Talk:Infinite Dvorak deck

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This deck is perpetually under construction. If you want to join in, just add some cards to the card list.

Due to the sheer number of cards that have been talked about, some old cards' talk has been archived Talk:Infinite Dvorak deck/Archived Talk.

Neat idea

This is a neat idea! As I remember cards from my gaming group's old 1000 Blank White Cards game, I'll add the ones that make sense (and probably some that don't) here. Edit: And in case you're wondering, the original cards designed for use with Full Deck were: Diamonds Are Forever, Gone Clubbing, "Cover Your Heart, Indy!", and Have Your Pet Spade or Neutered. Jtwe 21:03, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Well where are those other cards?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Gill smoke (talkcontribs) 31st December 2007.

Tokens = Things

Wouldn't it be easier to define Tokens as created-on-the-spot Things? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Zaratustra (talkcontribs).

That plays heck with game balance. For example, "Hoard"...-Bucky 06:58, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
I get the feeling this deck is never going to be particularly "balanced".
Tokens being Things sounds like a good idea from the infinite deck perspective - if a game features one token generator card, but no cards that do anything with tokens, then there's less card interaction than there could be. Treating all "destroy a token to achieve X" cards as "destroy a token or Thing" won't hurt anyway - if the effect is tailored for an abundance of tokens, then using a non-token Thing is just an expensive alternative, which is better than the card being unusable. --Kevan 10:21, 2 March 2007 (UTC)]
My problem with that is if a card says "destroy a thing or things to achive X", tokens shouldn't count, as the point was the sacrifice of things. Should we just change all cards like this, or change the rule? --fanofphilosophy

I just realized that if a token is destroyed it would be placed in the discard pile. I assume that this isn't what was meant to happen. I'll change the rule to reflect this. --Ryan 1729 02:15, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Cards by Bucky

(Older content moved to Talk:Infinite Dvorak deck/Archived Talk)


Win Conditions

Not that I mind, but don't you think you should spread out the 'Win' cards? Some sets of 100 have only one way to win and this set [3801 - 3900] has 11. --Gill smoke 14:28, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Not necessarily. I figured out that I hadn't been adding enough win conditions period. And adding a pile of win conditions now doesn't keep me or others from adding similar win conditions later-Bucky 22:06, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Fun with Semantics

Just asking, is "an Action" 'one' and "a Thing" 'it'? At my table that's how it is going to resolve (mostly because I still have to teach people to play). --Gill smoke 19:23, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Mostly correct. And kudos for teaching people to play.-Bucky 22:06, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
To clarify, "Action:" is an abbreviation for "Each turn, instead of playing an Action card, you may" so "one" and "it" refer to "an Action card" and "a Thing card", respectively.-Bucky (talk) 17:15, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

Crates

The mechanic of tokens that you can destroy to draw cards is sensible and cool, but so far the only cards that tell what to do with Crate tokens are Overflow Warehouse and Unpacker; otherwise they're inert. On the other hand, there is some precedent for tokens with ruletext (e.g., #5629 Narwhal's Sword and #5646 Mirrodin Mining Corp., LLC, and relatedly in #6013 Paper Airplane). Where should we draw the line between utility and repetitiveness? Binarius (talk) 11:53, 15 October 2016 (UTC)


Cards by Kevan

Here, Hold This

Hey Kevan, don't know if you even check this wiki anymore or care about Infinite Dvorak, but in the off chance: As written, Here, Hold This would allow you to select yourself to play the card, right? Should that be changed? --The T (talk) 20:30, 31 July 2019 (UTC)


Cards by Ryan_1729

Zork Dork

For Zork Dork, the card type "Quiz" is meaningless. If it's an action, a type of "Action - Quiz" would at least tell players what to do with it. --Kevan 11:25, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

alright. --Ryan 1729 11:56, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

For the record, what is the answer??? I don't seem to get it at all; looking online, the word "blank" follow that sentence in the game? Is the answer just "blank"? The T (talk) 22:52, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

Win conditions

I'm guessing you've not played any Nomic - all your "create a new card but it can't have a win condition" clauses are completely toothless; it's trivial to create a card saying "other players may never take any more turns" or "draw 1000 cards and play any number of them" or, indeed, "create another new card, and this one can say anything you like". --Kevan 21:17, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Also, small suggestion; each and every one of your cards has text coming out of the bottom. It's a card game, not a library. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Zaratustra (talkcontribs) 23:23, 9 March 2007.
Your new "this card may not allow you to win this or the next turn" wording would still be broken by a card that said "Take two more turns after this one. You win at the start of the second turn." - any card that lets you create a new card with any wording is going to have loopholes. --Kevan 12:33, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Short of removing the cards, this seems like the best solution. It gives the other players time to draw a card like "Gotcha" or otherwise stop the player from winning. --Ryan 1729 23:39, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

How about "Any player may discard a card to remove the new card from the game"?-Bucky

Perfect. --Ryan 1729 03:19, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Amoeba II

This card doesn't make any sense. First, it reads like an Action, not a Thing. It should say "When you play this". But it doesn't. So: "Create 2 cards." Okay. So make up any two cards you want, right? "For each Card created that are worded Exactly the same as this one the player may create 2 more cards. The limit to cards that may be created this way in one turn is 1000." so ignore this if neither of the 2 created cards are identical. "One hundreth (round down) of newly created cards may be kept in the players hand but may not be played this turn." so probably 0 of them. "All Amoeba II cards in the players control must be shuffled back into the deck after this card is played." So this card. Okay, so. Those 2 cards you created, now what do we do with them? The T (talk) 23:25, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

YOU ARE GREEDY!

In the off chance you come back to the site and see this, this card is listed as a "Type" and not a "Thing" as it presumably should be. -The T (talk) 21:01, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Cards by The T

Shovel says to draw the bottom of the deck. However, in an infinite deck such a card may not exist. Similarly, a few other cards say to search the entire deck, which we can't do since we have not defined all the cards in the deck.-Bucky 18:20, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Although the deck's theoretically infinite, any actual game of it will involve a finite subset. (I'll probably end up putting an "output just 100 random cards" option on the card export, so that this can be played on the Dvorak Engine without crashing it.) --Kevan 18:22, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Wards

I like the Ward mechanic. Very creative. Should we specify that Wards are explicitly Things? Binarius (talk) 02:15, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

They are very specifically not Things! I don't want them to be able to played as Things (or Actions); if you want to get rid of them, you can discard them at the end of your turn. :) -The T (talk)
So they're Reactions then. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 02:49, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
Hmm... sort of? Reactions, similarly, are just a type of Action card that can't be played like a normal Action card, thus removing the need for them to be classed as such. So I was thinking the same here. -The T (talk)

Parry

How does it work while it's on the table? Can anything "destroy" it, or prevent it from being drawn again? Binarius (talk) 02:26, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Nope. The downsides of it are that you can only use it once a turn, and you forego your draw. Like an actual Parry in Street Fighter 3, it's for mindgames. You can still try to destroy or steal it while it's in that player's hand, of course. -The T (talk)

Pokemon

Wouldn't it make more sense to force the player to play it on top of a lower evolution? Also, If you have a high-tier placed on a mid-tier, it isn't really clear if the low-tier's action can be used. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 22:15, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

No, rule 3 is [b]Cards shouldn't refer to other cards[/b]. "Cards should avoid making any specific references to other cards or mechanics, because they might never see those specific cards during play, particularly if you think of the deck as infinite." The Evolution mechanic is there to be an powerful bonus if you are absurdly lucky enough to pull both the card and it's prior form. Having a card you can never play is pointless. -The T (talk) 01:52, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
Ok, Wouldn't it make more sense to, if they are able to, force them to play it on top of a lower evolution? Also, "If you have a high-tier placed on a mid-tier, it isn't really clear if the low-tier's action can be used." --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 04:05, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
"it can use Action abilities of it's prior evolutions." seems quite clear to me. Forcing a player to evolve if able is generally unnecessary, since evolving a pokémon provides such a big benefit to its action. In some circumstances, it may be tactically preferable not to evolve, whether to maximize your number of Things or keep from putting all your eggs in one basket. Also forcing evolution would take extra words on already word-dense cards.
P.S. Since Rattata's ability is not an Action, Raticate should probably specify that it keeps Quick Attack.--ChippyYYZ (talk) 04:24, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
Nice catch! I feel like, because of that one outlier, I should probably reword the whole thing. 'May use the text of it's prior evolutions as it's own," maybe? -The T (talk) 12:13, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Minor grammar point, "it's" is a contraction of "it is" (like I'm, she's, we're). You want "its prior evolutions", with no apostrophe (my, her, our). Binarius (talk) 13:27, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

I always got that wrong, ever since I was a kid. Thanks! -The T (talk) 13:54, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Cards by jtwe

The ironic theme is an interesting idea, but it seems that all the cards are dentrimental to the player who played them. This makes no sense from a competitve standpoint. Is this part of the joke?Fanofphilosophy 23:44, 3 May 2007 (BST)

Well, it's not really so much a "theme" as it is a handful of card titles / flavor texts from the same song. But... Ten Thousand Spoons cancels an opponent's Reaction, Rain on Your Wedding Day shuts down opponent's Actions for a turn, A Free Ride lets you play Russian Roulette or I'm Ending This risk-free, and Good Advice will give you an extra card every other turn or so. Which one is detrimental? Jtwe 01:11, 4 May 2007 (BST)

Whimsey, Turnabout Dvorak and Untap Phase

"Turnabout Dvorak" - 'tap' and 'untap' aren't defined anywhere (except possibly "Whimsey") and given that this deck is infinite, you shouldn't count on these three cards all coming up at once. -Bucky 05:44, 19 April 2008 (BST) I've played MTG so I know what tap and untap are, the average player might not. I think this is treading into Special rules category. As a matter of course while playing action abilities I tapped the card.

Tap and untap, are, in fact, not defined anywhere. This is a legitimate concern, but I was kind of assuming that enough people had played Magic the Gathering that someone at the table would know what it meant. (I should point out that at one point I wrote a card whose rules text stated "take first and advance each runner one base" and no one complained about that, so I figured I could get away with tap and untap. :) ) As for not having all three come up at once, I'm not worried about that; Untap Phase gives you an extra turn, Turnabout Dvorak is a draw two, and Whimsey, at worst, is a one-shot draw 1 or discard 1 if you control any other Thing, so they're each useful on their own, but they get better in tandem. Jtwe 02:13, 21 April 2008 (BST)
Anyway, with the better random card generator coming axon, there is at least a bit more of a chance of finding all three.

Archival

We've got 99 cards so far - maybe we should archive off every hundred into its own linked page, to stop the main page from getting too heavy. I suppose wait until we have 120 or so, so that the page doesn't look too blank when we archive it. --Kevan 12:16, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Almost 150 now. Zaratustra 21:07, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

There are 220 at the time of this editing --Ryan 1729 12:35, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Looks like we might have to archive this talk page sometime soon. --Ryan 1729 03:10, 4 April 2007 (BST)

Perhaps we could split it into a section on the deck itself, and a section on specific cards. Personally, I dislike archived talk pages.Fanofphilosophy 23:44, 3 May 2007 (BST)

I've noticed that the Infinite Dvorak deck now has, in its unarchived page, over 200 cards in it. This should have been split a while ago. I would do it, but I don't know how. --Corrigan 04:20, September 8 2007 (UTC)

I'll post the directions Edit the card page. At the top copy and paste the last card set ie ", \[\[\/Cards 801-900\|801-900\]\]" change to the next hundred. Select the top 100 cards and cut. save the page, click on the link you just created, paste the cards in save copy the info box from the previous hundred then edit the new set and paste the info box in. edit it for the right set and save. "easy peasy." --Gill smoke 03:35, 3 October 2008 (BST)

Infinity

Is the deck supposed to be one of each of an infinite number of cards, an infinite number of each of a finite number of cards, or an infinite number of infinitely many cards? This would effect the probability of things like getting two Annoyance cards on top of the library, etc. MagiMaster 06:36, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

The way I see it, it's an infinite number of different cards, one each. We think of the number as infinite because there's no limit to the number of cards we can create and we'll only be playing some of all the different cards at a time anyway due to physical or engine constraints. BiggerJ 09:00, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
That was my thinking as well. --Kevan 12:41, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Backdoor Special Rules?

Maybe this is just me seeing things from a Nomic perspective, but cards like Rules Misunderstanding and There are 10 kinds of people in the world are Actions which create ongoing effects - effectively it's adding a special rule to the game. Is this good or bad?

