Cactus Game Design Message Boards

I was thinking more than just the artifact.  Various types of cards that would work well in general (read: not "if used by..."), but become much better if the holder hasn't played X or more dominants.

How do your ideas benefit speed decks any less? Okay, you play Asking for Signs against me. I pop out 2 doms for 2 easy rescues, I use my plethora of enhancements to win a third, then I (interrupt and) discard your KotW taking the EC with AfS with it, drop SoG/NJ, win. The best part is you can only use up to 2 doms to stop those first 3 Souls otherwise you shoot yourself in the foot from your own card.

I honestly don't see how you think these are miraculous dom-stopping cards.

Disciples already deck 2 KotW counters standard: MLaMG and SoT. No extra slots required.

I'm not saying you definitely would, I'm just saying they can be used for that purpose if that's what you're up against.

Sons of Thunder....

If I have to use 2 to kill one fortress then you deserve to squash me.

MLaMG can be fairly useful for killing Gates.

Remind me what MLaMG is please.

Some of these are interesting ideas and some of these would be decent cards but for the most part I don't see how they address your stated concerns.  I like doms and don't want to trash them but I'm all for cards that give people pause on whether they should use them in a deck.  I don't think they are broken but I wish it was a common strategic decision on whether to build with them or not.

Asking for Signs
0/0 Multicolor Evil Enhancement, TC
"Place this card on a Human Evil Character: Protect all Lost Souls from Rescue by a player with more than 2 Dominants in his Discard Pile. Protect Evil Character from Conversion. Restrict owner from targeting this card."   

 I think a speed player could actually benefit from this with the right build.  It would help the speed player if the opponent isn't using their doms or isn't making rescues against the speed players small defense.  The speed player can use ANB to use Doms again which can fit just fine with a speed deck.

A House Divided
Evil Fortress
"Whenever a Demon is Discarded, look at a player's hand, territory and Discard Pile. If no more than two characters of the same Brigade in both alignments are found, player may not attack his next turn." 

Do they have to have 3 good and 3 evil to not get hit with this?  I think this might be like an evil Garden Tomb; most decks it wouldn't help much but you could really abuse it.  You could discard a demon with Gates or from hand to trigger each turn and their are plenty of ways to make sure they don't have the six characters needed.

Unto the Least
Good Dominant
-X=Number of Redeemed Souls by players with the least-
"If a player has four or more Redeemed Souls than X and is one soul away from winning, move a Lost Soul from his Land of Redemption to a player with the least Redeemed Souls." 

I think that would really frustrate players, more than any previous dom.

Pharaoh
12/12 Gold Evil Character, WC
-Egyptian King-
"Unless Moses or Aaron is in play, Discard the top card of opponent's deck to Protect all O.T. Lost Souls from rescue. If you do, you may not attack on your next turn."   

strong but don't see how it is related

Sealed Scroll
0/0 Silver/Green Enhancement, TC
"Search all player's decks and hands for all Dominants you have not yet played. Set them all aside until all players have fewer than 8 cards in deck." 

Can be abused by ANB speed player.  I play that early, draw out most of my deck, then play ANB to get my needed doms at the end.  It would have been ridiculous with Sin in the Camp decks but that got banned.  It could still be abused with combo decks since doms were one of the threats to stop my endless initiative and I didn't use doms.

Golden Vessels
Artifact
-May be activated on your Babylonian Royalty, X=Number of cards drawn by an opponent's ability this turn-
"Protect this card from Dominants. At any time, you may remove this card from the game to draw X cards."

seems weak to me.  Unless it does something else, why include it?  there are better ways for me to draw cards, besides the opponent drawing cards was generally not an incentive for me to not draw.

My ideas of counters are more like:

Remove any number of dominants in your hand from the game to discard 2x dominants from a players deck or hand and x cards from that players territory.  x= dominants removed from hand

I would never use a deck other than speed with all 12 dominants if this card was released.

Yeah, ANB is the exact opposite of speed.

People still play TGT after Golgatha was released.  Just because a counter exists doesn't mean people will stop using whatever's been countered.

Right, but it would be bad if it was countered to the point that you rarely saw them.  Look at how they have countered BtN, capture, territory destruction, choose the blocker, etc.  Those are all still useful cards and strategies but you no longer win 90% of your games with a straight BTN deck.  Capture cards are still good battlewinners for defense but there is so much protection from capture that defenses don't rely on just capture. 

So if you achieved a balance where about 40% used 10+ doms, 30% used about 4 doms, and 30% used no doms, then I think that would be a large improvement to the meta of the game.  It would provide more interesting variety to not 95% of the time know that the opponent is using the same doms and just waiting for when they draw their SoG, NJ, Angel, CM, etc.  So they are still going to be used a lot, but I would to see it be a strategic choice and it be a viable option to not use them at all.