Drab was the one who suggested leaving out the trashing clause.
I don't think putting it in your hand actually solves the issue. I think the problem is whether BoO gains the card. As written, it really does. Because of that, lose track rule can come into play in various ways. Possession is the biggest one, and saying "put it into your hand" doesn't help because it goes to the opponent and you shouldn't be able to bring it back. This is tough to hammer down.
I'm still not sure if BoO manages to fill a new niche. Consider that if you only use it cards costing less than $5, it is extremely similar to BoM. The main differences: it costs less, but it costs $1 to mimic $4 cards, and you get $1 if you use it for a $2 card. If you only use it on cards costing less than $4, it has a strictly better effect compared to BoM AND it costs less. This says to me that it really should cost $5, especially considering that you also have options to mimic $5+ cards AND there are cute combos with cost reduction (especially with Quarry, oh man that would be crazy) and treasure playing (e.g. doing the Tactician-Black Market trick, with BoO filling in for BM). Overall though, it's just very similar to BoM.
So that probably means that the niche to go for is flexibility in choosing $5+ cards. But this causes some problems too. If there are no strong $5s, it's unlikely to be worth getting BoO. Having to pay $2 to get a weak effect is not what you want; $2 is a big cost here. If there is a single strong $5 card, you really don't want to have to pay $2 just to use its effect -- might as well get that $5 card directly. Even with multiple strong $5s, the cost of paying $2 is very high.
Off the top of my head, the $5s that would play best with BoO would be:
- Tactician. Not only can you pull off double tac thanks to playing treasures in the action phase, you can also use BoO to mimic Tactician with little penalty. You were discarding your hand anyway so it's OK to pay $2 for the privilege.
- Counting House. If you draw CH too early in your shuffle, you are out of luck. If you draw BoO early, you can find something else to do with it.
- Library, maybe Minion. Mostly because you can drop all your treasure before drawing cards.
I can't think of any super situational expensive cards that you wouldn't just buy directly other than Counting House... maybe Forge? But now you're paying $3, that's even tougher. The other cards -- Tact, CH, Library, Minion -- work well more for the Black Market mechanic than the BoM mechanic.
You said that it feels different from BoM. Can you elaborate on how? Just theoretically, it does not seem all that different.
Perhaps what you could do is something like this:
Outcasts$5 - Action
You may discard a Treasure. If you do, play this again as if it were an Action card in the Supply costing less than $6 that you choose. This is that card until it leaves play.
Possibly it may work fine copying even $7 cards, so that restriction might not be needed. But if it were needed, cost reduction still gets past it (unlike with BoM). Maybe it would be more dangerous with Potion cards if it had no cost restriction. Buy this, forget the Potion... hm.
So, rules-wise this should work almost exactly the same as BoM as far as copying cards goes. This is nice because you no longer have to worry about weird rules interactions. A small difference is that, unlike BoM, this would get played twice -- once as itself (making you discard a Treasure), then a second time as whatever you are copying.
Feel-wise, it should be very different. It is now clearly worse at copying cheap cards because it still costs you a Treasure, but it can also copy more expensive cards that BoM couldn't touch. Compared to BoO, this is better at copying $5s (you can discard a Copper instead of paying $2). It drops the Black Market mechanic, but some would argue that that little trick should stay with BM.
My questions for you:
- What is your goal with Band of Outcasts?
- How should it be different from Band of Misfits?
- As it is now, how
is it different from BoM (since you said it feels different)?