It seems a bit untidy from the player memory perspective (most Dvorak decks and similar card games require that players only have to read the cards on the table to find out what's going on), and also a bit overpowered - if a Thing adds an ability or restriction to the game, there are all sorts of ways to destroy or remove or reword that Thing. But if an Action says "Until a winner ith declared all playerth mutht thpeak like thith.", there's nothing that any player can do to reverse that, unless there's a rare "terminate all background effects" card (which might never get drawn). We could spiral out into card mechanics that add and remove background effects, as we did with tokens, but should we nip it in the bud instead? --Kevan 09:37, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Since there is currently no penalty for breaking or forgetting these rules players could slowly faze them out with no ill effects. Also if such a card is destroyed is it still binding? --Ryan 1729 10:39, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
If these cards were Things, then their effects would immediately stop being binding upon destruction; Things only have an effect while they remain in play. The rules have no specific opinion about an Action that says "for the rest of the game, X", but given that the Action card doesn't say "until this card is somehow removed from the game, X", I think most players would interpret the effect as continuing. --Kevan 10:48, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Rules Misunderstanding has been changed. Zaratustra 14:45, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, in the "thpeech" card example a player could just say "I am the winner" and (depending on interpitaion) negate the effect.(Note: I did not see this possible loophole when creating this card.) We could reclassify these cards as things that are immediately moved to the discard pile after being played to achieve the same effect. (Interestingly no one has complained about my equally if not more indestructable "Catch 22" card.) --Ryan 1729 12:24, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Things that move immediately to the discard pile and leave a ghostly permanent effect would give exactly the same problem; you have ghostly permanent effects floating around that players have to remember the exact wording of, and which they can't do anything to destroy. It would be better to have these rules written on Things which stay in play.
(And for what it's worth, I'd say that the common-sense game rule interpretation of "all players must thpeak like thith" is "anyone who doesn't is therefore no longer a player".)--Kevan 12:39, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
"Catch 22" Is in fact destructable with any of {Wrath of Bucky, Brazen Buckyism, Wikipedia Says It's True} and probably others I'm not remembering.-Bucky 15:49, 7 March 2007 (UTC)


Export problems

The 'Print this deck' and 'Generate MUSHcode' pages for this deck seem to skip certain cards for some reason. Is this fixable? BiggerJ 05:44, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Seeing as it seems to skip my cards, perhaps The underscore in Ryan_1729 is the problem? I'll temporairily change one of the two Switcheroos to see if that fixes it. --Ryan 1729 08:47, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

That didn't work. To be specific it seems to skip newer cards and all of my cards. What (if anything) is done to upgrade the 'Print this deck' and 'Generate MUSHcode' pages when new cards are created? --Ryan 1729 09:13, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Looks like it was because you were the only person to capitalise "card" at the start of each template. I've updated the export functionality to cope with this (it's an external script that I wrote myself, so there's no public access to it). --Kevan 10:43, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

That would be because I copied and pasted from the template each time. The price you pay for laziness I suppose. --Ryan 1729 12:39, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I just tried the print this deck page and noticed that "Fly on the wall" and "Action prism" had no text and type unknown. I removed some unnecessary spaces and they seem to work. --Ryan 1729 12:51, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Trip reports

Has anyone actually tried playing this yet? I would very much like to see descriptions of playthoughs of this game (and, if possible, transcripts of games of it played in the Dvorak MUSH engine). --BiggerJ 07:31, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Not yet. I'd rather wait until I changed the deck export so that it could filter out cards by specific users, but maybe I'll find time to do that today. --Kevan 12:08, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
Time found. You can now specify a comma-separated list of users whose cards you want to skip; they'll be crossed out, and listed as "skipcard", which the Dvorak Engine should just ignore as an illegal command.
We should be able to skip individual cards, too, without excluding other cards by the same author. See "loophole" for an example.-Bucky 17:17, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
Well, since you're cutting and pasting the cards anyway, you can put them through a text editor first, and just delete any cards you don't want to use.--Kevan 19:43, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
So would anybody be up for testing this in either the Dvorak MUSH Engine or Apprentice, over the next few days? --Kevan 14:28, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm up for it. Since you usually show up on my early afternoon, Friday and weekends are good days for me. Zaratustra 15:54, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm busy tonight and out tomorrow, but could maybe manage Sunday. I've added an upcoming games page to attempt to coordinate this sort of thing, if anyone wants to call a specific time and date. --Kevan 16:13, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
Just out of curiosity, why would you want to leave out cards by specific people? --BiggerJ 11:45, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
If there are some broken or annoying-to-process cards in the set (I remember there being a few), then they're likely to have been written by the same person. --Kevan 19:43, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Have just tried feeding the entire deck into the Dvorak Engine on the newly-created Dvorak MUSH, and it choked around the 250 mark. Not sure if it's hitting a configurable limit, or something intrinsic to the TinyMUSH software, but I suppose it doesn't really hurt to play with a subset of 200 or so cards. I'll throw together something to randomly select which 200 to use. --Kevan 17:48, 25 March 2007 (BST)

I just played two games with Zaratustra over MUSH with the first 100 cards. The first game ended on the first turn because of a slow reaction to "Leverage Scam"; the second game ended when I Hoarded 9 Tokens. Branch Statement proved to be impractical because we couldn't implement cutting the deck properly. I can imagine it would be difficult to keep track of tokens, because the Notes would get crowded fast.-Bucky 22:02, 25 March 2007 (BST)

I played a couple of games with Zaratustra as well, using the second hundred - he put a Triplicate onto Lightning Reflexes in the first one, but slipped up by playing Draw Two in response to Tarot Reading (which had given him a Thing) and lost the game. The second game ended with him getting Power Level Scouter and a Crowded Room. Can't remember any broken cards, but BZAAAAARG could use clearer wording as to how exactly a player's turn should be randomised. --Kevan 00:05, 26 March 2007 (BST)

Fixed BZAAAAARG, thanks for the critique. Just one clarification I couldn't fit in the card text that could be easily deduced anyway: if the player whose turn is randomized has only Actions or only Things in his/her hand, randomization of what kind or kinds of cards get played during that turn won't be necessary. --BiggerJ 09:41, 26 March 2007 (BST)

I'd go for tighter wording, even if it means sacrificing some of the card's possibilities (maybe "Choose a player. On their next turn, they must play one random Thing followed by one random Action, if possible. All decisions required by them shall be made randomly.", or something - "randomized by a random number generator" is a bit of a meaningless tautology anyway).
When you're actually playing with these cards, the ones with more than a few lines of text become quite heavy and wearying, a lot more so than reading them in isolation on the site. --Kevan 11:28, 26 March 2007 (BST)
Okay, I've used your suggested wording. Thanks for the help. --BiggerJ 12:42, 26 March 2007 (BST)

Deck status

The note in that box-thing at the top says that this deck is unfinished, and thus unplayable. But people have played it. Perhaps we should change the wording? --fanofphilosophy

Good point. Changed. --Kevan 12:40, 2 April 2007 (BST)

Cards by Corrigan

Last night, you seem to have violated several of the rules of the deck, namely
1)Don't add more than three cards at a time: You seem to have added 15 at once.
2)Don't change other people's cards:You edited Jindra34's "Swap meet" and Ryan_1729's "Role play," "Roll play" and "minimal".
3)Cards shouldn't refer to other cards:Your card "Reggae" uses a category far to precise; there is only one Musician in the entire deck so far. "Red Scare" does the same thing with "Right wing politician".
4)(Unwritten)Add all new cards to the end of the card list: 6 of these 15 cards were inserted into the middle of the pile.

Please follow the rules. -Bucky

Celestia

Worst Rule 3 violation I've ever seen. -Bucky

I agree, to preserve the flavor the card should probably be "if you control 6 other ponies" sort of thing --Gill smoke 13:25, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
That would make it a merely really bad Rule 3 violation. You may have to just redesign the card. If you want a win condition, you might have it gather Friendship Tokens based on the number of ponies you control or something. And I would change the name to "Princess Celestia" because I'm nitpicky.--ChippyYYZ 16:13, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Cards by Eric F

Saruman's Icy Storm

I recently edited it for spelling and grammar... I hope that's allowed. "No one can destroy opponants[sic] things"...I'm not sure what that means. Surely it means, "during his extra turn, the player of this card cannot destroy opponents' things". Or does it mean "for the rest of this game, the no-one can destroy their opponents' things". The latter violates the "no lasting effects" rule. Maybe Eric forgot to change his Action to a Thing. --Pongo 10:44, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Leaving spelling intact is sometimes useful for letting other users quickly judge the quality of a card (or a user's entire card output - there's an export filter that lets you ignore all cards by a given user); there's also the risk that you might "correct" someone's intentional misspelling. I don't really mind either way, though. --Kevan 10:52, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Shower of Arrows

Who is "they"? Does the player choose who to target? Is the target picked at random? Is everyone except the player of the card targeted? It should be specified. --Pongo 10:44, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Cards by Gill smoke

To counter the immense and ever-increasing size of this page, the older part of this section has been moved to my talk page.--Gill smoke 15:10, 4 June 2009 (BST)

Gloconda

This card should be fixed to say "if you control no other Things." Since Gloconda is a Thing itself, it would be impossible to actually win with it. - [User:Corrigan|Corrigan]] 20:27, 3rd October 2011 (PST)

Done --Gill smoke 18:39, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Cards by Pongo

Summon Pink Elephant

Summon Pink Elephant Seems quite powerful, I loose my turn because I can't destroy a token, what happens when I do? is it destroyed? The way it's worded makes it seem like it remains in play even after I "kill" it. If I kill it with an action card do I then get to play a Thing? How would I remove it?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by gill_smoke (talkcontribs).

Yeah, the wording is a bit woozy on this one - it'd be clearer if worded as "may not play cards which do not destroy the token", as "may only play cards" potentially means that you can't draw or use action abilities or breathe. And "for as long as they control it" is an invisible pseudo-rule. This could just be simplified to a Thing that comes into play under an opponent's control... --Kevan 10:52, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

the bigger problem, I have it, how do I remove it? It's a hallucination. It's unclear if "remove a token" action removes it; because I may only play cards that remove unliving tokens. Does the effect happen? I also think the colored part should be pink -Gill smoke 17:05, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
It's a token, so it's a Thing, so any "destroy a Thing" card will deal with it. I'm not sure why you're talking about removing unliving tokens. --Kevan 17:49, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Boot Disk probably needs to exclude itself from the "no Things in play" clause of its own ability... --Kevan 17:35, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Done. --Pongo 20:55, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Expensive New Drug

Expensive New Drug "When this is played, choose any effects you wish to protect a card of your choice from, erase this sentence and note that on this card. At the beginning of your turn, remove a money token you own or destroy this card. Action: Change the card you are protecting."


I think I understand the Action ability (it means, choose a different card to protect and unprotect the old one) but it seems ambiguous. Couldn't a player argue that "change the card" means, for instance, change the ruletext to whatever I want? Also, the protection: can I protect a card from having its owner lose? From having its owner's opponent win? From being crowded by any other Things being played? Since the card says "any effects", plural, can I choose all of these plus destruction, removal from the game, changes to ruletext, encroachment by tokens, AND being overruled by another card? Goldenboots 15:16, 25 October 2008 (BST)

"Any effects which directly affect the card itself" is the intentional meaning. "Having its owner lose" or "havings its owner's opponent win" are not effects which I see to affect the card itself. "Change the card" to me seems clear enough, but I'll remove the ambiguity, if at the price of increasing the card's verbosity. --Pongo 15:29, 25 October 2008 (BST)

Flying Spaghetti Monster

The text flows out of the card. At least in my browser. Maybe take out the line breaks? - Zt, 13:46, 13. November 2008 (CET)

I don't see that as a problem. You can export it or click edit to see the missing sentence. Pongo 16:47, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Lack of Phonetic Appeal

"Cards shouldn't refer to other cards". There are 11 Boons in the deck of 4000 cards. The chances of this card doing anything in a given subset are extremely small. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Bucky (talkcontribs).

The card is for the most part intended as a joke. Anyway, I can't really fix it without deleting the card. --Pongo 14:53, 6 June 2009 (BST)

Whisper of Yog-Sothoth

Three issues with this: 1)you should "play" the cards rather than "copy them into play". This is important if you copy an Action 2)Effort to play: If I'm playing this card in an actual game, I need to hold up the game while I look through the Archive for five different Lovecraftian cards to play. If I don't know my basic Lovecraft facts, this could take a while... 3)Power level - Getting five decent cards in play at once is probably a lot stronger than you meant this card to be. -Bucky 22:06, 6 June 2009 (BST)

Okay:
1) I hope I've addressed this issue with the modifications/clarifications I've made.
2) Ditto (cards may be played repeatedly).
3) Overpowered cards are not objectionable for this particular deck.
--Pongo 11:16, 7 June 2009 (BST)


Pirate-Global Average Temperature Correlation

Not that I mind, but your Author tag is too long. It's kicking the rest of the cards out of alignment. I liked the strike through. --Gill smoke 22:08, 9 June 2009 (BST)

Ignorance is Strength

"You may ignore any effect of an opponent's card" needs clarifying. Does 'ignoring' something completely prevent it from happening? (as worded, I'd say no) Does ignoring an effect that would eliminate you keep you from being eliminated? (arguable) Does ignoring something that only affects players who aren't you change what happens? (as worded, probably not but it isn't clear) Also, if your goal is to make cards fun to play with, you should word it in such a way that other players can potentially remove/disable the card; otherwise it will usually render the game unplayable.-Bucky 03:30, 15 June 2009 (BST)

Cards by ZT

All Hallows' Eve

It's completely impratical. Who the hell takes notes of what exactly what each player discards? The card is practically unplayable. --Pongo 17:50, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Yep, changed it. Something else: is it OK for cards to let you search the deck for another card? (E.g.: killer bees) The deck is theoretically infinite, so this could be tedious. On the other hand, it's not really infinite. Suggestions? --Zt 20:42, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
Yes, allowing searching of the deck is fine, but it is recommended the cards you can search for are not too specific, as that violates the "cards shouldn't refer to other cards" rule. I don't think impractical cards are forbidden as such, but they make the game tricky. Killer Bees is fine as a card. Pongo 16:49, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

You bought this vacuum cleaner and...

