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[jackelfrink]

The idea came to me when playing with Band Of Misfits that I would want a reverse of the card. That instead of being a specific card once played, it would be a 'counts as that card' while still in hand before being played.

The type would necessarily have to be action-attack-reaction-treasure-victory. Leaving aside the problem of how to get this all printed at the bottom of a card, it still leaves the issue of curse and duration card types. Duration I don't think would be a problem as there are no cards that directly interact with type=duration. Curse I would not want to have as a listed type because of all the problems associated with 'gain a curse' wording. Gaining a curse should only be gaining a curse, not gaining your choice of curse or joker. There are at least three cards this would be an issue on (that I know of, could be more). Fortune Teller, Torturer, and Mountebank. Fortune Teller is ok since the card is of type victory anyway. Torturer and Mountebank can be made to interact correctly by making the reaction part read 'if another player plays an attack card, you may discard this card. If you do, you are unaffected by that attack.

The next hurdle to get past is the problem of being both action and treasure. But I think this can be overcome by careful selection of the action wording. 'When you play this, do X' would work when it was played either as an action or as a treasure. Much like Horn Of Plenty. And like Horn Of Plenty the value would need to be zero to avoid undue complications of it being played in the action phase.

Now to the heart of the issue. What action would it be? Going with the Joker theme, I like +1 card best. It actually 'becomes' another card. Since it is treasure, it probably should generate income. So +1$ as well. But make that an explicit vanilla bonus (like on contraband) rather than just making it a treasure worth 1. Since it is a victory card, 1VP should be there too. So now it is beginning to look like a half-Harem. (I thought for a bit that it should be +1 coin token +1 victory chip, but I think this would make it too powerful.)

For the attack, I would want something amazingly mild. We dont want to actually use this as an attack. We just want to give it enough to make it into type=attack. A silly idea to cover this would be "all other players revel a card from their hand". Any defense card used to counter it would be redundant.

Its cost I would make 3. Low enough that you can sometimes pick it up with an extra buy, but it would still interact with any attack card that trashes between 3-6.

With all that in place, how would it interact? Mostly I think its use would be to load up with specific draw cards, then hold them until your buy phase when you can play them as a weaker Venture. It would combo this way with Scout, with Crossroads, and with Vagrant (And to a lesser extent, Wandering Minstrel). It would also do this with Sage but might not be as good a combo. Transmute, Ironworks, Tribute, and Iron monger would combo a bit TOO well though. In fitting with the Joker theme it should probably be "pick-1" but I dont know how to word that. It helps Venture, Silk Road, Conspirator, Vineyard, Bank, Menagerie, Harvest, Horn of Plenty, Scheme, Urchin, Death Cart, Journeyman, and Herald. Though not strongly in any of them. Interactions with Peddler would be strange.

Overall, I wish I could word it so that it would do stuff like interact with stuff like Wishing Well, Baron, Copper-smith, Duke, Treasure Map, Explorer, Apothecary, Counting House, Tournament, Young Witch, Feodum, Rats(!), or Mystic. But I think doing so would make it more overpowered than what I would want for a low value card.

[eHalcyon]

...I'm confused as to what this is.  The initial idea, reverse of BoM, doesn't make sense to me.  There aren't that many cards where it would matter what was in your hand.  But it looks like you moved from that intiial idea into something else?

Is the final product just supposed to be a card that has every type?

[jackelfrink]

Since you asked the exact situation that was the inspiration was a game I played a few weeks back that had Forager and Band of Misfits. What one player wanted to do was declare Band of Misfits as a Silver, use Forager to trash it, and have +1 coin. This was quickly ruled against as Band of Misfits specifically declares actions only and even if it didnt it would not be a silver while still in hand. But the origin of the idea is not exactly what I wound up imagining. It was just a diving board to get to the new idea.

The thing is that Joker would not DO anything. Not on its own. Or at least it would do the bare minimum to pass itself off. What I am interested in is when some other card is played and that other card asks for Card_X. Joker would step in to fill the shoes of the requested card. As an example, if Fortune Teller got played, and the first card off the top of my deck was Joker, then I could stop drawing and place Joker on top of my deck. As Joker (being a wild card that matches ANYTHING) would fulfill the request made by Fortune Teller.

I dont want it TOO powerful though. For example, Treasure Map requests Card_X, but in this case I would not want Joker to step in and fill the shoes of the requested card. If I had Treasure Map and Joker in my hand and play Treasure Map, I would not get my 4 golds. If for no other reason than doing so would make Joker ludicrously overpowered.

