ADMINION - Dominion Spin-Off

[ch3cooh]

Halloo, I've been working on a Dominon set for ESP (MIT student group that runs programs where college-students+ teach classes for 7th-12th graders.)  I want the set to be at basically the same power level as normal dominion (aka, if I introduced a card from this into normal dominion, it wouldn't be very over or under powered.)  And I think I want this following list of cards to be the base set.  So, it should have a good balance of costs, card draw, buys, money, actions. Before I spend a bunch of time printing and cutting, etc.  I'd love to get feedback - anything from typos to massive play glitches in the new cards would be very good to know!  Suggestions for other cards, also cool. :)
 
Flavor: "You are the chair of ESP.  In an 'almost' ideal world.  Thus, you do nothing yourself but recruit admin, order resources, and Delegate to the admin you have recruited.  Resource cards (treasure) can be used to attain other resources or recruit admin (action-cards) or get students, teachers, and programs (victory-cards).  By default, your hand size is 5 cards and you can delegate (play an admin) once per turn and buy one card per turn given the resources you have accumulated."

Aka: Actions are Admins, and +1 action (the ability to play an extra admin) is instead +1 Delegate
Attack Actions are Admin-CRISIS

Renamed Base Cards:
Copper ->  Candy, Silver -> Juice, Gold -> Food Delivery
Curse -> Parent, Estate -> Student, Duchy -> Teacher, Province -> Program

Ordered by Cost, These are the cards I plan to include in the first set:
2-costs
Chapel
Pawn
Fire Extinguisher (Admin-Response) - +2Delegate & Moat-response
3-costs
Fishing Village
Watchtower
Chair (Resource) - worth 1$, While this card is in play, all chairs (about half of the action cards) cost 2 less but not less than 0
The Whale Is Mshaw (Admin) - +3Delegate, +2Buy
Sketchy Websites (Admin-Crisis) - +2$, Each plater either discards down to three cards in hand or gains a parent card.
4-costs
Remodel
Thrown Room
Smithy
Coppersmith
Caravan
Stanchions (Resource-Response) - Worth 2, When another player plays a Crisis, you may reveal this card from your hand.  If you do, you may choose to redirect any cards you would gain to that player's discard pile.
5-costs
Tactician
Lab
Council Room
All-Nighter (Admin-Duration) - +5 Cards, +1 Delegate, at the start of your next turn, discard 5 cards.  If you play an all-nighter while you have an all-nighter in play, discard 5 cards at the start of all subsequent turns
Big Mess (Admin-Crisis) - +2 cards, each other player discards down to three cards in hand
Fire Hazard (Admin-Crisis) - +2$, Other players each discard an admin or gain a parent and a student into their hand.
6-costs
Punt/Tool (Admin) - Choose one of Punt:+3$, or Tool:+2cards,+1Delegate,+1Buy
Teach! (Admin-Victory) - You may trash an Admin from your hand. If you do so, gain a Teacher.  Worth 1 for every teacher in your deck.
Morph Attack (Admin-Crisis) - Each player (including you) reveals the top card of his deck and either discards it or, if it is an admin, returns it to the supply and gains an admin of your choice within $1 of its cost.
Classroom (Resource-Victory) - worth $2 and 1vp - when this card comes into play you may set it aside with any other victory cards from your hand.  Return them to your deck at the end of the game.

For fun, here are a few of the prettier cards:



 
THANKS!

Comments

[ultrawaffle.livejournal.com]

Some comments:
Fire Extinguisher is definitely better than Moat, but I think that's fine, because Moat is pretty sucky anyways.

Chair needs to be very carefully balanced--it matters a lot which actions cards are chairs, because otherwise having a 3-cost Quarry could be way overpowered. It also would be unfortunate if it is reasonably common to not have any chairs in a game.

The Whale is Mshaw seems pretty lame--there's a reason no card in Dominion (yet) gives either +3 Actions or +2 Buys. It's just not very useful to have that much, and the actions that give you the most cards (eg Council Room) tend to bring buys with them anyways).

Stanchions seems really good for $4, but it can't cost $5 given how common attackless games are.

Big Mess should NOT cost 5. For a terminal action, +2 cards is much worse than +2$. You can compare to Torturer, which gives 3 cards and has an attack which is significantly more powerful than discarding down to 3 (because it stacks with itself). Big Mess would be either a poor 4-cost or a strong 3-cost.

Fire Hazard is an interesting variant on Mountebank. Discarding an action instead of a curse makes it easier (but more painful) to defend against, but there's a huge difference between a copper and an estate (copper is much much better, until the end of the game). My gut feeling is that it's overpowered, but I could believe that I'm wrong. Another thing to keep in mind is that Fire Hazards might make two piles run out quickly, which has a huge effect on the game (though it is easy enough to block that probably curses wouldn't run out).