The sentence that says "At the beginning of your turn you are eliminated." should either say "At the beginning of your next turn you are eliminated." or "At the end of your turn you are eliminated." -Gimlear 20:52, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

"At the beginning of your next turn you are eliminated." is sth. else, as it triggers only once. "At the end of your turn" is sth. else, because you have less time to destroy "You bought this vacuum cleaner and". Maybe I should change it to: "At the beginning of each of your turns..."? Or does this sound strange? - Zt - 17:44, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
Why would you need to be eliminated more than once? -Gimlear 01:28, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
If you have, say, a Get Out of Jail Free (page 2) in your hand the first time.-Bucky 02:53, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
Changed it to: "Whenever your turn ends you are eliminated." Sounds odd maybe, but it should make clear that it triggers every turn. - Zt - 14:56, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

You Will Never Dance Alone

Is this card's ability meant to recurse infinitely and give you an infinite number of tokens? If not, it should be reworded. -Bucky 21:22, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

I think the intention is pretty clear. Do you mean it should be worded more like "Whenever another card generates a Single Token This card generates one too."-Gill smoke 01:12, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm just stupid and I totally didn't see the infinite recursion. Reworded it. Hope it's clear now. (You could still have an infinite recursion with two of these things in play now.) - Zt - 12:12, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Porn Movie Factory

I think it is common practice to put the come into play effects before the Action abilities, the way the card looks is it gets destroyed only when you play the action ability. I don't think that's what you intend. --Gill smoke 23:39, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Fixed. - Zt - 12:12, 26. March 2008 (UTC)

Gravity cannon

This card is way overpowered, in a two player game I win. In multi player after it hits the table, every other player can eliminate 2 other players (or or their proxies like extra lives). One for a Thing then one for the Action. To tone it down I'd make it only an action ability. I'd also consider adding a cost to play or use like destroy an energy token. I think there are other win conditions in this hundred. Otherwise it's a fine card. -Gill smoke 16:11, 2 April 2008 (BST)

There is no rule disallowing overpowered cards. They're not encouraged, but they're not disallowed because the deck is "infinite" anyway. You've made straight "I win" cards before. Check cards 1401-1500. --Pongo 16:15, 2 April 2008 (BST)
Actually, unless I'm reading it wrong, this is underpowered. You play it, and then you've played your Thing for the turn, so you can't use its ability instead of playing an Action and a Thing. Then your opponent goes, walks over to the cannon, turns it around, and blasts you with it. To fire it safely, you'd need to be able to play two Things and an Action in one turn, or somehow play it at the end of an opponent's turn, or something. What I want to know is, does this count as an "Action ability" for the purpose of Rickrolling it? Jtwe 20:04, 2 April 2008 (BST)
I concur. I'd say it does, because it seems to require one to use both their action and their thing ability for that turn. The Rickroll card effectively cancels a player's action, so I'm assuming in this case, since the thing ability relies on the action ability and vice versa, that the player effectively loses their thing ability as well. --Pongo 09:01, 3 April 2008 (BST)
"Action and Thing" = "instead of playing an action and instead of playing a thing". At least that's how I understand it. So jtwe is right, it's underpowered, unless you play in teams or you find a way to play more than one object per turn. As the thing ability doesn't work without the action ability, I'd also assume that all "counter an action" effects should eliminate it. - Zt - 13:40, 3. April 2008 (UTC)
Ohhhhh, I understood it's ability to be playable as either, not both an Action and a Thing --Gill smoke 18:10, 7 April 2008 (BST)

Gunpowder Factory

"Whenever another thing than this is destroyed, destroy all things." ... thing other than this card ... might be better wording? -Gill smoke 19:00, 7 April 2008 (BST)

Fixed. - Zt - 12:18, 8. April 2008 (UTC)

Rune of Haste

"Discard n cards. Then choose an Action or Thing ability and use it 2ⁿ times" Ooh! I think i'll discard 4 cards and play one 2 to the 4th power times!--NARF 13:01, 23 September 2008 (BST)

Your point being? --Kevan 13:30, 23 September 2008 (BST)
Maybe he thinks the card is overpowered? Dunno. - Zt 00:06, 24 September 2008 (CET)
Hmm... If it is overpowered, then how about n to the 2nd power? Although you WOULD get a slight bonus at 3... -- Nehh 09:13 GMT Saturday 30th May 09.

Albert Camus

Zombies, eh? I guess sometimes truth is...stranger than fiction? Binarius 21:25, 24 September 2008 (BST)

This could win "Best Card". Or at least "Wittiest Card".--ChippyYYZ 23:49, 24 September 2008 (BST)

Thank you. And he definitely did. - Zt, 20:35, 25.09.2008 (CET)
Oh, and in case sb. cares: the card that made me laugh most is Corrigan's "The Lord of the Xerox". (1001-1100) I always imagine the angry boss shouting that line. Hilarious. - Zt, 20:43, 25.09.2008 (CET)

I knew who he was. He stole the idea I had in high school for a novel, only he wrote it in 1942. --Gill smoke 20:32, 25 September 2008 (BST)

Interesting. Which novel? - Zt 09:33, 27 September 2008 (CET)
The Stranger -Gill smoke 21:28, 28 September 2008 (BST)

Homo Neanderthalensis

Bub is a real guy I work with and that would be something he would say. I'm trying to come up a card to go with "Why don't you go outside and practice falling down until I get there."-Bub I know its a remove and come back mechanic, but I can't get the embarrassing nature of the comment in. -Gill smoke 21:29, 28 September 2008 (BST)

Bub could become the new mascot of the Infinite Dvorak deck. We just have to pay attention to stay in character when we write those lines. It's harder for me as I don't know him, but I'd definitely like to see him appear on more cards. - Zt 18:02, 29 September 2008 (CET)
I've told him about it and he's touched but bewildered. Think blue collar redneck with an attitude. He doesn't cuss (much) so it makes it easier to be able to use him for direct quotes. A couple of priceless gems are now on my user talk page. -Gill smoke 02:36, 1 October 2008 (BST)
Great. Can't wait to see new cards with these quotes. - Zt, 22:54, 01. October 2008 (CET)

TYPE

Are you trying to break things? normally we have actions and things what kind is type? Was it from copying ChippyYYZ's untyped thing?

Yes, it was a copy paste mistake. Thank you. - Zt, 06. October, 13:03 (CET)

Hyperdimensional World-Eating Blackhole

"Whenever a Thing is removed from the game, draw a card and remove target thing from the game" "Once it gets started, there's no turning back"

Wait- if one Thing is removed, the controller of HWEB gets to remove all the Things, one by one, drawing a card for each. If a Thing is removed by HWEB, it triggers HWEB. I guess the controller could stop at a certain point by targetting HWEB. Goldenboots 02:44, 16 October 2008 (BST)

Oh, good point! Then there IS turning back. You could remove all opponents' Things and leave your own Things in play. I still don't think it's too powerful, because you need another card to remove a Thing in the first place. - Zt, 13:51, 17. October 2008 (CET)


The Decline and Fall of the Mighty Culture of NguNbuLe

"At the beginning of your turn erase the last sentence on this card. Indestructible. Action: Target opponent discards a card. Action: Take a Thing from the discard pile in your hand. Action: Destroy target Thing. Action and Thing: Erase target Thing's first sentence."

It's very neat that you can't use this card to erase its own first sentence unless you have a way of playing two Things and one Action in the turn you play it. If you do... it's very powerful. Goldenboots 20:25, 17 October 2008 (BST)

Actually, though, unless you can play two Things and an Action in the turn you play this card - you can't use the last rule to erase anything, ever.Goldenboots 23:49, 17 October 2008 (BST)
Thank you. No, you can't use the last Action normally, this was intended. It's just there to give you the possibility to erase its own first sentence, if you happen to be able to play two Things per turn. (See also: Gravity Cannon.) - Zt, 16:49, 21. October 2008

When me and Grandpa Used to Hunt Dinosaurs

"Everybody may use this Thing's abilities. Action: Destroy target living Thing controlled by opponent. If you do, gain a tooth token. Action: If you control two or more tooth tokens, eliminate a player with no living Things in play."

This may be intended, but after you get your two tooth tokens, you can eliminate players with no living Things until the undead cows come home. Or did you mean, sacrifice two tooth tokens to eliminate the player? Goldenboots 19:57, 21 October 2008 (BST)
I think it's balanced - if you're up against more than one player, it increases the chance that someone will be able to destroy this card, between each of your turns. Besides, everyone gets to use it. --Kevan 20:09, 21 October 2008 (BST)

The Allmighty Flying Frog of Buxtephlog IX

I disagree with the strongest card assessment You do realize the card wins the game not the controller?

Of course. The flavour text is a joke. I usually avoid making straight I win cards. ;) - Zt, 10:17, 29 October 2008 (CET)
If he were really aLmighty, he would know a typo when he saw one.  :) --ChippyYYZ 22:14, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
Maybe he did know it, and he saw that it was good! Binarius 23:38, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for pointing that out, but it wasn't the first and it won't be the last typo by me. I'm no native speaker. So keep on correcting me, please (no irony). - Zt, 12:17, 31 October 2008 (some crazy European country time)

Draw

"If all Things you control are black, win the game. Otherwise the game ends and nobody wins, nobody loses." Since this ends the game, shouldn't it be an Action? Goldenboots 00:56, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Absolutely right. Fixed it. - Zt 17:10, 11. November 2008 (CET)

Literature: a Disstory

"Who is the most overrated author ever? Everybody writes down a name secretly. If 2 players chose the same name, both win. If sb. wrote down one of the names below, she gains an irreverence token and draws a card. Hemingway, Twain, Melville, Updike, Sartre, Saramagó, Camus, Dostojevskij, Tolstoj, Roth, Kafka, Goethe, Schiller, Mann, Kundera, the guy who wrote the bible, Cervantes, Dante, Calvino, Shakespeare, Homer."

Shouldn't this be an Action, too? Otherwise, it happens once, and just sits there afterwards. Also, Dostoyevski and Tolstoy aren't spelled with J's in English transliteration, and who's Saramago? Goldenboots 15:25, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
Yes, it should be an Action. I'm too used to making Things. Tolstoy with "y" look strange, but if that's how you write it in English, OK. Saramago won the noble price for literature. - Zt, 17:42, 12. November 2008 (CET)

Gayness

Really? Do you want to piss off possible gay players? Goldenboots 04:24, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Gayness in the original meaning of the word: "Happiness". That's why everybody has to smile. And I don't want to piss off gay players, I want to piss of everybody ;) , Zt, 19:28, 14. November 2008 (CET)

In Soviet Russia Card Plays You!

Play in response to an Action. The Action's text is changed till end of turn. All instances of "the" and "a" in the Action's text are removed. Each subject in the sentence becomes an object, each object becomes "you". Dots become exclamation marks.

This is neat. You don't need to say "till end of turn" since Actions go away immediately anyway, and this card doesn't apply to a Thing's action ability. I think it's clearer to say: 'each sentence's object becomes the new subject, and the new object is "you" ' (or maybe "each TRANSITIVE VERB's object..."). Now, who is "you"? It's the person playing the original action, right? Goldenboots 04:24, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Yes, "you" is the person playing the Action, like in every Action "you" refers to the person playing it. I put the till the end of your turn clause inside, because Action Abilities are Actions as well and I didn't want their test to be changed permanently. - Zt, 19:31, 14. November 2008 (CET)

Skeleton Warmage

Just asking, Why not a copy of Skeleton Warrior, with an ability instead of a token without?

