sometimes i'm just stupid. I totally missed you had the shuffle in there ^^'

You missed the reshuffle!

I'm a Duration. This turn, i give + 1 respect.

You have to give +1 respect to his next post as well...

[LastFootnote]

Sometimes i'm just stupid. I totally missed you had the shuffle in there ^^'

You missed the reshuffle!

I'm a Duration. This turn, i give + 1 respect.

You have to give +1 respect to his next post as well...

Not necessarily. He just has to do something after that post is over.