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[LastFootnote]

Those of you who have been keeping up with the Treasure Chest contest may remember my submission for a Dark Ages card.

Barrister
Types: Action – Attack
Cost: $5
+2 Cards. Each player (including you) reveals the top 2 cards of his deck; you may choose a revealed Treasure for him to trash. He discards the rest. You may gain a Treasure from the trash.
Setup: Replace one of each player's starting Coppers with a Claim.

Claim
Types: Treasure
Cost: $0
Worth $1. When you play this, look through your discard pile. You may trash a Claim from your discard pile or hand. If you do, gain a Gold, putting it into your hand.

As I mentioned in that contest, it's a card I'm working on for my fan expansion, Enterprise. I submitted it to get feedback. It got zero votes. Now, I expected that a Thief variant would be unpopular, but zero votes sends a clear message: improve or scrap this card. I really want to keep the mechanic of cards that you can only get from other players' decks, and a Thief variant seemed the natural way to do that. I'd considered a Barrister that could only steal Claims, but that's a really weak Attack.

Simultaneously, I was trying to design a cheap ($4) terminal Spy variant to replace a non-terminal one in the set. I was having a lot of trouble thinking of a card that wasn't too close to Rabble, Fortune Teller, or Oracle. Today, a bolt of lightning (probably inspired by KingZog's Ringmaster Prize submission) struck my brain, and I realized that I could combine the two into a single card that stole only Claims from other players while mucking their decks.

But! But but but! That is but one of the three wrongs that (hopefully) make up this right. You see that Claim up there? That is a wordy mess. Originally you had to collide the Claims in hand in order to gain the Gold, but I realized requiring you to steal the Claim and then line them up was too much. Hence the tortured "look through your discard pile" wording. It hit me today that a better way to make you want more Claims in your deck without having to collide them was by making them Victory cards.

So! So so so! You know how two of the most suggested fan cards are Mini-Harem [Worth $1/Worth 1VP] and Proto-Duke [Worth 1 VP per Proto-Duke in your deck], but they both make lousy Kingdom cards? Combining those two wrongs with the wrong of my failed Barrister, I give you Barrister 2.0!

Barrister
Types: Action – Attack
Cost: $4
+$2. Each other player reveals the top 2 cards of his deck, trashes a revealed Domain, discards the other revealed Actions and Treasures, and puts the rest back on top. Gain all the Domains in the trash.
Setup: Replace one of each player's starting Coppers with a Domain.

Domain
Types: Tresaure – Victory
Cost: $0
Worth $1.
Worth 1 VP for every Domain in your deck.

This post is long enough for now, so I'll just stop there and let you decide. Do three wrongs make a right in this case? Feedback is welcome! Thanks in advance.

[Archetype]

I like Domain much better than Claim. With Claim you had an incentive to get rid of them and then make other Barristers weaker. But with Domain, you don't want to get rid of them, but it increases their chance of being stolen. I also like how this is a mini-Rabble.

My initial thought is to have it gain all revealed Domains instead of just one. Other than that, looks good if a bit wordy.

[scott_pilgrim]

My first thought is that it seems very interesting.  I like the idea of having Domain replace starting Copper (that's a very nice way to do both the half Harem and the self-counting victory card in a non-broken way).  I did some probability to show you that looking at two cards wouldn't be enough, but the numbers that came out actually convinced me that the card is fine as it is.  Here I assume that you and your opponent each buy/gain only floor(n/5) cards per shuffle, where n is the number of cards in your deck at the start of that shuffle.  Also assume that you play Barrister exactly once per shuffle.  You open Barrister, so you won't play it on the first shuffle.  Then the probability of stealing a Domain is:

Code: [Select]

Shuffle   Cards in Deck   Probability in Current Shuffle   Cumulative Probability
1         10              0                                0
2         12              0.16667                          0.16667
3         14              0.14286                          0.28571
4         16              0.125                            0.375
5         19              0.10526                          0.44079
6         22              0.09091                          0.49163
7         26              0.07692                          0.53073
8         31              0.06451                          0.56101
9         37              0.05405                          0.58474It's probably a little weak on average (~50% chance of making a 4 VP swing at the cost of adding a Copper to your deck), since it's just a terminal silver with a pretty weak attack on it.  That's fine though because it becomes much more appealing on some boards (you see your opponent going for a thin deck, or maybe they voluntarily trash their Domain).  Grabbing more of them improves your odds of getting that 4 VP swing, but the marginal returns diminish with each subsequent Barrister.