I thought that he would be too hard to get rid of with an Ability that copied himself. He's already got a protection from being removed (discard two cards). The rationale behind the token is that it can be used as an undead token for any effect that says: Destroy an undead you control to do this and that. It won't be useful in every game context, but in some. And then you've still got the protection effect which could be useful in many different game situations. - Zt, 21:04, 03. December 2008 (CET)

Gurg Gnagba, Lord of Stinky Underwear

And what the excrements of cow are we supposed to do if we're playing online?-Bucky 20:05, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Cards by Gimlear

The Pointless Game The Sentence: "This action is called "calling cards". No player may call a card unless it was the last card played." is mostly fluff to describe getting tokens in the next sentence. Please revise to get the card to fit the Card size, as it is you are almost into the next card down. I like the concept though.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Gill smoke (talkcontribs).

fixed --Gimlear 03:44, 7 April 2008 (BST)
Gimlear, your card was not removed it got thrown into the archive. Your new card is still a mile long. If you need to use that much text try the longtext tag instead of the text tag. --Gill smoke 18:10, 7 April 2008 (BST)
It's not in the archive because I moved it down before the archive page was made, there are quite a few cards with a lot of text, and I did use the longtext tag. --Gimlear 02:30, 8 April 2008 (BST)
I see Beetle Red didn't make the cut with The Pointless Game --Gill smoke 19:02, 2 June 2008 (BST)

I very much like this card concept. It is still too long to not look awkward, which is a shame since there's no need for it to go on so long. For example, the text fits just fine in this rewording, which has the same effect as far as I can tell. --Tweed Cap 18:53, 10 April 2008 (BST)

The Pointless Game
Thing
Whenever anyone plays a Thing with a color in its title, any other player may say "Beetle <color>" (if the color is not "red") or "Beaver Cleaver" (if the color is "red"); the first to do this gains 1 Pointless token and destroys the Thing. If any player ever has at least 10 Pointless tokens, the player with the most Pointless tokens wins the game.
Card by Gimlear, reworded by Tweed Cap


I think this may be construed to violate the "No Special Rules" guideline, but I can change it just a little to satisfy it. Thanks. --Gimlear 00:39, 11 April 2008 (BST)

Much better. Though I feel compelled to mention that the "As long as this is in play," is still unnecessary. Things that have a continuing effect on gameplay behave like Enchantments in Magic: the Gathering and similar cards in most games' they automatically stop doing whatever is they do when they leave play. If in some Dvorak game you wanted a Thing to continue doing something even after it leaves play, you'd have to explicitly say so. But you shouldn't do that on an Infinite Dvorak card; that's what "no special rules" means. It means that the cards in play and not your memory of cards played in the past tell you everything that's going on. --Tweed Cap 00:55, 11 April 2008 (BST)
Well put Tweed Cap, you comment covers the essence of the game. --Gill smoke 12:18, 11 April 2008 (BST)

Dawn of War

As written, a player gains a morale token whenever he destroys one of his own things. Maybe this was your intention; if not, it should be changed. --Tweed Cap 16:22, 10 April 2008 (BST)

Additionally, care must be taken not to have a recursion here. When a player's Thing gets destroyed, Dawn of War destroys a morale token. But a morale token is a Thing, so if Dawn of War is controlled by someone else, it seems that this player has had a Thing destroyed by another player (using what seems to be the most natural definition of having a thing destroyed by another player, namely destroyed by a card controlled by another player), so he then loses another morale token. And so on until he is eliminated. There are lots of ways to fix this; here are three fixes off the top of my head.

  1. Define what it means for a Thing to be destroyed "by a player" more narrowly, so that, for example, it only includes the effects of playing Things, playing Actions, and using Action abilities.
  2. Have Dawn of War only apply to non-token Things.
  3. Kludge. Do neither of those, but just legislate that losing a morale token doesn't trigger Dawn of War.

This card is long enough already, though, and it's probably safe to leave it to the vote of whoever plays with the card. Still, I for one am interested to know what your intention is. --Tweed Cap 16:34, 10 April 2008 (BST)

Thanks for pointing that out. I fixed it. And, yes, I did intend a player to gain a morale token whenever he destroys one of his own things. --Gimlear 17:40, 10 April 2008 (BST)

Again, in the spirit of not overflowing the box, this is easily fixed here by removing "As long as this card is in play,", which is unnecessary in context. --Tweed Cap 21:47, 10 April 2008 (BST)

Cards by Tweed Cap

If you have a question to ask or an issue to raise about any of my cards, it's worth looking at my user page. There's a good chance it's addressed there. --Tweed Cap 20:20, 11 April 2008 (BST)

Oubliette

It's not clear, what happens to the removed things when Oubliette is destroyed? Do the return to play? Are they destroyed? -Gill smoke 12:10, 11 April 2008 (BST)

They're gone. Removed from game is forever in my book. --Tweed Cap 15:03, 11 April 2008 (BST)
Just asking, why not use the destroy effect? To avoid protection effects? -Gill smoke 13:42, 14 April 2008 (BST)
Not really. Certainly, there are days when I want to take down those darned protected cards (cf. Exploit Strange Vulnerability), but here the point is that the removed cards are gone. They can't be brought back from the discard pile. --Tweed Cap 13:57, 14 April 2008 (BST)

Cards by Anfo

Where did you get the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy bullet points?-Gill smoke 16:02, 8 May 2008 (BST)

Anfo added them to his(?) Cognitive Behavioral Therapy deck, but I thought they were neat so I rewrote three of them a bit and added them to the Infinite Dvorak deck, so I'll try to answer your question. (I didn't credit myself as the one who added them to the deck since the "card by" line was overlong as it is. Maybe I should change it to "Card by Anfo, added by jtwe?) Anyway, I'm not sure what you mean by bullet points. The reference I used was the Wikipedia article on cognitive distortion, if that helps. Jtwe 18:34, 8 May 2008 (BST)
The cards I've added from other decks I did just that. Card by XX added by gill. That article is just what I meant. Thanks. I'm going to have to check out Anfo's deck -Gill smoke 17:22, 9 May 2008 (BST)

Mental Filtering

That's twisted, I think that bonus should work the other way. Like: May be played on another whenever they would draw a card you do instead and give them a card from your hand. Maybe with a token to mark the one who draws. As it is I wouldn't play it out of my hand. I'd wait and discard it. -Gill smoke 16:02, 8 May 2008 (BST)

That is how it works. You play it on an opponent, then whenever they would draw, you draw and give them a card. Jtwe 18:34, 8 May 2008 (BST)
I see it's intention now, the way I read it was Play on another when you(one who played the card) would draw, owner(of card) does ... perhaps I read it too quickly -Gill smoke 17:22, 9 May 2008 (BST)

2,000 cards

I noticed, while compiling some stats on the first 2,000 cards (which I'll put on the 1901-2000 talk page soon), that the 1501-1600 page actually only had 90 cards on it. I've corrected this by moving the first ten cards on every successive page to the end of the preceding one. The 2,000th card is now Atticus's "Being Very Sleepy" (which is to say, it always was), and the most recent addition, "Préemption de l'État", makes 2,109. Binarius 09:51, 1 August 2008 (BST)

The stats are up. Check out the 1901-2000 discussion page for all of the details. Binarius 04:16, 3 August 2008 (BST)
Wow, Thanks for the stats. How did you get all the cards together? I copied and pasted the first 1000 once, what a pain in the a$$ that was. Did you import them into Excel for the stats? I would love that file. I have considered printing an entire deck but ... Hey how many cards have Zombie or undead on the card? --Gill smoke 14:27, 5 September 2008 (BST)
Nice work there. I really am terrible for reusing card names. --Kevan 18:22, 4 September 2008 (BST)
Maybe a certain someone should add corner values to their cards--Gill smoke 14:32, 5 September 2008 (BST)
There are 28 cards in the first 2,000 that deal with zombies and the undead in their ruletexts, and 12 more in the next 300. Yeah, I imported them all into Excel, but they only got there via Word and, if you'll believe me, BASIC (I had to write a program to put the attributes in order). Quite labor-intensive. I have the Excel file if you want it, but it's pretty ungainly... Binarius 20:52, 5 September 2008 (BST)
Maybe at the 3000 point if you are still around. I left a link to my email on my user page, just click my name in my signature.--Gill smoke 14:10, 8 September 2008 (BST)
If anyone Java-oriented is interested in this sort of thing, my user page is now a Java class which reads in a text file of Dvorakish cards and spits them out in .csv format. If you have any questions, feel free to ask here or on my user talk page. Jtwe 15:59, 11 September 2008 (BST)
looks like Bucky wants to make the most varied colored cards stat. --Gill smoke 14:10, 8 September 2008 (BST)

Responses and Reactions

...By which I mean any Action allowing the player to "play immediately in response to" some particular occurrence, or any equivalent ability to play out of turn, but only under specific circumstances. Do these cards count toward the following turn's Action limit? Binarius 01:38, 14 August 2008 (BST)

The general rule is if it is ambiguous put it to a vote. I'd vote no because the card played didn't happen on your turn. On the cards I made like that I put the disclaimer in there, "Does not count as your action for you next turn." --Gill smoke 17:28, 26 August 2008 (BST)
If there's no consensus on this issue, then I will venture to suggest that cards played out of turn do not count toward the following turn's limits unless specified, since they explicitly allow you to play them outside of your turn. Comments? Binarius 01:10, 30 August 2008 (BST)
To quote the rules, "You can play one Thing and one Action per turn." You are entitled to one Action per turn, whoever the turn belongs to. On the next player's turn, your Action priveleges return. This would mean that you may not play an Instant (yeah, I play Magic) in the same turn that you play another Action or Instant.
Until Instants get their own section in the rules page, this is what the rules say.--ChippyYYZ 00:57, 11 September 2008 (BST)

Cards by redtoast

Whoa, Hey, What Are We Doin'

I think you mean to swap positions of the draw and discard. As worded it could mean they would be used in the oppisite way; draw from the face up pile and discard (and destroy) to face down pile, that violates the "no special rules" clause. If you intend that, just make it a thing, otherwise you might want to reword for clarity. --Gill smoke 17:44, 29 August 2008 (BST)

Apothecary

Potions don't seem to be worth much if you only need them for an Action ability that lets you play an Action card... Thing, perhaps? Or two Actions? Binarius 23:05, 30 August 2008 (BST)

Apothecary's actions can be played at any time. The potions turn your actions into instants.--ChippyYYZ 02:01, 31 August 2008 (BST)

Oops, of course. Silly me. Binarius 07:35, 31 August 2008 (BST)

Destiny

What incentive would either player have to choose a number lower than ten? It would seem that getting repeatedly shuffled back into the deck is this card's...destiny? Binarius 23:57, 20 September 2008 (BST)

Cards by Binarius

Quinquiplicate

This one seems to violate the "no special rules" rule. Does it wear off at the end of the turn?--ChippyYYZ 00:57, 11 September 2008 (BST)

I envisioned this to involve a permanent alteration of the affected cards' texts (e.g., in pencil), in the same sense as some other cards in the deck, like Speling Erorr (1-100) or Create Sequence (1501-1600). So it would be permanent, but not "invisible". Binarius 08:18, 11 September 2008 (BST)

Pink Is The New Black

No, Black is the new green. Go back to 1701-1800 to see for yourself. I love you card. I think there is a way to change the Title text color somehow, I know it does it for white. Kevan can you help? I was looking a the shade closely for my Undead Purge I wanted an off white, but I kept having to darken the color for readability.--Gill smoke 21:51, 3 October 2008 (BST)

Sorry, missed this. Looking at the source for Template:Card, there's just a kludge that uses black text only if the background colour is pure white (one of several variations on 'fff'). Feel free to add a new variable to specify a text colour, if you know your way around wiki parser functions. --Kevan 17:36, 17 October 2008 (BST)

Hot in Here

"Hand size limit 3. Actions must be played as soon as they are drawn." The card should probably say that this counts for all players. - Zt, 16:03, 17 October 2008 (CET)

I thought that would be understood from the lack of specific reference to the card's controller...? Binarius 21:12, 17 October 2008 (BST)

No One's Head Shall Be Higher Than King's

"No player may control more Things than you do." - what happens if they already have more Things when you play it? --Kevan 20:29, 25 October 2008 (BST)

I guess it's ambiguous whether everybody needs to destroy their Things or you get to play more; the former was my intent. Corrected, thanks! Binarius 21:41, 25 October 2008 (BST)

Only the Silent Survive

As worded, this card prevents Action abilities, and as a result makes most cards completely useless. It's also strongly self-protecting; there are only a few Things that can get rid of other Things without using an Action ability. And you need to get rid of it to win. Playing this card would suck for everyone involved.-Bucky

I agree, and this was very much intended in the spirit of the quote's origin. Not a card I expect would be played very often, but if it is played, it will probably be in every player's best interest to work together to destroy it. Binarius 02:27, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
It isn't an issue of everyone working together to destroy it as much as an issue of dozens of turns passing without meaningful action before someone even draws a way to destroy it.-Bucky 03:45, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
I can't think of a single card that destroys or alters a card in play with a thing ability. I have a couple Discard to destroy or remove from the game but they aren't anywhere near this set. The simple and fair edit would be to either prevent action abilities or Action cards from being played, Even with that stipulation they card would most likely to remain in play for quite a while. --Gill smoke 15:55, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
Well, you could get rid of it with an Anvil, one of the sample cards from the game rules. Pretty sure someone slipped that into the Infinite Deck somewhere, for whatever that's worth. --Jtwe 02:11, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
I seem to remember there being several "discard to destroy" and "destroy to destroy" Things in the deck. I know I've contributed a few; Homing Missile (#2286) comes to mind. More might be useful, I guess. At any rate, as serious as the card's subject is, I like Gill_smoke's suggestion, and I think restricting Action abilities is an acceptable compromise. Any more objections? By the way, Gill_smoke, what do you mean by "they aren't anywhere near this set"? Binarius 04:43, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
Most people who play play with on of the sets of 100 (for example 3501 - 3600) online. When I play locally, I pull out my ever expanding deck of 3 by 5's and add some new ones from the current set. The point being you have to go backwards several hundred cards (thus the proximity statement) to find 'A' removal card. By the way, I added the 4 picture sample cards (they are in the 3500's) at "The T's" suggestion. --Gill smoke 21:11, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
Welcome additions, too, I remember those. Ah yes, 100-card subsets...for some reason, that idea seems less and less satisfying to me with every new hundred cards we archive. On that note, I reiterate my resolve to play a game of Infinite using the entire deck someday! Anyway, if we're restricting ourselves to 100 cards at a time, there's still always F-35 Lightning (#4697), which I forgot about before. Just the same, your point is well taken. Binarius 09:43, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
I make a point of occasionally (~once per 50 cards I make) producing a Thing that deals with other Things without using an Action. One of them (Soft Ban) happens to be on the same page as Only the Silent Survive. However, that doesn't mean one of them will show up in anything resembling a timely manner.-Bucky 16:16, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
Re: 100 card subsets, Kevan has promised to one day to write a script to allow a random subset of 100 cards be generated with the MUSH, hasn't happened yet. On another note adding images isn't that hard just time consuming. I add it to flags. --Gill smoke 00:20, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Bottler's Spirit

