Wow, thank you all. I really wasn't expecting that.
I've really been itching to comment on the various contest entries. I really think this contest has elicited the best in us, and I hope that Davio will run more (with or without prizes) to keep the flow of great cards going.
Aphrodite - $9
Action - Treasure
If played as an Action: +$2, +1 <VP>.
If played as a Treasure: +$1 for every Treasure you have in play, including this one.
This is strictly a matter of personal taste, but I'm not a fan of Action-Treasure hybrids. Somehow it seems more natural to pair a playable type with a non-playable type (Treasure/Victory, or Action/Reaction, for example). That said, I don't have a compelling reason why not to do this. And if you do do it, I think this kind of approach -- forcing a direct choice between money and VP -- is more interesting to me than having two completely uncorrelated halves.
But I'd want to dial down the power of the card in a big way. $9 is more expensive than any other kingdom card. I'm sure there's a way to temper the power of the card while still retaining every bit of its gameplay value.
Bacchus - $6
Action - Duration
If you would draw a Card while Bacchus is in play, instead gain +1 <VP>.
This is an interesting idea, but I'm not sure I completely understand all its ramifications. At first blush, it seems like you'd get +5 VP instead of 5 cards during your clean-up phase. Then you'd have no next turn. But maybe drawing your new hand doesn't count? In that case, some really interesting combo possibilities present themselves that change up the game in a big way. Its effectiveness would depend a lot on what other kingdom cards are available, but there are enough drawers that it wouldn't be too situational. (It's also interesting in how it discourages opponents from playing Council Room, Margrave, or Vault.)
But ultimately I just can't imagine the full extent to which it changes up the game, so it's tough to critique this.
Ceres - $4
Action
+1 Card
+2 Actions
Reveal a Card from your hand. Trash a copy of it from the Supply.
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When you trash this, gain a Duchy and a Curse.
Normally I'm not a fan of supply-trashers, but here it's interesting that you have to have a copy of it in your hand in order to do it. That suggests you'd tend to use it when you're rushing a pile, because you're more likely to have copies in your hand and, therefore, more likely to want to deprive your opponents of them. Still, I think this would be an extremely situational thing to want to do, and I'm not sure I understand the synergy between the supply-trashing, the village piece, and the on-trash piece.
Demeter - $6
Treasure - Victory
When you play this, reveal your hand, +$1 per Curse revealed.
Worth 2VP per Curse in your deck.
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When you gain this, gain a Curse.
I voted for this one, despite not being entirely sure it plays. But I've seen a lot of "VP per Curse" cards, and I've never liked the idea, mostly because they depend on cursers being in the kingdom and/or are too powerful at negating them (which means that your opponent's best strategy is not to curse you, which means that YOUR best strategy is not to buy the "VP per Curse" cards in the first place).
But here's a card that fixes all those problems by changing the way you obtain Curses. Rather than relying on other players to give them to you, or forcing you to spend whole buys picking them up yourself, there's a curse-gain feature built right in. Moreover, there's a feature for mitigating the damage those Curses do to your deck. Your deck is still going to be horrible, but I suspect it will be just strong enough that a Demeter strategy could still work. It's still, I think, a pretty high-risk strategy, because even though it's somewhat easy to power these up to Provinces and beyond, you'll have a spectacular amount of junk in your hand when you do.
Like I say, I'm not sure if it's perfectly balanced or not, but I'm convinced enough that the idea is sound and the most it needs is a tweak or two. That's not something I ever thought I'd say about a "VP per Curse" card.
Epona - $4
Action
+2 Actions
Choose one: +1 Card; or +$2; or +1 Buy
I also voted for this card. I have a soft spot for the simple vanilla cards. This seems like a nice little Village. Seems like the +$2 is what you'd choose the majority of the time, and that initially bothered me. But then I realized that +$1 would probably be too weak, and yet the card would still have to be priced at $4 (as it would remain strictly superior to Village). I thought about more drastic changes to the list of choices, too, but nothing felt right here. Ultimately I decided, so what if the three choices aren't all equally powerful or chosen equally as often?
Anyway, great card.
Fortuna - $3
Victory - Reaction - Attack
2VP
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When another player plays a Treasure from their hand, you may reveal and pass this from your hand to that player.s hand. If you do, take the Treasure gaining it into your hand preventing it from being played.