Being a card of each type is not the goal outright. Its just the dividing line I think would work best to make a "this card counts as any other card" mechanic that would not be overpowered.

[SCSN]

I dont want it TOO powerful though. For example, Treasure Map requests Card_X, but in this case I would not want Joker to step in and fill the shoes of the requested card. If I had Treasure Map and Joker in my hand and play Treasure Map, I would not get my 4 golds. If for no other reason than doing so would make Joker ludicrously overpowered.

I don't think that would make it overpowered at all. Treasure Map is a pretty weak card, and you can also have BoM-Treasure Map in hand, play the BoM as Treasure Map and receive your cards. This doesn't make BoM overpowered, it's in fact a pretty mediocre card.

Something like

Joker - $6

When you play, discard, reveal, gain or trash this, choose a card from the supply costing $4 or less. This is that card until the end of the current turn.

would definitely be feasible. The only problem is that it's way too similar to BoM to warrant existence.

[Jimmmmm]

I dont want it TOO powerful though. For example, Treasure Map requests Card_X, but in this case I would not want Joker to step in and fill the shoes of the requested card. If I had Treasure Map and Joker in my hand and play Treasure Map, I would not get my 4 golds. If for no other reason than doing so would make Joker ludicrously overpowered.

I don't think that would make it overpowered at all. Treasure Map is a pretty weak card, and you can also have BoM-Treasure Map in hand, play the BoM as Treasure Map and receive your cards. This doesn't make BoM overpowered, it's in fact a pretty mediocre card.

Something like

Joker - $6

When you play, discard, reveal, gain or trash this, choose a card from the supply costing $4 or less. This is that card until the end of the current turn.

would definitely be feasible. The only problem is that it's way too similar to BoM to warrant existence.

A problem with this is if you reveal it then reveal it again later, who's to say it's the same copy or a different copy?

[SCSN]

Just number them from 1 to 10 or make them have different colored clothing or whatever.

[jackelfrink]

Something like

Joker - $6

When you play, discard, reveal, gain or trash this, choose a card from the supply costing $4 or less. This is that card until the end of the current turn.

would definitely be feasible. The only problem is that it's way too similar to BoM to warrant existence.

If I could re-write the core rules, I would do just this. The problem is that the text on a card only ever activates when the card is played. Until the moment it enters play, that text might as well read "blah blah blah".

What if Moneylender tried to trash this Joker? Play Moneylender. Read off what is printed on the Moneylender card and do it. Looking into your hand, there is no copper. There is only Joker. Sure, you could play Joker, the text on Joker would trigger, and THEN it would become a copper. But then Joker wouldn't be in your hand any more.

One other ugly work around I had thought of would be something like "+1 action. Put this card into your hand. Name a card and this card becomes that card until the end of your turn." Then the text on the card would have 'activated' and it actually would be 'a copper in your hand' for purposes of moneylender. But this would still leave the problem of the card text not being 'triggered' when it is not your turn. For example if you wanted to transform it into a curse when attacked by Mountebank for example. I guess you could add a reaction of 'when another player plays an attack card, play this' to go through the cycle of play-to-activate-the-text and returning it to your hand, but tracking issues get messy.

On the up side, Im happy to hear that other people are thinking that a blanket 'this card becomes a named card' is not overpowered like I had feared it would be. Maybee I will drop the idea of 'this card becomes a named card-type' after all and just go for the bigger version.

[SCSN]

Something like

Joker - $6

When you play, discard, reveal, gain or trash this, choose a card from the supply costing $4 or less. This is that card until the end of the current turn.

would definitely be feasible. The only problem is that it's way too similar to BoM to warrant existence.

If I could re-write the core rules, I would do just this. The problem is that the text on a card only ever activates when the card is played. Until the moment it enters play, that text might as well read "blah blah blah".

That's not true. E.g. Fortress' "When you trash this, put it into your hand" activates whenever it's trashed.

What if Moneylender tried to trash this Joker? Play Moneylender. Read off what is printed on the Moneylender card and do it. Looking into your hand, there is no copper. There is only Joker. Sure, you could play Joker, the text on Joker would trigger, and THEN it would become a copper. But then Joker wouldn't be in your hand any more.