Genius. I wish I thought of it. --Gill smoke 21:11, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

only eskimoboy and I can see the moon's master plan

Sorry to burst your bubble, but he already added it. It's number #4405.--ChippyYYZ 18:55, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

=O No wonder it seemed like such a good idea...! Removed. Binarius 07:31, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Sharks With Lasers

Shouldn't that be "Sharks With Freakin Lasers" --Gill smoke 13:34, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

If memory serves, it should be "Sharks With Freakin' Laser Beams Attached to Their Heads", but in the interest of brevity I hoped that evoking the image would be enough. Binarius 18:49, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Rest

I don't know why I never noticed that there were no blank actions. Thank you. --Gill smoke 13:23, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Wards

I like your Wards cards. They're very creative. I would like to suggest you change all wards to be "Thing - Ward" like you did with "Ward of Vitality", for consistency. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 02:15, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Ward of Vitality is just my little contribution to the mechanic. See my comment under The T's section, though. I guess it's true what they say about great minds... Binarius (talk) 02:19, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
Yeah, I saw it there too. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 02:23, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Alternate Timeline

Worth mentioning to remember the difference between "turn" (a single player's turn) and "round" (not officially defined, but maybe it should be; you can also word it "until your next turn"). -The T (talk)

Good point. I read a "full turn" as being one of your turns, starting with drawing and ending with discarding, if necessary, but it could be worded less ambiguously. There are a few more terms that wouldn't mind seeing added to the glossary page, if only the community could come to consensus on them. But jargon tends to grow unchecked when it's allowed to. Binarius (talk) 02:33, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
The current version of it is functional, but I worry it might be a little confusing. I would say something more like... "While this card is in play, keep track of any Things destroyed and their owner. At the end of your next turn, restore those Things to their original owners, and destroy this card." -The T (talk)

Revolving Bookshelf and Curious Puppy

How do these cards work in regards to ownership? Are they always owned by the player they're in front of? IE, when you play Revolving Bookshelf onto another player's Thing, they gain control of it, as well as gaining control of whatever Thing you play on top of it? Is this the intention? If so, it would mean Curious Puppy could get around a lot in one Round. -The T (talk) 02:42, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Yes, Revolving Bookshelf and the Thing on top of it are owned by the player they're in front of, the player whose original Thing they were played onto. I think I've worded it so that Curious Puppy can't get to Revolving Bookshelf when there's something on top of it (since it's considered out of play). The point that I left open for interpretation is how to handle Revolving Bookshelf if the top Thing is not destroyed but moves into another player's control. The ability is non-functional when there is only one Thing attached to it, and my interpretation is that a bookshelf that is empty on one side can have something put into it (another Thing can be played on top). Bit cumbersome to fit that detail onto a single card along with everything else, so I'll trust the players to resolve the ambiguity as they see fit. Binarius (talk) 02:49, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
And hey, if Curious Puppy gets a lot in one round, well, I can tell you from experience that sometimes they do. Binarius (talk) 02:51, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
If the top thing of Bookshelf was moved, I would probably just play it as, you can revolve between the thing below it and nothing. -The T (talk) 03:12, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Token Converter

Could you make tokens A or B a token that does not exist? --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 03:19, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Sure, why not? My main issue with it is, why require an Action to be used up to assign it? Once it's assigned, it no longer has this Action ability, so you couldn't change it into a different converter. -The T (talk) 03:21, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
That's correct. Any types can be chosen, but the card will only function if there are A tokens in play. If a sneaky opponent managed to activate the ability before Token Converter's controller was able to, they could brick it by choosing gibberish types like "Brvxcplmjn" and "Fplbnqh". I made it an Action ability to force the player to use a full turn if they want to activate it safely (it can interact strongly with other token-creating Things that have victory or elimination conditions), and also specifically to leave open the possibility of being hijacked if they didn't. Binarius (talk) 03:30, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
Imagine a card that could change the text on a card --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 19:54, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Church of the Long Now

This card is broken; if this card stays in play for 5 turns, it makes all cards eventually undestroyable. It'd be a race to destroy this card before that happens, which may not always be possible. I'd just add, "Except for this card". -The T (talk) 03:21, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

I went back and forth on that a bit and decided to include this card itself. Being unable to destroy Things and having to make do with the situation at hand is a drastically different gameplay mechanic, sure, but there also several cards that say things like "Destroy target Thing, even if it is indestructible", "Remove target card from the game permanently", etc. I'd appreciate opinions on whether that's still too overpowered anyway. Binarius (talk) 03:39, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Stargazing

What if you have 5 or more non-token things? --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 03:21, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Then nothing happens. You can't draw a negative number of cards. -The T (talk) 03:24, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
It is entirely possible to put cards in your hand back into the draw pile. I'm asking f that's the intent. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 03:35, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
That wasn't the intent. I didn't consider the interpretation of drawing a negative number of cards. Binarius (talk) 03:43, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
Drawing a negative number of cards isn't a thing. It have to be worded "put cards back onto the deck". -The T (talk) 15:12, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Weather Forecast

I feel like this missing, "and then put them back on the deck [in their original order]". As it is now, the cards are revealed and then... what, where do they go. -The T (talk) 03:12, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Badminton!

I would add "(from the Infinite Dvorak deck)" after "gains a copy of Badminton Racquet", since out of context it isn't clear that that's even a card. -The T (talk) 03:39, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

In Contemplation of Qualia

Should probably require that you both reveal the card and discard the Action, to draw it, in order to prevent cheating. -The T (talk) 00:07, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Stimulus Package

"When this has been in play for a number of turns equal to the number of players" is identical to saying "At the start of your next turn", unless another player's turn has been skipped. -The T (talk) 00:07, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Vicious Balance

Not sure which of Chippy's decks it's from, but a general rule of thumb is to credit a Dvorak card to it's original creator in the "Card by" field, even if they aren't the one adding it to the deck. The rules at the top say "Don't add more than three cards at a time", not "Don't create more than three". And when I copy cards from another Dvorak deck, I always try to keep them as verbatim as possible, not adding flavor text where it isn't, etc. (Not accusing you, just spitballing.) -The T (talk) 00:07, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

A Fine Addition to My Collection

"...you may search the deck for ChippyYYZ, The Forbidden One, put it into your hand, and end your turn." What happens if someone has The Forbidden One, or if the card simply does not exist (as the deck is infinite, and any one card lost doesn't make the deck and less infinite. See: Hilbert's Paradox of the Grand Hotel) --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 05:03, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

The whole idea of Hilbert's hotel is that no guests need to be turned down or forced to check out. Likewise, I think we can take as an axiom of infinite deck building that any card added to the deck will continue to be part of the deck from then on, since there's no established operation to remove a card from the archive itself, or at least from its history.
The players who use this deck could, to merely spite this card, take out The Forbidden One, before play. Although, if it was done unintentionally, that would be hilarious. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 05:34, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
At any rate, while I normally advocate making copies of cards to be put into a player's hand rather than finding the original card, as I've mentioned, I feel that ChippyYYZ, The Forbidden One is sufficiently epic to make a thematic exception (and to force the player to look all the way through a gigantic deck if they really want to go through with acquiring it). In the unlikely event that it happens to be in someone's hand already, this card won't be any additional help. Binarius (talk) 05:23, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
Anyway, what does happen in the instance of it not being in the deck? --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 05:34, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
Nothing. "You may" means you don't have to. If you're not able to, then oh well, you don't have to. On the point of "forcing players to search for it", tbh what I'd probably do if I were playing with it was make a copy of it, and then require any player who does end up drawing it, immediately remove it from the game and draw a new card. (I'm not saying your card should do this, I'm saying that's what I'd do to keep the game moving along.) -The T (talk) 12:18, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
Bit much to fit on a card, but from a practical standpoint, that's exactly what I'd do, and what I'd expect other players to feel free to do too. In my opinion, card creators can leave determining how to handle these minor ambiguities and impracticalities to the players' collective wisdom. Binarius (talk) 13:14, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Postmodernist Sculpture

Should probably say "When you play this, draw two cards." Otherwise, it reads like an Action. -The T (talk) 15:05, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Damn Autocorrect

I just want to clarify, what is the intent of this card in practice? Are you permanently defacing the card for the rest of the game? And would you expect, a card that no longer has meaning to have it's text ignored (or at least, those sentences ignored)? -The T (talk) 14:36, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

The Action Cycle, The Reverse Action Cycle

I'm assuming the intention of "most recently discarded" just means "the one highest on the discard pile", but I read it as "one that was discarded rather than played"? -The T (talk) 14:36, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Town Crier Auditions

Hear Ye! Hear Ye! Sudden Death, See? --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 02:12, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Fine Wine

Assuming this allows you to play cards from March 2007, [1] "Cyborg-" is the last such card, which by my count is #479--ChippyYYZ

Thanks. I'm guessing the discrepancy is a time zone issue. I went with the previous edit [2], which is the last one in March 2007 according to UTC. But that made me realize that neither of these corresponds precisely to the first month of the archive. The page was created on March 1 at 19:02 UTC; the last edit within the first full month of its existence (before April 1 at 19:02) was [3] on April 1 at 10:50. So for the sake of nothing short of the most exacting correctness, it seems like the cutoff should be #480 Glue. Binarius (talk) 04:28, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

LackeyCCG port...

...is not going to be possible. I just tried it, and Lackey doesn't let you have more than 300 cards in a deck. Even then, I found a workaround. When I put 600 cards into a deck and loaded it, it showed 599 cards in the deck, "-1" in the discard, and a gray card in the deck that crashed the program when I dragged it.

Anyone have any other ideas for how to play this deck online?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by The T (talkcontribs) 16:50, 11 September 2008.

I doubt you're going to get through more than 300 cards in a single game. If you did, and if it was really important to keep playing, you could abandon the game, make a fresh, random deck that also included the cards that were in play (and in hands) at the end of the last game, and start with those in play.
Which might be slightly easier through DvorakMUSH, although I forget how dynamic the engine is - you could just delete all the cards in the discard pile and add an equal amount of new random cards to the draw pile, provided you didn't mind breaking the odd discard-pile-digging card. --Kevan 18:58, 11 September 2008 (BST)
  • nod* Actually, I rolled it over in my head and thought of another idea basically like that. Just make a random list of 100 cards, add each one individually, and play a game with it. If you do run out of cards, I have to test if this is possible but: If Lackey will let you load a deck in the middle of the game without removing everything, then you could read the next 100 cards on your random list of all cards and add them to another deck to add. So I'm going to get back to doing this--for some reason I had the crazy idea of making template cards for each color card, just to add some more flavor to the game. I'd be glad to upload it when I'm done if people are interested, and try to maintain it when I can. The T 19:24, 11 September 2008 (BST)


Cards by NARF

ALL YOUR BASE

"Action - Reaction" Reaction to what? "Take one card from the opponents discard pile." There's only one discard pile by default.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Gill smoke (talkcontribs) 17:30, 18 September 2008.

Is this better?--NARF 13:06, 22 September 2008 (BST)
Yep --Gill smoke 21:04, 25 September 2008 (BST)

Clean Slate

Do you discard your hand, or does everybody? Or is "redraw hand" meant to imply that everyone else must discard their hands first too? Binarius 23:45, 18 September 2008 (BST)

Is this better?--NARF 13:06, 22 September 2008 (BST)

Deadly Switch

"When deck runs out, switch again" is redundant because this is already built into the Basic Rules. Also, please note that this type of conditional mechanic on an Action card violates the Infinite deck's "No special rules" rule. Binarius 23:24, 18 September 2008 (BST)

Is this better? --NARF 22:18, 19 September 2008 (BST)

That works great. Just be careful to phrase Actions so that their effects happen "instantaneously" and you don't need to remember what they said after they've been buried in the discard pile. Incidentally, the three cards you just added (No Corner For YOU!, Action Lock, and Thing Lock) all have the same problem. Cards that say things like "for the next five turns" or "for the rest of the game" should be done as Things. Binarius 23:55, 19 September 2008 (BST)
Is this better?--NARF 13:06, 22 September 2008 (BST)
Yep. And welcome to the party. --Gill smoke 21:07, 25 September 2008 (BST)

Election

"All players choose someone at the table to vote for (They may not vote for themselves). That player may choose if each player can draw a card next turn."

