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[LibraryAdventurer]

You could just excise the Artifact abilities out of Border Village entirely. That's how it originally was. "+1 Card. +1 Action. Look at the top 2 cards of your deck. Put one into your hand and discard the other." It no longer activates Patron, for what that matters. (It mattered a lot to me at the time, since there were precious few ways to activate Patron in Renaissance.)

EDIT: I enjoy Artifacts in real-life games, except Lost in the Woods! Lost in the Woods just makes Fool way too complex. I'd be interested in testing Fool as a one-shot and maybe moving Lucky Coin to Bard.

That's funny. The reason I don't like most artifacts, but don't mind Lost in the Woods is that I think the minigame of stealing powerful artifacts from each other is very annoying. But Lost in the Woods isn't particularly strong. If you don't have it, it means you can play Fool for a strong effect, so you don't miss it when it gets stolen. (Treasure chest isn't that strong either, but I just think it seems tacked on and Swashbuckler doesn't need it. Same for the Key and Treasurer actually.)

[NoMoreFun]

On Artifacts, since each Artifact only corresponds to one card, room could have been saved by making the Artifact the randomiser, with something like this.

[spineflu]

On Artifacts, since each Artifact only corresponds to one card, room could have been saved by making the Artifact the randomiser, with something like this.

but then how do i put the randomizer in the black market deck?

[LastFootnote]

That's funny. The reason I don't like most artifacts, but don't mind Lost in the Woods is that I think the minigame of stealing powerful artifacts from each other is very annoying. But Lost in the Woods isn't particularly strong. If you don't have it, it means you can play Fool for a strong effect, so you don't miss it when it gets stolen. (Treasure chest isn't that strong either, but I just think it seems tacked on and Swashbuckler doesn't need it. Same for the Key and Treasurer actually.)

I think Treasure Chest is the most fun part of Swashbuckler, but maybe that's just because I miss Jungle Explorer.

[LibraryAdventurer]

I like Jungle Explorer better than Swashbuckler. The coin token mechanic with Swashbuckler seems arbitrary to me (same with the discount on Fisherman), but Jungle Explorer earns her coffers and villagers. What is this card from?

[Gubump]

I like Jungle Explorer better than Swashbuckler. The coin token mechanic with Swashbuckler seems arbitrary to me (same with the discount on Fisherman), but Jungle Explorer earns her coffers and villagers. What is this card from?

It's an outtake from Renaissance, which evolved into Swashbuckler. It's in the Secret History.

[LibraryAdventurer]

I find your Duchess boring. Here's my Duchess:

Duchess
$2 - Action
+$2.
You may discard a card costing at least $3. If you do, +1 Action.
-
In games using this, when you buy a Duchy, you may gain a Duchess.

If this seems strong for a freebie, I'd just make it more specific "You may discard a Duchy for +1 Action."

[D782802859]

There really isn't anything wrong with Duchess as printed. It's not super powerful, but not every card has to be.

[LastFootnote]

I idea is just to make Duchess less slow, and simplifying it is a bonus.

But don't tell me. This particular change is straight out of Donald X.'s time machine thread.

[NoMoreFun]

Inspired by a post by Timinou in the Weekly Design Contest to necro this thread and post another revised Research (one that could actually fit in Renaissance)

Research
Action/Duration - $4
+1 Action
Choose one: Trash a card from your hand, or set it aside and at the start of your next turn, trash it for +1 Card per $1 it costs.

It's basically the same card, but it doesn't take cards out of your deck this turn. You also now have the option to trash instantly and avoid sending the card to Duration land, but with no benefit.

[NoMoreFun]

Donald X is on record as saying he wouldn't do Hexes in hindsight, so thinking about the official Doom cards (I posted something like this a few years ago in a different thread).

Werewolf
Action/Night - $5
If it's your Night phase, gain a Silver. Otherwise, +3 cards

Not a bad consolation prize for drawing it dead, and sometimes you'd intentionally play it at night.

_________________________________________________
Vampire
Night - $5
Gain a card costing up to $5 that isn't a Vampire, then exchange this for a Bat

Bat
Night - $2*
Trash up to 2 cards from your hand. If you trashed any, exchange this for a Night card.

Vampire doesn't need a buff to make up for losing the hexing, but just to be fair I changed Bat slightly so it can transform into an Exorcist or a Raider or a Den of Sin (might need an awkward "exchanging isn't gaining" clarification in the FAQ however for the "gain to hand" night cards)

________________________________________________

Skulk
Action - $4
+1 Buy
---
When you gain or trash this, gain a Gold

Skulk is on my veto list on Dominion Online so I'm not sure how strong it is, but my impression was the card would be fine without the Hexing. When trash bonuses are fun though.
______________________________

Leprechaun
Action - $3
Gain a Gold. If you have exactly 7 cards in play,  gain a Wish. Otherwise gain a Copper onto your deck.

