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[LastFootnote]

So at what price X would

Digging Vagrant: $X
+1 card
+1 action
Reveal cards from the top of your deck until you reveal a Curse, Ruins, Shelter, or Victory Card.  Place that card in your hand and discard the rest.

be balanced?

I'd test it at $2 first. It might be fine there.

[Witherweaver]

So at what price X would

Digging Vagrant: $X
+1 card
+1 action
Reveal cards from the top of your deck until you reveal a Curse, Ruins, Shelter, or Victory Card.  Place that card in your hand and discard the rest.

be balanced?

I'd test it at $2 first. It might be fine there.

It seems like it would be too good at $2. 

[Tables]

So at what price X would

Digging Vagrant: $X
+1 card
+1 action
Reveal cards from the top of your deck until you reveal a Curse, Ruins, Shelter, or Victory Card.  Place that card in your hand and discard the rest.

be balanced?

I'd test it at $2 first. It might be fine there.

I think it'd look odd compared to Vagrant at $2, and being so cheap and spammable might make it annoying in games with +buy since it'd likely slow the game down a lot. You're right that it's probably balanced at $2, I think it'd still be roughly as balanced at $3, but avoids the above issues somewhat.

[LastFootnote]

So at what price X would

Digging Vagrant: $X
+1 card
+1 action
Reveal cards from the top of your deck until you reveal a Curse, Ruins, Shelter, or Victory Card.  Place that card in your hand and discard the rest.

be balanced?

I'd test it at $2 first. It might be fine there.

I think it'd look odd compared to Vagrant at $2

Right, but I was assuming that Vagrant as-is doesn't exist in our hypothetical scenario.

and being so cheap and spammable might make it annoying in games with +buy since it'd likely slow the game down a lot. You're right that it's probably balanced at $2, I think it'd still be roughly as balanced at $3, but avoids the above issues somewhat.

I don't think raising the price to $3 really helps the slowness issue. What helps that is changing it back to Vagrant as it exists. There are probably two main reasons why As-Is Vagrant is better (not more powerful, but better) than Digging Vagrant.

1. As-Is Vagrant is much, much faster to resolve.
2. Digging Vagrant has the issue that it makes your good cards go by which, as Donald has said, really bums some players out. In fact it's the worst version of that phenomenon because it doesn't make bad cards go by as well (other than Copper).

[Tables]

Well, sure, if Vagrant doesn't exist that's not an issue. I think you're missing the point regarding the price - it's not that the card would somehow resolve faster if it cost $3, but that at $2, considerably more copies would be gained. When you then factor in that the card is pretty slow relative to it's effect, I think the lower price would be undesirable.

[LastFootnote]

Well, sure, if Vagrant doesn't exist that's not an issue. I think you're missing the point regarding the price - it's not that the card would somehow resolve faster if it cost $3, but that at $2, considerably more copies would be gained. When you then factor in that the card is pretty slow relative to it's effect, I think the lower price would be undesirable.

No, I got the point. I just don't think it really solves the issue. I buy† Vagrant for $3 or $4 with some frequency. Would I buy fewer of them overall if they actually cost $3? Sure. But I think it would still slow the game down too much.

The upshot is that I'd rather have Vagrant for $2 than Digging Vagrant for $3 (or any cost). Digging is slow and has the potential to skip good cards. If you're going to have a card dig for something, it should be because the effect is compelling enough to make the slowness worth it. Golem's digging for Actions is compelling. Digging for junk isn't.


† Or gain when I could have gained a more expensive card

[Witherweaver]

So if you have exactly N bad cards in your deck, then playing N Digging Vagrants will put them all in your hand.  That seems like a good thing, as the value of all other drawing cards is increased.  But you're probably not going to play all of them unless you also have other drawing, in which case you're as likely to draw the Diggers as you are to draw the junk they're supposed to be digging.  And reshuffling issues.  I guess if you were going to use them then you would want a lot of them, so maybe they need to be cheap. 

It does have a lot of synergy (Forge, any trashers, Baron, Island, Ambassador, any discard-for-benefit card, Death Cart and Crossroads as mentioned before, etc.).  I was thinking it would excel in this cases, but maybe not.

So maybe $2 does work.  It would be interesting to see.