Does "that player" mean the person receiving the most votes? What about ties? Goldenboots 14:50, 16 October 2008 (BST)

SUDDEN CAPS LOCK

Does it bother anyone else that this card says, in effect, "Remove target player from the game"?--ChippyYYZ 23:54, 20 May 2009 (BST)

Yes. Even though it really reads "Target player can't play cards" (they can still use Action abilities.)-Bucky 20:02, 21 May 2009 (BST)
Or discard a card for effect --Gill smoke 15:03, 26 May 2009 (BST)
Although there are a few cards that they can still play... Hmm... We need more cards with loads of capital letters in the title. ——— Nehh
I checked, there are about 2 per page that can be played this way, it's not THAT rare to get cards under its' rules. --NARF 17:43, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

My newer cards

I can't help but feel I messed up a little bit with the wording on these. Could people please state if these cards are understandable, or should I rewrite them? --NARF 01:05, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Wartime Holds No Rules

I'm not sure if you've worded this card correctly. Since it effectively says "Things' Action abilities don't count towards their controllers' per-turn limit.", this means you can use every Action ability of each Thing you control an infinite number of times in one turn. Is this what you really intended? -- Corrigan 13:27, December 27 2010 (PST)

Is it okay now? --NARF 03:16, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

The main problem with this card is that it allows the abilities to be used infinitely and repeatedly, not that it allows each Thing to use all of its Action abilities in one turn. Allowing a Thing to use multiple different Action abilities in one turn should actually be kept on the card; that way, the card is powerful without being insanely broken. It should include something like "Each Action ability can't be used more than once in a turn". PS: Writing on a card that it can't be destroyed even by cards which claim to be able to destroy indestructible Things (and to the best of my knowledge, hardly any such cards exist) is somewhat excessive and unnecessary. It's fine for this card to be indestructible, but the attempt to make it "super indestructible" isn't worth the card space. -- Corrigan 19:39, 11 January 2011 (PST)

"each Thing may use one Action ability on it without using up the owner's action turn" means that each thing can only use anything once each turn, not one ability infinitely.

Well, I did some extreme editing to deal with the readability problem. It's no longer ridiculoustructible, and it uses a token system to prevent screwing around(although now one can use a token remover to use abilities infinitely :/ ) but it works. I had to use the word sacrifice because otherwise it'd run off the card. --NARF 13:15, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Much better. But (and this has always bugged me), I think that we should make the distinction that tokens are Things in their own right which vanish when they leave play, while counters are put on Things to keep track of certain properties. People seem to use these terms interchangeably. -- Corrigan 19:46, 12 January, (PST)

I'm pretty sure that only the term 'token' is defined, in the 'Tokens Exists' section. Counters are special Tokens according to the rules. --Gill smoke 20:30, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
Well, the way I understood it, counters and tokens are different; something that destroyed a Token couldn't remove a counter from a card, for instance. I wouldn't be against adding a definition for counter to the page. --Jtwe 02:02, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

The Internet

This seems like a rule 3 violation to me; how many censorship cards do you expect to come up? Luigi-Wan Kenobi 18:27, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Mass Duplication and Rule Edit Proposal

In Goldenboots's most recent edits, the entire header and Special Rules sections and a few dozen cards were duplicated. I believe I have corrected this, retaining all of the old cards and including the two that redtoast contributed, but the Recent Changes page seems to think that I've missed a few hundred bytes, and I'm sure it couldn't hurt for someone to check my work.

This most likely would not have happened if the edits in question had been done to the Card List section instead of the entire page. To address this, I would like to propose the following changes to the "rules for adding cards" section at the top of the page:

  • Don't add more than three cards at a time; give someone else a chance to add some, before you add any more.
  • Use the Edit link to the right of the Card List header to add cards instead of the edit tab at the top of the page, and make sure you put your cards at the bottom of the page.

Comments? Binarius 06:14, 26 September 2008 (BST)

It's the first time this has happened in the year and a half this deck's been going; I don't think we need to give new visitors the mental load of an extra and puzzlingly oblique instruction. --Kevan 13:40, 26 September 2008 (BST)

oops - sorry Goldenboots 01:27, 27 September 2008 (BST)

Random Idea: Add the 4 cards from the Game Rules

Zombieattack.gif

I thought it would be interesting to add them, but couldn't decide how best to do it. I originally wanted to just divide them into 4 cards like on the side bar. But 1. They don't really line up properly even if we resize them, and 2. They can't be added to the spoiler that way. Should I just edit out the art only, and make the cards with the art in them? Should we just have them be artless? Is this is a stupid idea to begin with? =O The T 18:40, 3 October 2008 (BST)

I think they have already been added once. The zombie attack card inspired the zombie token madness I have. --Gill smoke 21:50, 3 October 2008 (BST)
I checked, and they aren't there... The T 07:12, 4 October 2008 (BST)
Go ahead and add them. I'd say go artless but if you want to take the time to add the picture into the card the card template tag you want to use is "|image= ", I think there are some examples in the archive, I remember seeing one with a banner ad on it. --Gill smoke 02:34, 6 October 2008 (BST)
I got this. I'm doing it in two parts to follow the update rule. The images are not the right size and the PNG of the cement mixer looks bad. I tried to fix it and failed. --Gill smoke 13:48, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Cards by Game and Watch Kirby

"Oh no you don't!"-There are two ways to interpret this; as a "play in response to..." card or as an illicit special rule creator. Needs clarifying.-Bucky 00:58, 30 March 2009 (BST)

Cards by Goldenboots

Secured Lockbox

"If Secured Lockbox is destroyed by a player other than its owner, both the destroyer and the owner win the game. If Secured Lockbox is destroyed by its owner, the owner is eliminated. Secured Lockbox cannot be destroyed." - am I missing something, or can the first two conditions never be met? --Kevan 16:58, 11 October 2008 (BST)

I'm assuming you need a) one of those cards that says "Destroy target thing, even if it can't be destroyed" (to which the typical response is a thing that says "This thing cannot be destroyed, at all, even by that other card", ad infinitum), or b) something to edit the text of the card (change the "cannot" in the last sentence to "bagel" or something). Jtwe 17:26, 11 October 2008 (BST)
Yes, I was thinking of someone winning by changing the text of Secured Lockbox. I do think a card that says it can destroy even non-destroyable cards would also work, because that is more specific. I want to mention that the old (2000-2007) Rules covered conflict much more clearly than the new ones do - or am I missing something? Goldenboots 03:03, 12 October 2008 (BST)


The Sacred Writings of (your name here) Are Inviolate!

Nice card. I like "change a card's text"-cards. There won't be much use for it though, or am I wrong?- Zt, 16:58, 28 October 2008, 16:59 (CET)

Maybe not. If you had the Decline and Fall of Ng... card in your hand you could "protect" it from self-erasure by setting this card up first. Or if you had a slow guaranteed win you might want to protect a key card. Goldenboots 05:12, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Junk DNA

I understand your intention but I think your "junk" class of tokens is a little vague and can change quickly. In this hundred there are no tokens types that qualify. in other sets there are cards that just make money tokens then a new thing could then destroy money token to perform an action. when the modifying thing got destroyed then what? What if I have tokens without a maker say from an action? --Gill smoke 15:59, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

"A 'junk' token type is a token type where no current rule names the token type for a purpose other than creation. " I don't think it's vague. If there's a card IN PLAY that has a use for the tokens, they're not junk. If there's a card in play that only creates the token, it's junk - there are such cards. If the token has survived past its use, because the card that created it is gone and now no card refers to it, then it's junk. Yes, which tokens are junk can change quickly - since many cards refer to Money tokens (and a few to Energy or Gold tokens) a token could go from junk to not-junk as such cards appear, or go from not-junk to junk as cards which use them disappear or are altered. Anyway, the test of junk is: is there a card in play right now which does anything to this type of token -by name - except create them? If no, it's junk. Goldenboots 21:07, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
Here are some currently visible cards that would create junk tokens:

David Blaine: Action: Put a thing into your hand and replace it with a thing from your hand. Action: Replace a word on a thing with "Ace of Clubs". Action: Give an Ace of Clubs Token to a player.

Chinese Bakery Entrapment: Play under the control of another player. The controller of this card may not use any action abilities other than the one on this card. Action: Create 10 fortune cookie tokens.

Zombie: Your hand size is reduced by one Action: Destroy living thing, create Zombie token in its place.

Refried Beans: Whenever you would draw a card, you may choose to draw from the top of the discard pile; if you do, gain a Flatulence token.

Token Clock: When this comes into play, put eight Sand tokens into play. If no tokens of any type are in play, you win the game. Action: Destroy a token.

Bruce: While this card is in play, the title of all non-token Things in play is 'Bruce', and all tokens are Bruce tokens instead of their normal type. Action: Put a Bruce token into play

John Stuart Mill: If the total number of Tokens ever decreases, the Action below automatically triggers (under your control). Action: Add 5 Utilitarian Tokens to the game and redistribute the ownership of Tokens as ordered by you, but so that nobody's total number of Tokens goes down.

Baker: Action: Put a dozen Food tokens into play.

None of these cards make these tokens do anything but sit there and be tokens. It's unlikely another card will come along and do something with, say, fortune cookie tokens. Goldenboots 21:24, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I actually have a bunch of food sacrifice cards in my backlog, and as Bucky is always reminding me the deck is infinite. I know I'm being a little picky but look Bruce is a good example of changing rules I mentioned. All tokens get changed When Bruce is in play, that is not only at creation. My fortune cookies are now Bruces. My opponent's Bruce tokens are just a Bruce and are not modified. The Bruce card goes away and I'm left with 10 fortune cookies. I win, wait it's supposed to be different types. As I said I get the intention, I'm not sure how to change the class of tokens to better reflect what you want. --Gill smoke 15:59, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

When Bruce is in play, no-one could win with Junk DNA, because there would only be one token type, Bruce tokens. If Bruce went out of play (see discussion under "Bruce") all tokens would revert to their old names, and any remaining Bruce tokens, made with Bruce's action ability, would be a junk token type. I'm happy with the idea that what is a junk token type varies from play to play. Yes, having ten fortune cookie tokens that are a junk type doesn't win you the game via Junk DNA. I don't think a food sacrifice card which said, for example, "Sacrifice four tokens that are food to make an opponent discard a card" would prevent fortune cookie tokens, soup tokens, etc, from being a junk type. The Junk DNA definition says the token type has to be named for a purpose other that creation - a general card like my example doesn't name the type, fortune cookie tokens.

Recursive Suicide Pact

"No Reactions may be played" looks suspiciously like a backdoor secret rule.-Bucky 20:09, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

OK, I'm changing it to "No reactions may be played TO R.S.P". In any case, RSP will normally end the game with everyone eliminated, the exception being when somebody has an escape card against elimination. I think I'm right that if I drew R.S.P. I would play it and expect to win, unless those darn escape cards rescued someone else. Goldenboots 05:26, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
I would not expect you to win. You would eventually end up on the wrong end of the Pact yourself. -Bucky 16:38, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
And yet I am quietly confident. The trick is to name yourself. Goldenboots 01:34, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
I see a couple of reactions to being eliminated (not to RSP) about 20 cards up that could be handy in eliminating yourself. Just a thought.--ChippyYYZ 02:21, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
If you name yourself, you get eliminated. Just because you get eliminated last doesn't make you any less eliminated.-Bucky 04:59, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
Chippy: I think I made those. You may be right, they aren't played in response to RSP but to elimination. That's fine. Bucky: If everyone else is eliminated, for one shining second I'm alone in the game - don't I win? Then, yes, I'm eliminated.
There's no rule that says you win if everyone else is eliminated; it's just implied. But there are a few other cards, such as Get Out Of Jail Free (page 2) and more importantly On Vacation(page 4) that imply that winning by eliminating everyone else is not immediate.-Bucky 19:03, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
I would argue that, while winning is not "automatic" when everyone else is eliminated, under normal circumstances it's what will happen. In that "one shining second", you can propose rule changes freely and pass them by unanimous vote. ----

You Win if...

You know nobody plays with the full deck. The probability is near 0 now. Even the "at least 17 money tokens" would be hard in actual play with most decks. With a couple of create a copy from the archive the card gets easier to use for the win. I like it. --Gill smoke 14:14, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Fishing Rod

The Action ability can be used to draw as many cards as you want, as long as there isn't a fish in play. Is that intentional?-Bucky 22:12, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Nope, it's the same sort of thing I keep pointing out on OTHER people's cards. Good spot - fixed. Goldenboots 03:23, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
Incidentally, Binarius already beat you to it. Check the Unplayable Dvorak Deck.--ChippyYYZ 03:30, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Wiki Edit

It seems adding the phrase "This card is uneditable." would render the reversion reaction useless. Not intentional, I suppose?--ChippyYYZ 04:27, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Nice idea. The two cards (Wiki Edit and the edited card - which cannot easily be Wiki Edit, since WE only edits opponent cards) would be in conflict. I'm adding language to rule this out, because avoiding card conflict is a good thing. However, I would think the reversion would be more powerful than the new text on the edited card, only there because of Wiki Edit in the first place. Goldenboots 23:07, 18 March 2009 (UTC)


Cards by Object Replacement Char

BOOM Gun

If the card is face down the rules text is assumed to be blank logically there is nothing to return it to face up.

