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]

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.