Discussion of Rule Changes

[AlexanderJohan]

There have been a number of rule changes as of 18 Februari 2022. What I would like to do is discuss whether these actually are reasonable and benefit the game or not.

The changes are as follows:
1. A huge buff of coffers, allowing you to play them at any time during your turn.
2. A big buff of Merchant Guild.
3. A huge buff of Donate, allowing you to trash at the end of a game ending turn.
4. A reasonable buff of Prince, allowing you to set aside cards that would otherwise move somewhere (trash or back to supply).
5. A slight nerf of Patron, only giving a coffer when revealed during the Action phase.




1. I think it is reasonable to allow the spending of coffers in the action phase, for Storyteller and Black Market. What I dislike is being able to spend coffers gained when buying Silk Merchant or Spices immediately. IMO this breaks Spices entirely. Basically it becomes (almost) strictly better than silver, especially when you're able to lower its cost by even 1. Silk Merchant and Spices were already very strong cards. They did not need a buff, IMO. A reasonable change would be to have Silk Merchant and Spices gain the coffers at the end of Buy phase.

2. Quite a big buff. The removal of the "while in play" clause is already a big buff, for double or triple playing the card. The change of gaining coffers per gained card really propels this card to a top-tier card, making it very likely to feature in the dominant strategy of a kingdom. I think it is reasonable to propel this card into the upper echelons.

3. Donate did not need a buff. It already was probably the most powerful event. This rule change totally negates some landmarks (Wall, Wolf Den, Bandit Fort) as well as kingdoms with cursing. The idea of Wall, Wolf Den and Bandit Fort is that you have to play around them and adapt your strategy. If you can just buy Donate on your finishing turn , that aspect of planning around them completely disappears. That seems like a waste. It really buffs ending the game in these cases, making it harder to play around your opponent ending the game when you have a points lead. A potential fix for this would be with some kind of "take an extra turn" wording.


4. I think this is a reasonable buff as Prince was quite a weak card for its cost. Setting aside a horse or experiment is nice. Maybe there are some uses I'm overlooking. I think Prince could cost 7.


5. If you think about it this is really a nerf mostly of Loan, Venture and Capitalism. The first two definitely did not need a nerf, already quite weak cards. If you wanted to nerf Capitalism, making it cost 6 would have been a better option. The reveal-effect on Patron was already quite hard to make work in many kingdoms, I don't think it needed this nerf.


So, these are my 2 cents. Would be curious to hear other opinions,

all the best,
Johan

[kieranmillar]

Just so you are aware, all of these changes have come from Donald X, Dominion's designer, rather than ShuffleIt, and all were done to primarily to smooth out rules confusion, rather than considerations to buff or nerf cards. So there will never be changes like e.g. making Prince cheaper.

For example, I know the change to Patron was because the new coffers rule resulted in infinite money when combined with the Persue event, rather than an aim to buff or nerf other combos. Can't comment on any of the other changes though.

[AlexanderJohan]

Makes sense re: Pursue. Although this could also be helped by limiting the moments of spending coffers to Action phase and money playing phase.

I just realized another interaction of the TOMB landmark and Donate. I think Donate is broken under this new rule.