Envious (as a "while this is in play" effect) is probably a better fit, but this is nice and simple.

______________________________

Cursed Village
Action - $5
+2 Actions
Draw until you have 6 cards in your hand
---
When you gain this, put a card from your hand onto your deck.

Just like with official Cursed Village, it might hurt, it might not. This version can also be helpful.
_________________________________

Tormentor
Action/Attack -  $5
+$2
If you have an Imp in play, each other player gains a Curse. Otherwise, gain an Imp.

Incorporates another good idea from the forums regarding Imps (not sure who had it first - maybe it was LastFootnote?). May not need the Cursing but I like the idea that the little Imps are helping the Tormentor do mean things.

[NoMoreFun]

I think there's a consensus forming around Gatekeeper that it's a dud.

I remember hearing on AdamH's podcast that it cost $4 for most of playtesting and was bumped up to $5 late in the picture, as it was too strong in the early game to lock players out of their opening cards (but not otherwise). So as a suggestion:

Gatekeeper
Action/Duration - $4
At the start of your next turn, +$3

[spineflu]

Donald X is on record as saying he wouldn't do Hexes in hindsight, so thinking about the official Doom cards (I posted something like this a few years ago in a different thread).

Werewolf
Action/Night - $5
If it's your Night phase, gain a Silver. Otherwise, +3 cards

Not a bad consolation prize for drawing it dead, and sometimes you'd intentionally play it at night.

_________________________________________________
Vampire
Night - $5
Gain a card costing up to $5 that isn't a Vampire, then exchange this for a Bat

Bat
Night - $2*
Trash up to 2 cards from your hand. If you trashed any, exchange this for a Night card.

Vampire doesn't need a buff to make up for losing the hexing, but just to be fair I changed Bat slightly so it can transform into an Exorcist or a Raider or a Den of Sin (might need an awkward "exchanging isn't gaining" clarification in the FAQ however for the "gain to hand" night cards)

________________________________________________

Skulk
Action - $4
+1 Buy
---
When you gain or trash this, gain a Gold

Skulk is on my veto list on Dominion Online so I'm not sure how strong it is, but my impression was the card would be fine without the Hexing. When trash bonuses are fun though.
______________________________

Leprechaun
Action - $3
Gain a Gold. If you have exactly 7 cards in play,  gain a Wish. Otherwise gain a Copper onto your deck.

Envious (as a "while this is in play" effect) is probably a better fit, but this is nice and simple.

______________________________

Cursed Village
Action - $5
+2 Actions
Draw until you have 6 cards in your hand
---
When you gain this, put a card from your hand onto your deck.

Just like with official Cursed Village, it might hurt, it might not. This version can also be helpful.
_________________________________

Tormentor
Action/Attack -  $5
+$2
If you have an Imp in play, each other player gains a Curse. Otherwise, gain an Imp.

Incorporates another good idea from the forums regarding Imps (not sure who had it first - maybe it was LastFootnote?). May not need the Cursing but I like the idea that the little Imps are helping the Tormentor do mean things.

I'm not sure removing the hexes necessitates removing access to envious/deluded. give vampire the ability to hand out deluded (since it's a counter to that in the form of gaining, and also is only on the non-bat turns) and leprechaun the ability to whammy yourself with envious imo.

[NoMoreFun]

Deluded is way too strong for a realiable attack, and the best counter play is Big Money.

I like Envious and with Leprechaun it creates interesting situations where you have to decide whether you want to play it or not, but I imagine it being too easy to work around.

[spineflu]

Deluded is way too strong for a realiable attack, and the best counter play is Big Money.

I like Envious and with Leprechaun it creates interesting situations where you have to decide whether you want to play it or not, but I imagine it being too easy to work around.

I mean, have it be something like "you may discard an action card; if you do, each other player takes Deluded. If you don't, each other player with 5+ cards in hand discards an Action or Treasure card (or reveals they can't)." (fear, iirc)

[emtzalex]

Skulk
Action - $4
+1 Buy
---
When you gain or trash this, gain a Gold

Skulk is on my veto list on Dominion Online so I'm not sure how strong it is, but my impression was the card would be fine without the Hexing. When trash bonuses are fun though.

