Distant Colonies Update

Some significant changes have been made to Distant Colonies. I have started to associate certain cards with certain expansions, turning it into a true treasure chest expansion.

Base: Jeweler and Settlement

Intrigue: Almoner (see below), Curio Stand

Seaside: Hawker

Prosperity: Investment, Bookkeeper

Cornucopia: Waystation

Hinterlands: Flower Meadow (see below)

Dark Ages: Badlands (see below), Infernal Contract (see below)

Alchemy: Doppelganger (see below)

Guilds: Let's wait for it to be released to make a card for it

New Cards:

I really like the utility of Almoner. You can gain whatever card you want, but your opponent also gets a copy. Powerful for rushes, as well as in asymmetrical matches. The real value of it is knowing what cards are more useful to you than your opponent, as well as controlling the pace of the game.

It also has some fun edge cases, such as gifting your opponent the last curse, or combining it with cost reducers and gifting provinces.

 This card was adapted from Temp. It is a powerful one-shot trasher, or you can use it for alternate VP. Most games, it will trash an estate or overgrown estate on the first use, making it worth 2 VP. However, if you are determined (and disciplined enough not to trash them), you can make it worth even more and turn it into a powerful alt-VP strategy.

 One mechanic that I was experimenting with for the Distant Colony expansion was tampering with the basic cards. Flower Meadow is a lot harder to ignore than regular duchies, however, it makes for a much poorer alt-VP/rush game. 

The name is based on the dutch tulip-mania, where tulips became absurdly valuable, then crashed in price.

The idea behind Infernal Contract is that it offers a gold with a penalty, similar to Cache. However, this is slightly cheaper, and is a lot harder to get rid of than its coppers. The premise of this card is that you can open with a gold with a standard 4/3 split, but it comes with a penalty. You get a junk card that confers a VP penalty, that you cannot get rid of. In some cases, this can be exploited by trash-for-benefit cards, but overall, it is a bad thing. I also don't like that it forms a powerful combo with Curio Stand, but I don't really see a way around it.

A lot of Alchemy's focus is actions, and Doppelganger is my answer to that. It acts as a Throne Room, but also gains an extra copy of the card. It helps both to play them, and to gain them.
However, the real madness of it starts when you start Doppelganging other Doppelgangers. You can quickly build up your deck, and you can be sure that it supports your action-heavy composition.