u/InspectorMendel

A Bird in the hand is worth two in the discard, as they say

The “not set aside for Taboo” clause is to avoid gangups in multiplayer games. Note that the cost is much more than $3 since you are also giving up a useful card.

A gainer with a big downside. Probably only worth buying in the mid-to-late game.

Would this also work as a Project? How much would you pay for this effect, if anything?

Rules clarification: Treasures that don’t produce coin (such as Tools) are unaffected.

A lesson not to work too hard?

”End your Buy phase” is there for two reasons: one, to limit Mania to once per turn; and two, to avoid the need to remember how much $ and such you have left after trashing your cards.

Here's the math on this:

Incursion+Province = +8VP for $12

Incursion+Duchy = +5VP for $9

Incursion+Estate = +2VP for $6

So, these are more expensive and yield less VP than Colony, Province, or Duchy, respectively. But you don't add a junk card to your deck.

Or, for some alt-VP options:

Incursion+Nobles = +6VP for $10

Incursion+Mill (or Gardens) = +4VP for $8

Incursion + King's Castle = +10VP for $14

As another point of comparison, the wiki claims that a typical bid for Mountain Pass is about 13-14 debt for 8VP.

Hindrances are like Projects, except you start the game having them, and you pay their cost to lose them. You track them with wooden cubes like Projects.

I shared a few Hindrances yesterday and got great feedback. So here are some more Hindrances, as well as revised versions of the ones from yesterday, for a total of 11.

Some thoughts on specific Hindrances:

• Kowtow is “Evil Star Chart”. As a side effect it also helps the player to your right remember what you’ve gained.
• Highway Robbery is “Evil Road Network”.
• Enchantment is a Hindrance version of the attack card Enchantress. It transforms the second Action you play, which does two things: it doesn’t kick in on early turns, and it stacks with Enchantress.
• Debasement is a Treasure version of Enchantment. It can be quite painful on boards with no Villages, but not to the point of grinding the game to a halt (I think).
• Secret Society is a weird one. For one thing the setup is a bit awkward, especially in multiplayer. Also it can end up being pretty unbalanced in some cases, though I tried to mitigate that by keeping the cost low. Still, it’s not for everyone.
• Barricade v2: modified so it can’t kill you in the opening if you’re unlucky.
• Vermin v2: added the cost limit from Shaman so i doesn’t become insane when cards like Swindler are on the board.
• War v2: changed to avoid the need for unique tokens. Also raised the price. Also there’s now a cap on its impact, which makes skipping it a reasonable choice in more cases. Watch out for other cards that give you VP tokens, though.
• Shipwreck: unchanged. I included it here for completeness.

A Hindrance works like a Project, except you start with it active, and you have to pay its cost to lose it.

You track Hindrances with wooden cubes like Projects. At the start of the game everyone has a cube on the Hindrance, and if you “buy” a Hindrance, you remove your cube from it.

I would love any feedback, or ideas for more Hindrances :)

If the game ends due to this, that means that the player who triggered it got the last turn. So that’s an incentive to trigger it.

With this in play, Duchies are worth 2/3 as much as Provinces (instead of half), and Estates are worth 2/3 as much as Duchies (instead of 1/3). Action-Victory cards become highly valuable, and VP tokens are less attractive.

Compared to Battlefield, it doesn’t incentivize buying Estates quite as much, but it does make Duchies more tempting.