I reject your reality and substitute my own=

What is this card supposed to do? I think your are supposed to replace the things you have in play with things from the deck but the wording could make it more clear.

Unofficial IRC Channel

irc://irc.freenode.net/dvorakgame

I should be there. I'm assuming you all know how IRC works. If not, it's basically a way to send text over the internet. If you want to use it, you need a client, such as:

For more help go to http://irchelp.org/. --Pongo 10:32, 25 October 2008 (BST)

I've registered the channel, I hope Kevan doesn't mind. --Pongo 15:07, 25 October 2008 (BST)
I mean, I probably should have technically used ##dvorakgame as it is "unofficial". --Pongo 15:13, 25 October 2008 (BST)
I'm happy to make it official if people are using it. Don't forget that we already have a MUSH where you can actually play the game, though. --Kevan 16:35, 25 October 2008 (BST)
Of course. --Pongo 16:44, 25 October 2008 (BST)

Okay, seeing as nobody's interested, I've dropped the channel. --Pongo 09:28, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Archiving this Page?

It does seem to be getting rather long. --Pongo 16:29, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Yeah but where to start? we need to distill some meaning from the page before making a new one. that and the open issues need to carry forward. --Gill smoke 15:37, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps splitting the page somehow into a "Cards by" page and a page for things that aren't specific to individual cards? Binarius 20:13, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
I'm thinking the "Cards By" sections could just be moved to the users' talk pages. That would simplify matters a bit.--ChippyYYZ 04:30, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Talk:Infinite Dvorak deck/Archived Talk - Bucky

Czech Diacritics Question

I wanted to make a card called Antonin Dvorak, but spelled as in the name of the Czech composer Antonin Dvorak - there's a long-sign (like an acute accent) over one of the i's and an a, and there's a hacek (little v-shaped sign) over the r. Can anyone tell me how to type these in wiki? Goldenboots 04:34, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, you can use the HTML character entity references, like &Iacute; for Í or &aacute; for á, or you could just copy and paste an ř from somewhere like the Windows character map. I don't know how well any of this will export, but it displays fine on the page, at least for me. Jtwe 21:15, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
Thanks. I copied yours. Goldenboots 01:10, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Cards by Maeglin Dubh

Comments/Suggestions?

Three issues with "Drone". First, it doesn't say what to do with the Building once you find it. And second, if we're preserving the illusion of an infinite draw pile, a simple "Search the draw pile" won't work, or may take an unreasonable amount of time. Infinite Dvorak Deck search cards usually do something like "search the top N cards of the draw pile". Finally, whenever the draw pile gets searched, it should also get shuffled to avoid card counting.-Bucky 17:06, 27 May 2009 (BST)

Is better? - Maeglin

Mostly. But there's a new problem. Far fewer than one in 20 cards are Buildings. The current wording will do nothing a lot of the time.-Bucky
What would be a good number? -Maeglin
Looking through the last two complete pages of the archive (3801-4000), I see a total of 5 buildings. So you need to see more than 40 cards to even have a 50-50 chance of finding one. Perhaps you could use the "Make a copy of a Thing named XXX from the Infinite Dvorak Deck archive and put it into play." mechanic, perhaps making the card it morphs into yourself (See the Home Base/MechFab series on page 19). You could even let the player pick any building from the archives (which would, ironically, let you grab the aforementioned Home Base every time)-Bucky 05:06, 28 May 2009 (BST)
How does this look? Trying to keep the Zerg theme going, but it might be too self-referential. Hopefully the 'create-a-copy' mechanic will help circumvent that. - Maeglin
Remove the "To play this thing, you must first destroy a card named Hatchery" bit; otherwise, someone who draws Lair/Hive from the draw pile can't play it. Also, what does "Tap-Action" mean?-Bucky 17:14, 28 May 2009 (BST)
Words removed. Tap-Action means to do this action, turn the card on its side, putting it in an 'exhausted' or 'tapped' state. Tapped cards become untapped at the end of the round/turn, whichever makes more sense. - Maeglin
What's the point? You can usually only take one Action per turn anyway.
That's true... I remember seeing the mechanic somewhere on this site. I know I'm going to use it in whatever set I make, but I guess adding the text "use this action only once per turn" does the same thing. I've played some card games before (specifically Versus system) so some terminology dies hard.

From the Team Fortress CCG Deck...

Tap - The card is placed sideways and is ineligible for further actions until untapped. Tapped cards may be "untapped" at the beginning of the player's next turn, unless another card or ability states otherwise. Tap+Action - Whenever a card has "Tap+Action:" written, its ability will count as your Action for the turn, as well as require the card to be tapped in order to perform.

Also, I'd assume that an "Action+Thing" is equivalent to a "Full-Round Action"?

The tap rule is a deck-specific Special Rule. It doesn't affect cards in the Infinite deck. And yes, "Action+Thing:" means "Instead of playing an Action and a Thing"-Bucky

Cards by Nehh

Hidden Stash

Hidden Stash appears to violate the 'no special rules' rule. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Bucky (talkcontribs).

I see what Bucky is saying and the easy fix is to just make it a thing. You wouldn't have to change another word (or color) on the card. The 'no special rules' rule means in effect that Actions cannot have effects that last beyond your turn. --Gill smoke 18:32, 2 June 2009 (BST)

Fixed.

This is too complicated...

I'm guessing this is yours from the flavor text.
There was a discussion earlier on the this page. Technically you are usually allowed only one Action play per turn so unless there is another effect that lets you play more actions per turn, "This is too complicated..." is unplayable. How I get around it on my Reaction cards is by adding a discard mechanic. Like "Discard in response to an action that was played (or discarded) in response to an action. ... When played as an action this card does something else." and by the way I had nothing to do with this card, except meddle with other peoples actions. --Gill smoke 13:07, 23 June 2009 (BST)

Stuff-in-a-can

Glossary - cards moving from a hand to the discard pile are "discarded" rather than "destroyed". It's important to keep this consistent since some cards (like the stuff-in-a-cans) do stuff when destroyed but not when discarded. In fact, the glossary even says that "A Thing that's still in someone's hand can't be destroyed"-Bucky 18:56, 27 June 2009 (BST)

Multicard

So is this and my sleeping giant like gonna start some crazy card flipping mechanic? Cause I can roll with that if you want. AldusValor 20:22, 29 June 2009 (BST)

Card Flip

By turn did you mean flipped over? --Gill smoke 14:46, 30 June 2009 (BST) Uh huh. --Nehh, 06:33 GMT

Inappropriate Baseball Project

Just saying, wouldn't this work better flavor wise if you gave the player whose thing you destroyed a baseball token? --Gill smoke 16:49, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Burning Hands

How would I ever Draw a card? Without an action ability to remove/destroy a thing in play this card becomes "Take turns discarding the deck, repeat as necessary." A very real possibility at most stages of the game. --Gill smoke 16:45, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Major clarifications required here. "A player" means a player of your choice, or just Anybody? "A card"? you mean a Specific card, right? And how long does it last? Forever, end of your turn, or just the instant in which you use it?--ChippyYYZ 18:35, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Eight Rule

This needs quotation marks around the second "_______". Otherwise its a win in 2 turns, by first changing the blank to "text of this card", then using the Action ability again to make Eight Rule read "You win the game at the end of each turn".-Bucky 17:06, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Bag of Endless Water

Don't you mean decanter of endless water? ;) --Gill smoke 17:23, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Nope. This is a bag. Made of canvas. It always leaks.
I was referring to the classic D&D magic item [4] no party I was ever in had. --Gill smoke 13:52, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Clone Fodder

You might want to either change the abilities to both Things or both Actions to limit the speed of this powerful card. And I'm just saying, making a thing have the rulestext of an action is usually really bad idea. You might want to change it to just "Things". --Gill smoke 17:23, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Fire Elemental

"Place 1 Flame token on a card": one of Fire Elemental's original 10 tokens, or do you get to create a new one? Binarius 09:46, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

You might also want to add something like "Can't be destroyed by fire-based effects". Currently, Flamethrower and Pyromancy actually make it less hot.--ChippyYYZ 14:53, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Fixed. Makes more sense now. Note that extinguishing it kills it very effectively.

Breaking the Limit of Maths

The number given is ambiguous; do you mean 10^(10^(10^32)), (10^10)^(10^32), ((10^10)^10)^32)? There is a rather large difference between these interpretations.-Bucky 20:32, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Unlike addition and multiplication, exponentiation is not associative. Nested exponents are evaluated beginning with the highest power, so 10^10^10^32 = 10^(10^(10^32)). Binarius 23:36, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
I think the parenthesis go the other way ((10^10)^10)^32 Where did you get the rule for exponents starting with the highest order? I remember it left to right, also if I remember right you can multiply the nested exponents to get 10 to the 3200 see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponents_%28Math%29#Generalizations --Gill smoke 14:36, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
Nested exponents can be multiplied if parentheses are involved, as in the example you cite: (a^b)^c = a^(b*c), so 10^3200 can be written as ((10^10)^10)^32, although simply writing 10^3200, or even 10^(10*10*32), would of course be more concise. As another example, (2^3)^4 = 8^4 = 2^(3*4) = 4096. But without parentheses, 2^3^4 = 2^(3^4) = 2^81 = 2417851639229258349412352. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetration#Iterated_powers or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_operations#Special_cases. Any math textbook that addresses the question will say the same thing.
The advantage of this notation is that when using variables - as is most often the case with the people who use this notation the most - writing a^b^c^d in an ascending diagonal line (so that d is c's exponent, c^d is b's exponent, and b^c^d is a's exponent) means something different than a^(bcd), where a's exponent is the product of the other three. Binarius 22:18, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Sharing Is Caring

In a four player game, one player gets to steal the other players' copies of Sharing is Caring and then everything else next turn. I'm assuming this isn't the intended use of this card?-Bucky 18:36, 31 October 2012 (UTC)


Unlimited Thing Works

Unlimited is right. My turn, I play Unlimited Thing Works and immediately use its ability to create two copies of ITSELF. I then use the copies' abilities to produce four more. A short time later, I control an arbitrarily large number of every Thing in play or in the discard pile. Unless this was the desired effect, I would change it either to trigger at a specific time, such as the beginning of your turn, or to exempt itself from being copied. Maybe both.--ChippyYYZ 14:14, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Cards By ChippyYYZ

To counter the immense and ever-increasing size of this page, this section has been moved to my talk page.--ChippyYYZ 15:16, 3 June 2009 (BST)

The Black Market

What is the meaning of "X" on this card roll Xd6 and draw X cards, I think you mean X to be the number of money tokens you control. You might want to edit this for brevity. --Gill smoke 11:41, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Dvorak

I just saw that on the front page an considered adding it. You already had. --Gill smoke 16:57, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Intense Focus

the "destroy this" clause leads to the backdoor special rules we are always trying to avoid. --Gill smoke 03:34, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

How's that? The way I read it, you can still play cards. But if you do, Intense Focus is destroyed, and then its effects stop. Binarius 06:53, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
"If you play a card destroy this. Discard your hand at the end of your turn. Draw four extra cards each turn." The Discard and Draw effects seem to me to happen after the card is destroyed. Maybe it is just the sentence order. --Gill smoke 12:50, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Meteor Storm