Teach! seems really good, especially in a set without Embargoes.

Morph Attack is a powerful attack, but I feel like it's not worth it for $6 if it gives you nothing. I would make it cost $5 or add +2$ (for a 6-cost, a terminal action that gives +2$ isn't much--compare to how powerful Goons is).

Classroom: to clarify, the setting aside effect happens in the Cleanup phase when you play it as a treasure? It sounds reasonable, but I could totally believe that it's too weak for $6

[ch3cooh.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for commenting! I don't want gameplay to explode when it first comes out. :)

The Whale is Mshaw has +3 actions largely for flavor. I want it to be worth $3 though.... how about +3 actions +1$

I'm ok with Stanchions being really good. Stanchions are really good. :) Is there any situation where game play is annoyingly ambiguous.

Big Mess -> 4cost, it's not supposed to be a terribly impressive attack by itself.

I think most people will probably block Fire Hazard, at least until it's towards the end of the game anyway.

Should Teach! cost 7? I had it as 7 for a while, but I felt like, regardless of the cost, a game with teach would have a teach! duchy scramble no matter what, which is kind of the desired effect.

Morph Attack -> 5-cost

I was actually worried classroom was overpowered. yes, it happens during the cleanup phase, I'll change the text to make that clearer.

I'm worried about All-Nighter. Is it reasonably a 5 cost, is it too easy to abuse the 'last-turn-don't-care' quality - that property is intentional, but it shouldn't be so bad as to make games a toss-up.

[ultrawaffle.livejournal.com]

I don't think All-Nighter is too powerful--until the last turn, it's a significantly weaker version of Tactician. I would say it is worse than Tactician under most circumstances.

So, for Classroom, I would note that 1 VP is pretty trivial, and that if you use it to clean VPs from your deck, you no longer have that silver to spend. As a comparison, I think a 1 VP Island would be utter crap, and would rarely be worth buying for $3. The difference between 1 VP and 2 VP is huge, because having a lead in 2 VP cards (which are also beneficial in themselves) can add up to a Province (or even a Colony), whereas that's basically impossible with 1 VP cards. So, as an example, the action power of Nobles would probably make it one of the weaker 5-costs, but the 2 VPs make it able to compete with Gold at 6. On the other hand, Classroom without the 1 VP I would probably value at only 4. 1 VP is definitely not enough to raise a 4-cost to being with 6, though it could easily raise a strong 4-cost to 5. Then again, maybe I'm underestimating its power--unlike Island, it doesn't cost an action to use and it can set aside multiple cards at once.

On Fire Hazard, in the early game people don't have actions a lot of the time, and in any case in a game without any action forks, they will probably never have a lot of actions. If someone gets 5/2, it could be absolutely devastating if there are no reasonable 3-cost actions to buy.

[ch3cooh.livejournal.com]

For classroom, it doesn't change the card much in my mind to make it 2vp instead of 1, and, I agree, 6-cost is a lot. I'll playtest with 2vp at 6-cost and see what happens.

The 5/2 split is a really strong argument, but mountebank seems like it would have roughly the same randomly powerful advantage. I think I'm ok making that a concern of players in the first turn of a game with Fire Hazard - that they are more likely risking an early parent and student if they don't pick up two actions and if another player has a 5/2 split. (the dilemma also fits the flavor well, 'fire hazards' are definitely a reason to pick up even 'cheap' help early to avoid them on registration day) Between Fire Hazard and Mountebank, I feel like the easier to block but more annoying effect is a trade-off that is pretty closely balanced, possibly in the favor of Mountebank where you can't block Mountebank until you already are drawing a curse in hand :(.

[ch3cooh.livejournal.com]

heh - also, it's a failure mode that I'd find hilarious to play test through given the flavor: one player gains a mountebank early and everyone else has 7 cards in their hand come their turn for the first 3 rounds of the game - would be less fun after that, but dealing with reg is like that, the nostalgic synergy is enough that I almost want to 'get' to try to deal with it. ;-)

[ultrawaffle.livejournal.com]

The difference between an early Fire Hazard and an early Mountebank is that getting Fire Hazarded makes it harder to defend against future Fire Hazards (by quite a bit, when you're adding two dead cards to a thin deck with (say) only one action in it so far), while getting Mountebanked makes it easier to defend against future Mountebanks. But I could believe that this difference is not very significant in practice.

[ultrawaffle.livejournal.com]

Oh, one more thought: I think Sketchy Websites should cost $4. Even though it's strictly worse than Militia, it's still really good (Militia is one of the best 4-costs), and I can imagine few games where I wouldn't buy two of them on the first two turns if it cost $3, which is usually a good criterion for something to cost $4 instead of $3. The option of gaining a curse has little effect on its strength--the reason Torturer has that option is because its discard effect can stack; when you just discard down to 3 people will rarely take a curse instead.

