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[LastFootnote]

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

I think that might have been tested? I'm not certain.

[LastFootnote]

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...

Huh, that's interesting! Stronger than I expected, but maybe not crazy? Or maybe it needs to cost $4. Of course probably it just shouldn't exist at any cost, since it seems to really only work in money decks.

[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

I think that might have been tested? I'm not certain.

I just thought that Donald X had finally noticed that the "cantrip checkers" are more fun when they interact with the top card rather than the 2nd top card (with Sorceress).

On that note.

Patrol
Action - $5
Reveal the top 4 cards of your deck. Put the revealed curses and Victory cards into your hand, then put the rest back in any order.
Afterwards, +3 Cards.

This is so that Patrol is always at least a "best 3 of 4" drawer even if the Scout effect did nothing.

[NoMoreFun]

Catacombs has an awkward interaction with Elder, so it should be reworded

I prefer the version that gives you 6 cards with Elder.

Catacombs
Action - $5
Look at the top 3 cards of your deck.
Choose one: +3 Cards, or discard the top 3 cards of your deck and then +3 Cards.

But also Oracle like wording would work.

[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

I think that might have been tested? I'm not certain.

I just thought that Donald X had finally noticed that the "cantrip checkers" are more fun when they interact with the top card rather than the 2nd top card (with Sorceress).

On that note.

Patrol
Action - $5
Reveal the top 4 cards of your deck. Put the revealed curses and Victory cards into your hand, then put the rest back in any order.
Afterwards, +3 Cards.

This is so that Patrol is always at least a "best 3 of 4" drawer even if the Scout effect did nothing.

I don’t perceive the need to buff Patrol which is already one of the strongest $5 Smithies.

It whiffs about as often as Scout did. It's a good card because Smithy is a good card but the additional effect doesn't often amount to much in my experience.

[LastFootnote]

Patrol should have just been Scout with +$2, costing $5 (and possibly picking up Curses). That way you get to make use of the deck-ordering way more easily. But no, it was too similar to Minion then. Never mind that Minion should have been cut.

[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...

Huh, that's interesting! Stronger than I expected, but maybe not crazy? Or maybe it needs to cost $4. Of course probably it just shouldn't exist at any cost, since it seems to really only work in money decks.

From my "simulation", I expect it's actually fine at $2 - one turn less than BM-Smithy doesn't sound overpowered to me, though I'd still like comparisons to stronger BM cards if someone has simulated those. But I should mention that my sample size was only n=3 pure Adv.-BM games, so the "real" average number of turns may be somewhat higher or lower than my result.

Increasing it to $4 would only marginally weaken pure Adventurer-BM (you could still open Adv.+Silver with 4/3, and you usually get enough $4 or $5 turns on which to buy further Adv.s you want), but it may significantly weaken any combos with other $3-$5 cards, and with extra buys.

[grrgrrgrr]

I can't help but feel that the design process of Circle of Witches was a little overfocussed on making certain cards Cursers (that can't be blocked), leading to a clunky result. A better version, IMO, would be:

Circle of Witches
At start of Clean-up, you may spend 3 Favors to have each other player gain a Curse. Repeat as desired.

I also feel like Elder is not only little underpowered, but also has an annoying desinteraction with Command cards and Way of the Chameleon. What about the following version? (sorry if this is premature)

Elder (Action, $5)
+1 Action
$2
Take an Elder token. (when you are instructed to choose between abilities (using the word "Choose"), you may spend an Elder token to take an extra (different) option)

[Udzu]

Nice thread! As someone who isn't planning to print out the replacements, here are the minimal changes that I'm applying to my 1E cards (which I can just about keep in my head):

Adventurer: digs 3 Treasures
Chancellor: +1 Buy
Duchess: only affects you
Feast: +$2
Scout: also a Victory type worth 1VP
Secret Chamber: +1 Action
Thief: trashing is optional

Still not sure what to do with Spy or Pearl Diver (suggestions welcome).

[NoMoreFun]

Collection
Treasure - $5
+$2
+1 Buy
This turn, when you gain an Action card, if it's the first time you gained a copy of it this turn +1VP

Thematic with the name and removes the broken interactions with horse gainers.

[LastFootnote]

Collection
Treasure - $5
+$2
+1 Buy
This turn, when you gain an Action card, if it's the first time you gained a copy of it this turn +1VP

Thematic with the name and removes the broken interactions with horse gainers.

This was actually one of the tested versions, except it worked on all card types. We also noted that it was thematic. But tracer complained it worked on junk. Too easy to get lots of VP from Copper, Curse, Estate he felt.

[grrgrrgrr]

I've read the Secret History about Tools and you've worried a lot about it and it is not as absurd as it seemed to be. Still, I cannot help but feel that multiplying King's Courts, Platina and City Quarters with it shouldn't be possible. I think it should be:

Tools (Treasure, $4)
Gain a card costing up to $6 that anyone has a copy of in play.

The Plunder card that is most shocking to me, however, is the Nearby trait. A Nearby Peddler looks very awful to play with, as does any cheap Nearby card when Quarry is on the board. A good fix IMO would be:

Nearby (Trait)
The first time you gain a Nearby card in your turn, +1 Buy

(It also kinda weirds me out that the +Buy-on-play trait was considered not interesting enough, but oh well)

[segura]

Tools should simply cost $5. I find the argument that it is priced cheaper because it sucks as a opener beyond weird.

Nearby neatly illustrates the mess of getting rid of on-buy triggers.

[LastFootnote]

Tools was originally a terminal Action that cost $5, and I bought it plenty at that time. But nobody at Donald X.'s table would touch it, so *shrug*.