This card seems problematic to me in a purely practical sense. People tend to just lay all their Treasure cards down at once. This card would require them to wait between playing each one, to give others an opportunity to jump in with a Fortuna reaction. That would slow the game down pretty badly, both in person and online. Beyond that, I don't like that it's a targeted attack, and a discretionary one at that, allowing one player to be ganged up on. But that's a personal choice there, not anything broken about the idea itself.
Glycon - $2
Action
+1 Card
You may trash this Card after playing it.
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If there are 0 empty supply piles: +1 Action, +$1, +1 Buy
If there is 1 empty supply pile: +1 Action, discard 1 Card
If there are 2 or more empty supply piles: discard 1 Card
This one just missed my top three. To give you an idea of how tough it was for me to narrow down to 3, I think if this had been costed differently, I would have voted for it. Because I think having a Market for $2 is just too much, even though it may eventually become only one-third of a Warehouse. But that's the thing: it
might. Most games (at least pre-Hinterlands) are not three-pilers. So most of the time this is a $2 Market.
Of course, the very presence of a $2 Market implies a rush on that pile, which in turn implies that it will empty out. The +Buy on the card itself probably speeds its way to depletion -- although, if you're using these cards only to exhaust the pile and render them useless, what did you rush the pile for in the first place? It's entirely possible the card works just fine as-is -- that there's a happy medium somewhere, where the optimal strategy for all players is to snap up a few and then stop, thereby requiring anyone interested in emptying the pile to burden themselves with soon-to-be-useless cards. If that's the case, hey, great. But I can't help thinking the card would be more reliably interesting at $3, which makes a big difference when +Buys are involved, as they are here.
I could easily be wrong, but that was my thought process. Love the
self-trashing piece, by the way.
Hermes - $6
Action
+2 Buys
+$3
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In games using this, the game only ends when 3 or more supply piles are empty.
Correctly priced, I don't doubt, and interesting in how the +2 Buys helps speed the game toward its forced three-pile ending. The only thing I worry about is, when the Provinces split 6-2 or worse, forcing the game to a three-pile ending might add 15 minutes of play to a game whose outcome is already determined.
The idea might be fixable if (1) this were a Victory card, thus increasing the odds that a Province deficit could be overcome, and (2) if it helped speed a three-pile ending a little more forcefully, such as (though not necessarily with) a "When you gain this, gain a..." clause.
Iris - $3
Action - Attack
+1 Card
+$2
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Each player (including you) with 5 or more cards in hand discards 2 cards.
I think attacks that also hit yourself are definitely worth exploring. Minion proves that it can be done. But whereas Minion's self-attack is secretly a benefit, here this actually hits you harder than it does your opponents. If this is the first card you play from your hand, you have to discard down to a 2-card hand, while everyone else only has to go to 3. Admittedly, you also get the Woodcutter benefit, but is it enough? Sometimes, I guess, but if you're playing a winning game, surely your average card value is better than half a Woodcutter.
But I see how in certain combos, this can be awesome. If you play a Festival first, then one of these, you're immune from the attack while still inflicting it on others. At that point, the card becomes better than a Militia at a cheaper price. The problem is that there are not that many non-terminals that also decrease your hand size. So most of the time, I fear this would be a dead card and would really only come alive on a minority of boards. Even then, you'd have to rely on drawing it with your enabler in order to make it work.
Jupiter - $4
Action
+1 Card
+2 Actions
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When you buy this, you may trash a card from your hand. If you do, put this on top of your deck.
Seems like a perfectly fine card to me. It was in my top 5, if I recall correctly. A Village-with-a-one-time-bonus is a cool idea, and I think this is a fun one. I'm sure it's balanced as-is.
Kratos - $7
Action
+2 Cards
+1 Action
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Discard 1 card. While Kratos is in play, whenever you play an Action card, +1 Action.
Not sure what to make with this one. It probably works as-is, but I dunno, it seems like an automatic free pass to play whatever actions you want simplifies the gameplay process too much. You want players to work towards whatever goal they're shooting for, rather than just say "Hey, whenever you have a need, consider it filled." But I think this is more personal taste talking than any kind of objective criticism.
Luna - $3
Action
+1 Card
+1 Action
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Discard a card. +$ equal to half its cost in Coins, rounded down.
This card caught my fancy -- sort of discard version of Salvager? But then I realized you could buy some early Provinces and use this as a cantrip +$4 all you wanted. True, you'd have to collide them to get the benefit, but (unlike Tournament and Treasure Map, which also rely on collisions for big benefits) they're still perfectly playable and strong anyhow. Estates turn these into Oracles, and Duchies turn them into hand-shrinking Conspirators. I'd want this costing $5, and then I'd still worry it was too strong.