Skulk is in my top five for opening pairs with Cathedral (and its presence on a board is enough for me to buy the Project, absent a strong handsize attack). The thing about Skulk is that getting the card itself is the reason that you are able to buy (or gain) a Gold for $4. The Skulk is the junk (and, at least conceptually, it is worse junk than 2 Coppers, which only discount a Gold equivalent to $5 in the form of Cache). As junk, trashing it is its own reward, and having it give an additional Gold would (imo) be busted.

I think it probably needs to still contain a weak/unreliable attack. One option might be something like

Each other player with 5 or fewer cards in hand gains a Copper to their hand.

That's probably the weakest junking attack possible, as it gives the least bad best piece of official junk, actually helps the opponent on their next turn, and doesn't stack (unless combined with a handsize attack). You could weaken it further by saying

Each other player may reveal a Copper from their hand; if they don't, they gain one to their hand.

This is substantially weaker than almost any Hex, will fail the vast majority of the time, and is an attack that a players would choose not to avoid when they could in a non-marginal portion of cases. Alternatively, you could give it an especially weak non-Attack function (like Duchess's universal deck control effect).

Ultimately, Skulk provides access to Gold at a significant discount, and also provides +Buy, which is absent from many boards, and which Skulk will not infrequently be the only source of. It might still be buyable with just the +1 Buy and on-gain, but I think it is more interesting with some other effect.

[emtzalex]

Ultimately, Skulk provides access to Gold at a significant discount

Well, yeah, but buying Skulk also adds two stop cards to your deck. Without the Hexing the card would be far too weak as Ruined Market plus Gold is identical to Woodcutter plus Copper.

Ruined Market + Gold is arguably significantly worse than Woodcutter + Copper, as the need for +Buys is strongly correlated to having lots of money, and any hand with a Ruined Market has one space fewer for payload. That's why I tend to get Skulk (even in it's current version) with the intention of trashing it, either with the intent to trash it using a TfB card I am intending to buy anyway (Sacrifice, Upgrade, etc.), or because I have very good trashing (Cathedral). If my plan for Skulk is not to play it, then I don't really care that much about it's on-play effect.

On the other hand, as I mentioned before, +Buy is something that is not infrequently absent from boards. It is also something that can be very needed in a deck. Ergo, I have, on very rare occasions, bought (or intentionally gained) Ruined Market in games where I was desperate for +Buy and nothing else was available (especially where the nature of the Kingdom made turns very swingy, getting more than $13 in some turns and less than $5 in others, e.g. in games with Minion). There is a non-zero set of circumstances where buying a Ruined Market at $4 might be a strategically reasonable choice, albeit not nearly enough to justify that card existing.

[The Alchemist]

Here's how I personally changed Transmute for my sets:



This version still preserves all the normal options, including Copper to Transmute and Estate into Gold, while at the same time letting you trash Transmute and other $4 actions into Provinces, like a good remodler should, instead of just Duchies which I think was one of the big problems of transmute. Before it gave you 3 things you actually didn't often want in your deck, but a more expensive Transmute is a more desirable one.

[NoMoreFun]

I never liked how Wishing Well interacted with the 2nd top card of your deck, not the top card. It was mitigated by Mystic (which also Self Combos), and cards that combo with it like Secret Passage. But now I think Sorceress has provided the ideal wording.

[Commodore Chuckles]

Ultimately, Skulk provides access to Gold at a significant discount

Well, yeah, but buying Skulk also adds two stop cards to your deck. Without the Hexing the card would be far too weak as Ruined Market plus Gold is identical to Woodcutter plus Copper.

Ruined Market + Gold is arguably significantly worse than Woodcutter + Copper, as the need for +Buys is strongly correlated to having lots of money, and any hand with a Ruined Market has one space fewer for payload. That's why I tend to get Skulk (even in it's current version) with the intention of trashing it, either with the intent to trash it using a TfB card I am intending to buy anyway (Sacrifice, Upgrade, etc.), or because I have very good trashing (Cathedral). If my plan for Skulk is not to play it, then I don't really care that much about it's on-play effect.

On the other hand, as I mentioned before, +Buy is something that is not infrequently absent from boards. It is also something that can be very needed in a deck. Ergo, I have, on very rare occasions, bought (or intentionally gained) Ruined Market in games where I was desperate for +Buy and nothing else was available (especially where the nature of the Kingdom made turns very swingy, getting more than $13 in some turns and less than $5 in others, e.g. in games with Minion). There is a non-zero set of circumstances where buying a Ruined Market at $4 might be a strategically reasonable choice, albeit not nearly enough to justify that card existing.

The principle that a good turn plus a bad turn is usually better than two mediocre turns would argue that Gold + Ruined Market is better.

