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[Eggplantation]

I have really liked the idea of making an expansion, and have quite a few tasty morsels bubbling away in my mind ready to be served as a hopefully delicious main course of Dominion experience. One of the flavours I have been experimenting with recently is the idea of card self synergy. So here is entree, just a taste of what is to come.

Vassal: $3+ Action/Victory
0VP.
You may trash a VP card from your hand. If you do gain VP tokens
equal to the cost.
- You may overpay for this. +1VP for each $2 you overpay.


Aristocracy: $6 - Action
Choose one: +1 action, +1VP, trash a kingdom card from the supply.
Or +2VP, trash a card from the supply.
- While this is in play, VP tokens may be used as coin tokens.

What do you think? All constructive feedback greatly appreciated!

Will edit this post as I am happy with card changes.

EDIT:
- Aristocracy re-balanced heavily

[scott_pilgrim]

Vassal - This sounds too strong.  If it trashes all your estates, it gives you 6 VP total, so you net 3 VP, counting the 3 VP lost from trashing 3 Estates.  So that's like a Duchy that clears junk out of your deck.  It won't necessarily hit all of your Estates every game, but if you get a lot of them it probably will.  Then since they self-synergize, you get 3 VP for each one you trash, that just seems way too good.  I do like the self-synergizing aspect, the card just needs to be weaker overall.  The overpay is something which has been discussed before, and I think there are some problems with it.

Aristocracy - This is way too strong.  In general, non-terminal +VP is bad, because it tends to be either completely dominating, or very weak.  If I trash my deck down to 5 Aristocracies, then I get 11 VP every turn.  +3 VP is also a lot even for a terminal $6; as long as I can play it twice over the course of the game, it's better than Province.  The flexibility to make it non-terminal at the cost of 1 VP makes it even stronger.  I'm guessing that this is roughly the power level of Rebuild, but it costs $1 more, and has the potential to lead to really, really long games.

[Asper]

Here's the link to where Vassal's overpay was discussed, if you're interested. Personally i think it's fine, but your card has to be weaker and cost more.

Edit: "It's fine" is about the effect in general, not about a certain card.

[Eggplantation]

I get what you are saying, and on I see the overpoweredness you are stating. Thanks for the feedback!

I don't think that netting 3VP is too much to ask for 3 action uses that may never happen, because during that time you could be using your woodcutter, or playing your silver with that spot that is taken up with Vassal. Considering the strength, I think we can pretty safely chop off the bonus cantrip ability when you successfully trash a VP card.

I think this card is comparable to Island. Island costs $4 which works out to be a little more than Vassal. It is always worth 2VP, no matter if it leaves your deck or not. This removes 2 cards from your deck when used, and Vassal removes one, and only green cards. Vassal will grab you two VP points if you connect it with Duchy or Province, and one for Estate, and will reduce the green of your deck. If you get many bad draws you can end up scoring no points from this card, whilst Island will always be worth 2VP. However it can be used effectively in many situations also.
The thing that seems to be the main problem is the 3VP for trashing another Vassal with Vassal. However there are a maximum of 8 cards in 2 player which is a maximum of 24VP points if one player trashes all their Vassals with Vassal. This is not an easy task on a large amount of boards, due to poor trashing. Then if both of the 2 players are going for Vassal and get 4 cards each, a maximum of 9 points can only be scored from them, 18 in total. It would probably be quicker to just buy a province and a duchy in big money and a board with no villages, for the same points. But in situations where an engine can be established, especially with Duchy gainers, this card can shine.
Less Vassals also means less chance of joining Vassals. Trashing Vassals for VP also reduces the potential for trashing other green cards in your deck, to score more points. Comparing this card to another $3 VP card, like tunnel is interesting too. I am not trying to prove that my card is terrible haha, just when you look at it this way, it doesn't look over-powerful...

Adding cost to this card is a double edged sword, as it gains more VP when trashed as its price goes up.
doubled overpay amount, read Asper's post and was enlightened.

Reworked:

Vassal: $3+ Action/Victory
0VP.
You may trash a VP card from your hand. If you do gain VP tokens
equal to the cost.
- You may overpay for this. +1VP for each $2 you overpay.


As for Aristocracy, after your input rethinking from your input, I do think this needs some reworking. I thought of this, but will give more thought later. Not sure if I am 100% happy with new:

Aristocracy: $7 - Action
Choose one: +1 action, +2VP, gain a copper.
Or +3VP, trash a card from your hand.
- When this is in the game, VP tokens may be used as coin tokens.

Shall edit the OP when I decide on changes.

Thanks for the link Asper, that looks interesting, shall check it out!

Edit: Deleted comment on overpay, added comment, Asper posted and changed overpay.

[Asper]

The problem is that Bishop allready does what Vassal does, and does it worse when used for VP cards. Bishop is a balanced version of Vassal. I can imagine it's pretty easy to construct a deck containing only Vassal and about 5$ of money to buy and trash a Duchy every turn. This is faster and about as good as an engine that can buy a Province every turn, as it doesn't have the risk of choking on VP cards. Adding the overpay clause is unnecessary and makes an overpowered card even more overpowered.

Making it cost more is only a problem because you made it a VP card, also unnecessarily.