You could change the wording to:

When you play, discard, reveal, gain or trash this, or play another card with this in hand, you may choose a card from the supply costing $4 or less. This is that card until the end of the current turn.

[jackelfrink]

That's not true. E.g. Fortress' "When you trash this, put it into your hand" activates whenever it's trashed.

DOH! Ok, you are totally correct. A card does not have to be played for the text to hold effect. This makes the whole design process much simpler. No more jumping through hoops trying to duplicate an efect that I can just do directly.

You could change the wording to:

When you play, discard, reveal, gain or trash this, or play another card with this in hand, you may choose a card from the supply costing $4 or less. This is that card until the end of the current turn.

To simplify it even further, it could be "+card, +action || While this card is not in play, you may choose a card from the supply costing $4 or less. This card is that card until the end of the current turn." It also triggering as being another card when played makes it too similar to Band Of Misfits. So its play is just some mild generic bonus while its real power only happens when it is not in play.

[Asper]

Not an actual solution for reasons below:

W
X/Reaction, Y$
Z
-------
While you see this card, if it is not in the supply or the game is allready over, it is any card you want that is used in the game.

Why is that okay (probably even without a Reaction type)? Because any time it matters what card it actually is, other players will see it. If you trash it, they will ask "What did you just trash?" and you'll tell them. If you play it, you say "I play Goons", if you discard it for Mountebank, you say "a Curse".

This doesn't fix the main issues of this card, though.
For one, with the current wording, you can play it as anything. Restricting that will make the card text even more complex and either you will have to reset it on play ("until you play it") or it will become even more like BoM.
The second thing is that if you don't restrict changing the card to cards not in play, i could play Joker as whatever and later declare that i have a Haggler in play. While this could be done intentional, i don't think it's that good an idea, and restricting it would take "if it is not in play"), making the text longer again.

Other things you want to avoid is it to be bought for 0$ ("I buy a Curse"), to suddenly be worth 10 VP at the end ("Oh, hey, i didn't realize i bought a Colony") or anything not in the game ("I play Young Witch and there's no Bane, hurr hurr!"). So the other things are necessary.

All in all i think it can be done rule-wise, but it's pretty sure one of those cards that Donald would have scrapped because it has too much text and is too confusing for too little effect.

[Compynerd255]

Here's how you could word a Joker:
---
Joker - Cost $5 - Reaction:
Anytime you can see this during your Action phase, you may reveal this. If you do, choose a card from the Supply costing less than this. This is that card until the Action you are currently playing resolves.
---

Or, as a more restrictive alternative:
---
Joker - Cost $5 - Reaction
When you play an Action card, you may reveal this from your hand. If you do, choose a card from the Supply costing less than this. This is that card until the Action card resolves.
---

As far as I understand, the original problem would be having a card that could serve as any card in your hand, but does nothing when played. For instance, you want to play Treasure Map and need a card to connect it to (and trash). This fixes the problem of it being both Action and Treasure and all those other types, since it is simply taking on the guise of whatever card you want it to be, whenever you want it to be that thing (during your Action phase, of course). It fixes the problem of changing at any time (such as at the end of the game).

The first variation allows the card to take on any form any time during your Action phase - for instance, while you're doing a conditional draw. If you get Rabbled, for example, you can say your Joker is a Curse so that you can topdeck it. If you play Scout, you can draw it and declare it an Estate so that you can put it in your hand - or as another Scout so that you can topdeck it.

The second variation only allows the card to take on any form for the duration of another Action card - for instance, with Treasure Map, you can reveal your Joker and say that it's another Treasure Map, and it will take on that form until Treasure Map finishes resolving (during which time you can trash it). Or, if you play Menagerie, you can name all the Jokers as cards you don't have in your hand and thus activate the thing.

And note that both versions of the card allow you to *play* Joker if you play it as a result of Throne Room, King's Court, Procession, Golem, or similar, because playing another Action card is part of these cards resolving. For instance, you can play Throne Room, reveal Joker, call it another Throne Room, and play it as Throne Room.

And one more thing - since Joker takes on its new identity until its host Action card finishes resolving, if it is trashed, it retains its identity even while sitting in the trash (which Band of Misfits can't do). This can create some interesting combos, though probably the most relevant ones come from TR/KC chains and Dark Ages cards that care about the trash and retrieve from it - you host the Joker under the first KC as a trash target of your choosing, then during the use of KC, trash the Joker, reap the benefit, and then get it back.