[emtzalex]

Ultimately, Skulk provides access to Gold at a significant discount

Well, yeah, but buying Skulk also adds two stop cards to your deck. Without the Hexing the card would be far too weak as Ruined Market plus Gold is identical to Woodcutter plus Copper.

Ruined Market + Gold is arguably significantly worse than Woodcutter + Copper, as the need for +Buys is strongly correlated to having lots of money, and any hand with a Ruined Market has one space fewer for payload. That's why I tend to get Skulk (even in it's current version) with the intention of trashing it, either with the intent to trash it using a TfB card I am intending to buy anyway (Sacrifice, Upgrade, etc.), or because I have very good trashing (Cathedral). If my plan for Skulk is not to play it, then I don't really care that much about it's on-play effect.

On the other hand, as I mentioned before, +Buy is something that is not infrequently absent from boards. It is also something that can be very needed in a deck. Ergo, I have, on very rare occasions, bought (or intentionally gained) Ruined Market in games where I was desperate for +Buy and nothing else was available (especially where the nature of the Kingdom made turns very swingy, getting more than $13 in some turns and less than $5 in others, e.g. in games with Minion). There is a non-zero set of circumstances where buying a Ruined Market at $4 might be a strategically reasonable choice, albeit not nearly enough to justify that card existing.

The principle that a good turn plus a bad turn is usually better than two mediocre turns would argue that Gold + Ruined Market is better.

But if you get the +Buy on the "bad turn" it is effectively useless. Thus, it's better to have it linked to at least some payload (with Woodcutter) than independent from it (with Ruined Market/Skulk, which both constitute terminal dead cards that provide $0 while taking up a slot in your hand).

[LibraryAdventurer]

Recently, I had a game with Annex, and every time I looked at it, I thought "boy, that event just sucks".
So here's my version strengthened by changing the timing:

Annex
- Event
During clean-up this turn, after discarding and before drawing your next hand:
Look through your discard pile. Shuffle all but up to 5 cards from it into your deck. Gain a Duchy.

What do you think?

[grrgrrgrr]

What I find kinda irksome, is that Black Market cards have no pile. This means that the stop moving rule comes into play whenever you try to return a Black Market card to the supply using Way of the Horse, Swap or Way of the Butterfly. This means that the latter two straight up don't work with BM, while the former gets rather overpowered. But isn't the Black Market deck supposed to be "their pile"? Here an attempt to fix this.



I know this is rather superfluous, and it'd also mandate a fixing in the wordings of Encampment and Experiment (to use "its pile" instead of "the supply").

And a better fix might be to somewhat fix the stop moving rule into: if a card tries to move out of your deck and has no destination, it goes to the trash. But that obviously opens its own can of worms with Fortresses originating from BM, and returning to the supply is probably too uncommon to warrant a "fix" like this.

Research's setting aside and missing shuffles makes it not all that fun.

IMO

Research
Action - $4
+1 Action
Trash a card from your hand. Gain a Horse per $1 it costs.

The horses could be top decked but without the duration type and setting aside it's a big buff.

Honestly, I think Garrison has the perfect solution to this. Just put a token on this per $1 the trashed card costs, and at the start of your next turn, remove the tokens for +1 card per token removed. (and it's a Renaissance card, which makes the solution extra perfect)

[Holger]

Adventurer would probably work with just a reduced cost; I think I'd try it at $4 (or even $3); this might make it a reasonable BM card (in engines, it's still usually worse than Moat).

I think Adventurer should cost $2, no joke. It takes a lot of work to make it good, like Poor House. Arguably it takes even more work than Poor House, though the upper bound on its power is also higher. Anyway, yeah, $2. That's my unofficial official recommendation.

I've finally tried to estimate Adventurer's strength if it cost $2, playing with it in a few IRL solo games. The result was that $2-Adventurer BM takes 13 turns to get 4 Provinces on average, and 15 turns to get 5 Provinces.

(In those games, it wouldn't have mattered if it cost $3 instead, since I never happened to have a $2 turn.)

This is better than Smithy-BM, which averages 14 turns to 4 Provinces according to the Wiki. Does someone know how many turns stronger (non-Attack) BM cards need to get 4 or 5 Provinces?

I've also tried a few solo games of $2 Adventurer+Spice Merchant BM, since I expected SM to be one of the best supporting Action cards for Adventurer. But surprisingly, this strategy took slightly longer to get to 4 resp. 5 Provinces than $2 Adventurer-BM alone...

[NoMoreFun]

Sea Chart is another brand new card that interacts with the 2nd from the top card of your deck. I would revise to:

Sea Chart
Action - $3
+1 Action
Reveal the top card of your deck and put it in your hand. If it's a copy of a card you have in play, +1 Card