But it's an interesting idea, and I'm sure there's some way to balance it. Maybe it could work as a $2 card if you took the +1 Card off?
Minerva - $4
Action
You may set aside a Victory card from your hand.
If it is an Estate: +1 Card, +1 Action, +$1
If it is a Duchy: +2 Cards, +2 Actions, +$2
If it is a Province: +3 Cards, +3 Actions, +$3
Otherwise, gain an Estate.
Discard the set-aside card during your clean-up phase.
I'm not sure I understand this one. Why isn't the set-aside card merely discarded? I guess so it won't get drawn back into your hand if you have a very small deck, but why not allow that? The main problem isn't that, though, so much as the staggering power spike. The Estate bonus is fine. The Duchy one is stupendous, but for colliding this card with a Duchy, maybe you deserve the reward. But the Province one is game-winning, I'm sure. You're all but guaranteeing a Province buy that very turn. With an outside source of +Buy (which you're likely to draw), you can get a Province and another one of these. Almost instantly, you've got an unstoppable chain of them, because one Province-reward will very likely lead to another.
I like the idea of a card that cares about colliding with the basic Victory cards, but I think it needs to be more temperate than this.
Nox - $4
Action - Duration
Choose any card from the supply and put it on this Nox card, face up.
During the clean-up phase of your next turn, return it to the supply.
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Whenever this Nox card is in play, playing a copy of the card placed on it has no effect.
I like the idea of a moratorium on playing certain cards, but I'm dubious that that this is the best way to do it. This seems too severe, although I like that it encourages a diverse deck. Maybe a milder penalty would work? But it's tough to predict how it will play without actually playing it, especially since I think it will behave very differently from game to game. For example, a Minion deck would be stopped cold, while a Menagerie deck might not feel it at all.
Osiris - $0
Action
Return this card to the supply. If you do, gain an Osiris token. At the end of the game, if you have the most Osiris tokens, all your Estates are worth 3 VP.
Interesting little subgame here, but I worry that it's too costly to play. Obtaining a single Osiris token means spending a buy, a card slot, and an action. In return, you're not guaranteed to get anything at all. I'd want to make this a non-terminal, maybe even a cantrip, before I'd even consider it.
Pluto - $4
Action
+1 Card
+1 Action
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You may choose to let each other player draw a card. If you do, choose one: +1 Card, or +1 Action.
I like the versatility, but the penalty is awfully steep. A $3 price tag might be a good change, but better still might be to compensate for the penalty better by offering more. With this card, the Laboratory option just means that
everybody gets a Laboratory effect, resulting in zero net benefit for you. The Village option, I suppose, is great when you need it, but you're still giving away a Laboratory effect and only taking a Village effect for yourself. Basically I'd love it if my opponents bought this.
Quirinus - $5
Action - Attack
+$2
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Each other player reveals the top two cards of his deck. If they reveal any Treasure cards, they trash one that you choose. Either you gain a copy of it or they gain two copies.
I voted for this card. I think it's basically flawless and perfectly balanced. I'd probably prefer Jester to this most of the time, because Jester basically never misses. But this has a couple of advantages over Jester in that it can take a card away from your opponent and sometimes offer a choice of what card to target. All in all, a good way to merge the attack powers of Jester and Thief, both of which (Thief's weakness as an overall card notwithstanding) are two of the more interesting attacks.
Roma - $5
Action - Attack
Discard a card. Use the first of these options which applies:
If you discarded a Victory card, gain a Victory card with a cost less than that of the discarded card and put it on top of your deck.
If you discarded an Action card, gain a Treasure card with a cost less than or equal to that of the discarded card and put it in your hand.
If you discarded a Treasure card, all other players gain a Curse.
If you discarded a Curse, +1 card and all other players gain a Copper.
There's too much stuff here for me. It's personal taste, but I like simple cards, and this kind of just feels like a laundry list instead of a single composite. Also, why the rule against hybrid cards, which are rare enough anyhow? That said, it's kind of cool to have a mandatory discard that isn't an automatic "discard your weakest card." It's a good area to build some gameplay into.
Sol - $3
Victory
At the end of the game, count the total number of Sols in all players' decks. If the total is an odd number, multiply each players' Victory Point total by negative one. If the total is an even number, nothing happens.
Tricky. I think it probably reads better than it plays, though, as it pretty much means that the game will be decided in the final turn of the game, whoever's that happens to be. That would be pretty frustrating if you lost after building a brilliant and effective engine that clawed your way into an admirable lead.