It's way stronger in multi-player (better chance to hit a Domain, plus the chance of getting 9 or even 16 VP-worth of Domains), but I don't think it becomes problematically strong.  The main concern I would have is that it may be swingy in multi-player.  Very nice card(s) though, I like it a lot.

[LastFootnote]

scott_pilgrim, thanks a lot for doing the math, there! I think I'm happy with the current probabilities as well. The only change I may make is to replace Barrister's +$2 with +2 Cards. This would make it easier to play multiple Barristers in a turn, and also help differentiate it from the other Attacks in the set, which currently all have +$2.

Archetype, I considered having Barrister steal both Claims in the rare case that a player revealed two, but I thought that would be a bit too swingy and/or too much of a downer for the victim. In a 2-player game, that's an 8-VP swing from just one Attack!

[Kirian]

No, but three lefts do.

[LastFootnote]

No, but three lefts do.

Ba dum bum, tsssh! Thanks for that obligatory old chestnut.

[AJD]

…I feel like the power differential between this in 2-player and 4-player games is really wide. Am I missing something?

[LastFootnote]

…I feel like the power differential between this in 2-player and 4-player games is really wide. Am I missing something?

I don't think it's really wide. If anyone at all is contesting you, more Domains in your deck means that they're easier for other players to steal. Also, there are potentially more players to play Barrister against you. Even if you're uncontested, it's not a sure thing that you're going to grab all 4 Domains, and if you build a deck that plays Barristers often in order to ensure this, you're likely giving up on playing more powerful terminals.

So I think there are enough self-balancing factors in place that it won't be too crazy in 4-player games. Time and playtesting will tell!

[Tables]

A week late to comment, but... the fact that this attack can get so damaging late in the game is a real put off for me. Mainly in the sense of, this can cause big VP swings just by sheer chance, and that is in fact it's main selling point to buy the card. What cards does that remind you of? The one it really reminds me of is Saboteur. Saboteur typically can turn a Colony into a Province or Province into a Duchy at worst (okay edge cases when a pile is out blah blah blah), a 3 or 4 point hit to a player, but it costs $5 and does nothing. This in a 2 player game will always be a 4 point swing when it hits and costs less and gives $2. It hits less, but I don't think that's a big enough drawback. In a 3 player game it can do even more damage - if one player has all three Domains then stealing one gives you 6 points on him.

I don't think this effect is at all overpowered. The card is probably on the weak side, honestly. But the whole stealing points thing, especially late game, leaves a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths. I personally don't like it.

[LastFootnote]

A week late to comment, but... the fact that this attack can get so damaging late in the game is a real put off for me. Mainly in the sense of, this can cause big VP swings just by sheer chance, and that is in fact it's main selling point to buy the card. What cards does that remind you of? The one it really reminds me of is Saboteur. Saboteur typically can turn a Colony into a Province or Province into a Duchy at worst (okay edge cases when a pile is out blah blah blah), a 3 or 4 point hit to a player, but it costs $5 and does nothing. This in a 2 player game will always be a 4 point swing when it hits and costs less and gives $2. It hits less, but I don't think that's a big enough drawback. In a 3 player game it can do even more damage - if one player has all three Domains then stealing one gives you 6 points on him.

I don't think this effect is at all overpowered. The card is probably on the weak side, honestly. But the whole stealing points thing, especially late game, leaves a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths. I personally don't like it.

Sorry you don't like it. A lot of people don't like trashing attacks, so it's to be expected that not everybody's going to love the card. I'm really hoping the card will be a success, because creating new Attacks is hard and I really like the additional element the Domains add to the game. I've only playtested it in one 2-player game so far, so the jury is still far from in.