[NoMoreFun]

I don't mind a bit of randomness (I like Boons and Loots), but I think Ruins are too similar in function to Curses, and I don't like Hexes for various reasons. Meanwhile I really like the Snow and Idle Hands fan mechanics, as de facto "-1 Card" and "-1 Action" junk respectively, and think they could work to fix up a few cards.

Ruins
Action - $3*
+1 Action
Return this to its pile

Hex
Action - $3*
+1 Card
Return this to its pile

So when a card says "Receive a Hex", instead of the random negative effect, you gain a Hex ("Idle Hands"). New versions of the Doom cards would say "Gain a Hex" (and not have the Doom type), but there'd be rulebook to say that "receive" is the same as "gain".

I picked it this way around because I think it's more interesting with Cursed Village and Tormentor, but maybe the other way around works better.

This is all part of a "3rd editions" project - a way to "update" cards without replacing them. For Dark Ages it makes Death Cart stronger and Cultist/Marauder much weaker but I think they still work.

[LibraryAdventurer]

I'm not against the whole idea of a Treasure that draws, but Figurine seems awkward and usually really weak to me. Hopefully this change makes it more useful but not OP.

Figurine 2
$5 - Treasure
+2 Cards
+1 Buy.
You may discard up to 3 Actions for +$1 each.

Another possibility with a less drastic change:

Figurine 3
$5 - Treasure
+2 Cards
+1 Buy.
You may put a card from your hand onto your deck.
You may discard an Action for +$1.

or a more drastic change:

Figurine 4
$5 - Treasure
+2 Cards
You may discard an Action for +$1 and +1 Buy.
You may play an Action card from your hand.

Which do you think is best?

[segura]

Figurine might not be the best non terminal draw but it does not need to be buffed. After all it is the only Lab variant besides fully developed City that provides conditional extra Buys. That is pretty huge, you get one engine component that does two essential jobs.

[LibraryAdventurer]

Figurine might not be the best non terminal draw but it does not need to be buffed. After all it is the only Lab variant besides fully developed City that provides conditional extra Buys. That is pretty huge, you get one engine component that does two essential jobs.

It's hard for me to consider Figurine "non-terminal" when you (usually) can't play Actions afterwards.

[segura]

Figurine might not be the best non terminal draw but it does not need to be buffed. After all it is the only Lab variant besides fully developed City that provides conditional extra Buys. That is pretty huge, you get one engine component that does two essential jobs.

It's hard for me to consider Figurine "non-terminal" when you (usually) can't play Actions afterwards.

Well, you don’t play Figurine in decks with a high Action density to begin with and actually Figurine is hyper-non-terminal as it can convert dead Actions into Pouches.

[NoMoreFun]

I thought there was some sort of mistake with Figurine and Longship being $5s. Figurine has proven itself as a solid $5 to me, and it's retroactively made me see Scepter and Capitalism as a lot stronger.

Jury's still out on Longship for me.

[LastFootnote]

I thought there was some sort of mistake with Figurine and Longship being $5s. Figurine has proven itself as a solid $5 to me, and it's retroactively made me see Scepter and Capitalism as a lot stronger.

Jury's still out on Longship for me.

I don't tend to buy Longship much, though I should probably but it more.

[NoMoreFun]

Along the lines of other revisions to Cantrips that then deal with the top of the deck, and with a card that could use a buff.

Cartographer
Action - $5
+1 Action
Look at the top 5 cards of your deck. Put one in your hand, discard any number of the others, and put the rest back.

Also looks neat alongside Raze, Border Guard and Miller (Cost = Number of Cards revealed)

[BryGuy]

I'm not against the whole idea of a Treasure that draws, but Figurine seems awkward and usually really weak to me. Hopefully this change makes it more useful but not OP.

Figurine 2
$5 - Treasure
+2 Cards
+1 Buy.
You may discard up to 3 Actions for +$1 each.

Another possibility with a less drastic change:

Figurine 3
$5 - Treasure
+2 Cards
+1 Buy.
You may put a card from your hand onto your deck.
You may discard an Action for +$1.

or a more drastic change:

Figurine 4
$5 - Treasure
+2 Cards
You may discard an Action for +$1 and +1 Buy.
You may play an Action card from your hand.

Which do you think is best?

While figurine seams fine to me - I do not yet own Plunder. If i was to change it i would go with:

Figurine 5
$5 - Treasure
+2 Cards
You may discard an Action for +1 Buy and +$1.
You may put a card from your hand onto your deck.

[NoMoreFun]

Tide Pools
Action/Duration - $4
+1 Action
Choose one: +1 Card; or +3 Cards and discard 2 cards at the start of your next turn.

IMO it's not always clear whether the Tide Pools effect is better than a cantrip, and thats a more interesting decision to make with plays than simply not playing/gaining the card (which is clearly a dud without specific combos, much like many removed 1E cards).

Also it's a teacher card for "Durations only stay in play if they have something left to do"

[segura]

Tide Pools
Action/Duration - $4
+1 Action
Choose one: +1 Card; or +3 Cards and discard 2 cards at the start of your next turn.

IMO it's not always clear whether the Tide Pools effect is better than a cantrip, and thats a more interesting decision to make with plays than simply not playing/gaining the card (which is clearly a dud without specific combos, much like many removed 1E cards).

Also it's a teacher card for "Durations only stay in play if they have something left to do"

I totally disagree that Tide Pools is a dud or even weak. Vanilla-wise it is a Forum spread over two turns and while handsize attacks kill it in its tracks, it is a fine sifter otherwise.
I think your version is less interesting because you can always bail. Also, with Innkeeper we already have a sifter that can be a mere cantrip.