[ch3cooh.livejournal.com]

Hmm, think I could lower it to +$1 instead? You probably noticed, the set has a lot of good response cards - I really like it when games are interactive in interesting ways - the counterpart to lots of responses is that the attacks have to be good enough to play anyway. I really like the dynamic of stanchion-sketchywebsite where, if you think other players are likely to have a stanchion, sketchy website effectively becomes a dead card. But you're right that in every game without stanchion, it's overpowered. So.... $1 - I wan to make it cheaper than stanchion. It's possible stanchion should be 5.

[ultrawaffle.livejournal.com]

I think making it give $1 makes it quite weak, perhaps such that it should cost $2. For an action that gives neither cards nor actions to give you only $1 makes it not a whole lot better than a copper--it does do the attack, but it costs an action to play.

[ultrawaffle.livejournal.com]

By the way, I should add: I absolutely love the flavor.

[ch3cooh.livejournal.com]

:) thanks. It helps that ESP has awesome culture. Which reminds me, I've been meaning to come to HRSFA more frequently this semester, when's the next game night/ perhaps it's time I poke you to be on an announcements list as I'm on campus 2nights per week already for class.

[ultrawaffle.livejournal.com]

Every Friday night starting at 9 we have games (though occasionally I won't be there). I also have some friends in the law school who I play games with sporadically, and I'm sure you would be welcome with them too--I'll try to remember to poke you next time that's happening.

Wow

[yalu wu (from livejournal.com)]

Oh my gosh... this is SO cool!!

Does mshaw know about this?

Also, you're going to have to update this if ESP gets new stuff! For example, (back in the old days when I was in ESP) we didn't have stanchions and we used masking tape for everything!! Ah, technology.. (kidding!)

Re: Wow

[ch3cooh.livejournal.com]

hehe, I don't think many people outside of ESP (and now my LJ) have seen anything, and the MIT ESP 'unveiling' is tomorrow night. :)

For the record,
Mshaw's flavor refers to one of Vincent's infamous graphic design projects - a splash theme featuring a whale making a giant splash that had S-P-L-A-S-H spelled out in the water. Someone commented that this made it seem like Splash was made by a single giant whale, and we stared debating if one person could somehow pull off a splash alone. The consensus was basically, no, but if someone could, it would be Mshaw (at the time, in kind of seemed like he was doing that at Stanford) - and the graphic was posted on the office wall and tagged with "the whale is mshaw." Mshaw came to this splash, and this was his nametag quote, but I'm not sure anyone explained the story to him... hehe, ESP has a bit of a bad habit for inside jokes. :)

Re: Wow

[ch3cooh.livejournal.com]

Actually, for prosperity/history-of-some-kind, a "stories" insert might be a really nice addition - aka, a packet with a picture of each card an an explanation of it's flavor. Although, it seems a bit heavy-handed while most of the people around catch the references. hmm... later.

Re: Wow

[ch3cooh.livejournal.com]

oooh oooh oooh!

Dongles:
Resource, a 4-cost, When this comes into play, flip a coin. If heads, trash the card, if tails, this card is worth 3$ and return it to the supply pile in your cleanup phase.

We can never keep track of our mac-dongles!
:)

[chessbot.livejournal.com]

This is hilarious and awesome. (And therefore, so are you. :-) ).

There are a couple of random typos on the cards you might want to check before printing (I don't mind copyediting if you want to send them over when they're reasonably final); I don't have the Dominion experience to comment on the actual content. The cards look really pretty, though :-).

[ch3cooh.livejournal.com]

I will definitely take you up on that - possibly as early as tomorrow night. I want to show off at the Tuesday meeting and then start printing. :) Thanks! I've been playing with paint.net which is surprisingly good for being completely free.

[oxeador.livejournal.com]

If I may make a suggestion, print this cards cheaply (or even just handwrite staff on pieces of paper) and playtest it. That is the best way to see how it works, whether something is overpriced or underpriced, et cetera. After all, you are going to have no shortage of volunteers to playtest.

[ch3cooh.livejournal.com]

I'm definitely doing this - actually, to an extreme: the final plan is to print on common card-stock and sleeve the cards in nicer-than-average sleeves. I could afford to do it a more professional way, but I really want the game to grow and for other people to try making cards. :) I'm buying 1500 sleeves for 2 Resource/Victory sets and then one set of each card + a bunch of spare. But, as that's enough for about 75 non-base cards types, and I'm only making 24 this round, the hope is for the collection to grow!

Отличный блог!

[vladijotom.livejournal.com]

Познавательно, но не убедительно. Чего-то не хватает, а чего не пойму. Но, скажу прямо: – светлые и доброжелательные мысли. (http://zimnyayaobuv.ru/) (http://zimnyaya-obuv.ru/)

Re:

[audracab.livejournal.com]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6M_6qOz-yw