[Awaclus]

The problem is that Bishop allready does what Vassal does, and does it worse when used for VP cards. Bishop is a balanced version of Vassal. I can imagine it's pretty easy to construct a deck containing only Vassal and about 5$ of money to buy and trash a Duchy every turn. This is faster and about as good as an engine that can buy a Province every turn, as it doesn't have the risk of choking on VP cards. Adding the overpay clause is unnecessary and makes an overpowered card even more overpowered.

Making it cost more is only a problem because you made it a VP card, also unnecessarily.

Except the engine buying a Province every turn ends the game when the pile is empty, this doesn't. But it's also pretty easy to construct a deck containing only Vassal and $8 of money to trash and buy a Province every turn, which is much better than an engine that buys a Province every turn.

[eHalcyon]

The overpay on Vassal has been discussed elsewhere, and it's been linked.  I'm still not that fond of it, but it may work.

Gaining VP tokens equal to the cost makes this stronger than Bishop when trashing VP.  This also costs less and doesn't have a drawback (Bishop lets opponents trash).  Where Bishop is stronger is that it can trash ANYTHING for VP tokens.  I think this should probably cost $4.

I think Aristocracy is too powerful, even at $7.  Non-terminal VP is just too good.  Terminal +3VP is also decently powerful, and the trashing is usually beneficial.  The Copper on the non-terminal portion helps gate it, but it isn't a huge penalty because you can always trash extra Coppers with the terminal option. 

The biggest problem is the "VP tokens may be used as coin tokens".  Terminal "gain 3 coin tokens" is better than Gold!  But my top concern is that it breaks Monument.  In games with both Aristocracy and Monument, Monument because $4 terminal Gold.  That's already quite powerful, but it's even better because part of it can be saved between turns as a "coin" token, and if you don't use up all those tokens by the end then they count for VP.  Monument with coin token instead of VP token is already too good for $4, but now you get the choice.

[Eggplantation]

But it's also pretty easy to construct a deck containing only Vassal and $8 of money to trash and buy a Province every turn, which is much better than an engine that buys a Province every turn.

However it is quite hard to turn this into a golden deck, as you cannot trash your trasher, like you can with bishop. So you will often have an awkward 6 card deck of something like: gold, gold, silver, Vassal, Province, trasher. It can be done with other supporting cards, or with platinum, but again this reduces the chance for these combo-ing cards to line up in a kingdom. This would make a bishop golden deck a better strategy in many circumstances. I now agree that it is probably too cheep at $3, however another way needs to be thought up of how to balance with its self trashing ability.

Yeah I can see that Aristocracy is a beast as it is, one that may not be able to be affordably costed correctly as it stands. It just gains too many VP/coin tokens... So I gave it some thought and I think this fixes most of the problems brought up with this, and brings back the trashing from the supply which I think would be an interesting and fun game mechanic. Here it is:

Aristocracy: $6 - Action
Choose one: +1 action, +1VP, trash a kingdom card from the supply.
Or +2VP, trash a card from the supply.
- While this is in play, VP tokens may be used as coin tokens.

Replacing 'When this is in the kingdom' to 'While this is in play' unbreaks monument, and just turns it into a combo with this card, which is nice.

I am actually quite happy with this. Mid game you would grab one as early as you can, then use your VP-coins to grab as many more of these as you can before the pile runs out. Then end game you can combo these together, grabbing multiple VP points a turn (however it is more difficult to get ridiculous amounts of VP a turn). Once you are in the lead you can relatively quickly end the game by trashing provinces with the terminal version of this card. Build an effective engine around this, then you can even end the game with 3 or 4 provinces left. However not an automatic buy, because you have to weigh up whether gaining many of these in your deck is faster than the other strategies, as this takes time to set up.

[GeronimoRex]

If Vassal were changed so that it gained VP tokens equal to the VP points of the Victory card, it would be more balanced; I'd probably give it 1VP of it's own so that it could trash copies of itself for benefit if you wanted it to... suggested nerf:

Vassal
$4 Action/Victory
1VP.
You may trash a VP card from your hand. If you do gain VP tokens
equal to the VP value of the card.

This would be most similar to Island, in that you are removing Victory cards from your deck to prevent clogging without losing any VPs. However, in many instances, even this version would be more powerful than Island, since one copy of Vassal could keep being reused... upping the cost to $4, eliminating the overpay and reducing the benefit, and I think you'll have a working card... but a card that may not be different enough from Island to be worth it.

[eHalcyon]

Not sure that it actually unbreaks it.  Trashing a card from the supply is an interesting effect and a good way to guarantee that the game will end, but it doesn't gate it THAT much because you can just trash the treasures for a long, long time.  It can also be hard to judge the power of trashing from the supply.  It could be inconsequential, but it can also offer very strong end game pile control.  Not a bad thing about the card, just something that is hard to balance.

The "in play" clause doesn't completely solve the Monument issue, but at least it requires gaining an Aristocracy before you can take advantage of the added power.  That's probably fine then.



@Rex, your version of Vassal doesn't work because there are many VP cards that have variable value.  How much VP do you get when you trash a Vineyard?  It would be terrible if I had to stop in the middle of the game and count all my action cards.