This is confusing. What target thing? The targets that the Action/Things target, or an additional target? Please fix this vague mess. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 00:20, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Not a mess at all; I fear The T's tone may have rubbed off a bit. "Target Thing" is long-established shorthand for "a Thing of your choice"; you'll find it on hundreds of cards throughout the deck, including five of yours. This card allows you, when you would destroy a Thing, to destroy an extra Thing (of your choice) by discarding a card, if the card that allowed you to destroy something in the first place was an Action, or if it was a Thing then by destroying that Thing itself. The wording is correct and idiomatic. Excellent card. Where ya been, Chippy? Binarius (talk) 02:06, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
"When [condition], you may discard a card to destroy target Thing." At first you might (and did) assume a connection to the action that triggered it or the things that action destroyed, but there isn't one. Neither is there any vagueness. Card does what it says. Thanks, I've had a BuSy WeEk.--ChippyYYZ (talk) 02:48, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
The card didn't seem too clear on whether you destroyed one of the things, or an additional thing. Basically what I'm asking is: what target thing are you referring to? --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 04:01, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
From the Black Rose Assassin: "Action: Destroy target Thing." Which target Thing? The Thing you target. Meteor Storm works the same way: "Target Thing" means you choose a Thing for the ability to target, and it targets that Thing. When the ability is triggered (by one of your Actions or Things destroying something), Meteor Storm says "I'm going to destroy target Thing now." and it targets a Thing and destroys it.--ChippyYYZ (talk) 04:36, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
The difference between the Assassin and Meteor Storm is that with the Assassin there is no assumed Target Thing, so therefore you make it. If the text would be "Action: *something that involved a target thing* as well as destroying target thing." Would your first assumption to create a new target thing, or to destroy the previously established target thing? --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 04:45, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
So here's the business. There is no previously established target thing. There is also no such thing on this card or any other as an Assumed Target Thing. A card will always either define the Thing or Things it affects (Backhoe or Long Road Ahead) or it will leave the choice to you (Assassin) or another player (Alolan Raticate). The first half of Meteor Storm's ability ("When an Action card you play would destroy one or more Things,") does not refer to the targeting of any things. It just describes an event that happens: You played an Action card that happened to destroy something. Maybe it targeted the thing or things it destroyed, or maybe it didn't (Long Road Ahead). Either way it fulfills the condition, opening up the second half of the ability ("you may discard a card to destroy target Thing."). So you discard a card. Now, since this ability asks for a target instead of explicitly defining which card it affects, you get to choose a target. That action from earlier might have targeted a thing, but that Thing was that Action's target, not this one's. That Action had its own targets that this card doesn't care about because this card is not that card. This card isn't referring to a previously targeted thing or else it would say to destroy "a Thing that was targeted". It does not refer to a target that has already been established because it does not say that it refers to a target that has already been established. It refers to "Target Thing", so you choose a valid target, which in this case is any Thing in play that isn't rendered untargetable by some effect. And you destroy that Thing.
TL;DR: The card does what the words on the card say the card does. The card does not describe a connection between its abilities and the things destroyed to trigger those abilities, so no such connection exists. You target a Thing.--ChippyYYZ (talk) 06:10, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
It just seemed confusing to me. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 06:15, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Protection Racket

"Things by JakeTheWolfie can't be destroyed except by cards by JakeTheWolfie." Acolyte vs Assassin. Let's see who blinks first. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 18:08, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Manifestation

"When Manifestation enters play, reveal a Thing card from your hand for as long it remains in play" Why not shorten it to "When you play this", as it avoids ambiguity of what would happen if no one technically played it, but it still entered play. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 00:06, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

There's already no ambiguity. The effect triggers once Manifestation is in play, which means Manifestation is controlled by someone, who therefore owns its effect. Plus my way still works even if it enters play in a nonstandard manner (e.g. Green Spell or Jake Of Hearts).--ChippyYYZ (talk) 01:47, 6 October 2019 (UTC)
Take one of my cards, which Summons Corax and Mithras. Clearly, neither of them have a hand, as to take their turn they must draw a card. As they are unable to perform this thing's text, what happens? --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 01:54, 6 October 2019 (UTC)
The way the last sentence is written, if Manifestation's controller has no Things in their hand, Manifestation goes to the discard pile as soon as it's played. That strikes me as pretty careful wording in complement to this card's other mechanics. Binarius (talk) 02:20, 6 October 2019 (UTC)
Wording updated to better accommodate inability to reveal a Thing due to having an empty hand or not being a real player. And the question of how to resolve cards for Corax and Mithras is an ambiguity motherlode of your own making.--ChippyYYZ (talk) 02:33, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

Gold Wizard

I'd rather have Gold Wizard only use the five colors of Magic: The Gathering (to which the original 5 spells were very much a direct reference). I don't know where Binarius got Cerulean and Scarlet, and while they're neat, I'm more comfortable letting them be their own thing. Do what you will with Gold-Plated Wizard Tower. Also your White Wizard Tower still says it creates White Spell instead of White Wizard, and Cerulean Wizard Towet is misspelled.

Cerulean and Scarlet were my initial contributions supporting contributions to this new Spells idea of yours before I realized Blue, Green, White, Black, and Red followed in Chippy's grand tradition of Magic references. That's why I chose quaternary colors (I wanted to stay out of the way in case Chippy had existing plans for more hues) and why I didn't do any more after realizing that there should canonically only be five in the first place. Still, I couldn't resist getting myself in on the Wizard fun while the getting was good, but neither would I presume that their treatment should be equal to Chippy's originals. Consider them the sincerest form of flattery. Binarius (talk) 04:41, 13 November 2019 (UTC)
Ah, ok. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 20:08, 13 November 2019 (UTC)
That said, if you feel like treating yours equally to my originals, you're welcome to build your own alternate magic color wheel, like one of those alternate universe Justice Leagues that the real Justice League meets and ends up fighting.--ChippyYYZ (talk) 01:00, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

The Maker's Hands

"..to put target Thing in the discard pile." Isn't this called Destroying? --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 04:57, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

Destroyed Things go to the discard pile, but Things that get put in the discard pile weren't necessarily destroyed. This gets rid of those pesky indestructible Things, and also doesn't count as destruction for effects like Green Hacks or Gyro Stabilization.--ChippyYYZ (talk) 22:54, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
If they weren't nessicarily destroyed, then they weren't destroyed. Their placement was simply moved. It's not destroying them, which means the owner just has the hassle of digging throguh the discard pile to use their thing's ability. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 23:00, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
Things that aren't in play don't do anything. If your Thing gets moved to the discard pile, it's no longer in play under your control. You can't use its ability from the discard pile just like you can't use its ability from your hand or from the deck if an Action returns it to your hand or shuffles it into the deck.--ChippyYYZ (talk) 23:15, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
It doesn't say to take it out of play, however. Moving it's location doesn't change ownership. If I moved a card into your area, it would still be under my control despite it looking like you control it. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 22:51, 30 November 2019 (UTC)
Read the Dvorak Rules and the Glossary. What you will find is that Things are described as usually having an effect while in play, and that Things that are destroyed go to the discard pile. Because the duration of a Thing's effect is tied to its remaining in play, and destruction is only described as moving a Thing from in play to the discard pile, my interpretation of the rules is that the Discard Pile is Definitely Not In Play, which therefore means that The Maker's Hands does in fact say to take its target out of play. This is not something I would be wrong about.--ChippyYYZ (talk) 04:20, 1 December 2019 (UTC)
By your logic, something that is indestructible could not go into the discard pile under any circumstances. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 04:31, 1 December 2019 (UTC)
Destruction and going to the discard pile are not interchangeable, and I never said they were! From the Dvorak Glossary: "If a Thing is 'destroyed', it is moved from in play to the discard pile." That is not a reversible statement, meaning that an indestructible Thing can go from play to the discard pile without counting as having been destroyed. This distinction appears as far back as Blockade (#337) by Bucky.
Bonus round: Your assertion that by my logic an indestructible thing couldn't go to the discard pile under any circumstances wouldn't even be correct if "Destruction and going from in play to the discard pile ARE interchangeable" was my logic, because it could still go to the discard pile from my hand, which would not be "from in play" and therefore not destruction. This should serve as an indication to you that you do not know what you are talking about, and that you should therefore be placing more trust in my very obviously correct opinions that are based on a literal decade of experience on this website than in your own. This continues, and will continue, to not be something I would be wrong about. Well you didn't say "from play" now, did you?--ChippyYYZ (talk) 05:17, 1 December 2019 (UTC)
Ok, but I was talking about it could never enter the discard pile from play. If it's forcibly discarded (Or is indestructibly destroyed) then it would go to the discard pile. But what does indestructible mean in this context? Either it means that it prevents destruction (And by proxy preventing the definition of destroy from applying) or it means something else. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 14:10, 1 December 2019 (UTC)
"Indestructible" means "Cannot be destroyed". It does not mean "cannot go from in play to the discard pile" beacuse, and this is the point I have been trying to make clear from the beginning, those terms are not interchangeable. Destroying a Thing puts it in the discard pile, and therefore out of play, but putting a Thing in the discard pile, and therefore out of play, does not mean Destroying it, meaning that Indestructibility would not apply. Snipe Hunt (#1364), Overkill (#1624), and Restraining Order (#1913), all created by Bucky in 2008, are all examples of this exact effect. Players have been putting indestructible things in the discard pile since the Bush administration.--ChippyYYZ (talk) 01:52, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
The Glossary does not define destruction, but only describes its result as causing a card in play to move to the discard pile. A card can specify that anything happen when it's played, hence the long-standing convention that, as a term of art, destruction is not semantically exhaustive: it is possible to cause a card to move from play to the discard pile without the need to describe it as being destroyed, if that's what another card says to do. The community's understanding of cards like #1364 Snipe Hunt and #1624 Overkill has always been to have the function of countering cards that declare that they cannot be destroyed, as in, for a couple of early examples, #50 Pocket Universe and #937 Cockroach (the word "indestructible" itself wasn't used until #1542 Matriarchy). For a couple of more recent cards that illustrate the interpretation of moving a card in play to the discard pile as a superset of the mechanic of "destroying", #7076 Not Exactly Destruction Per Se and #7347 Star Platinum come to mind. Binarius (talk) 03:54, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Alliances and Flares

These are excellent. I wish I were familiar enough with Cosmic Encounter to contribute, but I doubt I'd be able to offer anything of comparable quality. Binarius (talk) 04:20, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Thank you! Albert Einstein probably said "Constraints breed creativity", and I've found trying to make cards that fit a certain set of concepts (e.g., the Colored Spells emulating effects from MtG, or the Stands from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure) forces me to design more interesting effects than when I design a card's effect first and then name it something.--ChippyYYZ (talk) 12:40, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
Flattery, surely... (Note to self: Preface things you want to sound profound with "Einstein probably said".) But yes, when I'm feeling stuck I'll often try coming up with a title on the spur of the moment and then develop a concept to fit effects to around that. Doesn't seem to work too bad. Binarius (talk) 13:02, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Suspicious Object/Activity

Should these specify that the cards put under them must be Things/Actions, or can opponents undermine their utility by contributing cards of the incorrect type? Binarius (talk) 04:21, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

I wanted undermining to be possible, since Suspicious Object still costs each opponent a card, and I didn't want anything like "... or reveals that they have no Things in their hand", so I just left it as a possibility. Had I designed Suspicious Activity first, or even at the same time instead of as an afterthought, I might have noticed that it's easier to pitch a junk thing for Suspicious Activity than it is to pitch a junk action for Suspicious Object. New design penalizes opponents if they all dodge it by throwing away the wrong card type.--ChippyYYZ (talk) 22:25, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Binarius, Analysis!

This might need to be reworded to work with hidden zones that act like a secondary deck, but aren't a deck. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 19:00, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

Cards by AldusValor

Welcome to the party, don't let my comments keep you from making more. More cards is more fun. Subtypes don't really matter, Authors add Reaction to Action cards to show it is to be played during someone elses' turn, and Subtype their Things for clarity or inclusion.

And Finally, although this is probably the first part read, Thanks for the warm welcome. The first three cards were modified slightly from my Legend of Elsewhere deck, which I'm hoping to complete, Elsewhere is a very long epic story that I have been playing around with in my head for years and am finally putting pen to paper on. Once I get some typed, I'll post a link on my user page. I'll be around for a while, so be prepared. Aldus Valor 22:40 17 June 2009 (EST)


Doublechin's Decree

This action does not complete on your turn and is sort of a "Special Rule" in that I cannot look at the cards in play and determine the state of the game. To mimic the result make it a thing and use a depleting token mechanic, and destroy the card when there are no more tokens on the card.--Gill smoke 17:48, 16 June 2009 (BST)

It does make a little more sense that way. Fixed. Aldus Valor 22:20 17 June 2009 (EST)

Doublechin

"Action" means instead of playing an action card you may do the following. You have a comes into play effect there, Did you mean the action effect is only playable the turn you play Doublechin? Another issue there is only one discard pile for all players. You should edit this card for clarity. --Gill smoke 17:48, 16 June 2009 (BST)

Yes the effect was meant to happen only once. As for the "Owner's Discard Pile." I have MTG on the brain. Fixed. Edited. Aldus Valor 22:22 17 June 2009 (EST)

The Mouth of Vecna

"As log as this card is in play," I think you meant "long", as a mechanic, did you mean for The Mouth of Vecna to go away once it eliminated a player? because I could see a rules discussion ending the game quickly, and what happens when played online, how do you know I spoke? --Gill smoke 17:48, 16 June 2009 (BST)

"The next player who speaks" only works once, or was that the intended effect? And there is a MUSH command to "speak", though typing the following
"nothing", but holds up two fingers, indicating the number two.
would cause everyone to see
ChippyYYZ says "nothing", but holds up two fingers, indicating the number two."
You may wish to edit the card for clarity on these two points.--ChippyYYZ 00:52, 17 June 2009 (BST)

As for the "log" I share a computer with someone who hates to lose at online monopoly, and the keyboard takes the brunt of the anger, and sometimes the keys don't register. I have a hard time logging into Urban Dead as a result.

As for the card mechanic, it means that until someone makes it go away, anyone who speaks loses the game. So I'll amend the card to reflect that. "Any player who speaks..." Edited. Fixed.Aldus Valor 22:26 17 June 2009 (EST)

David Bowie

"Action:David Bowie may become an exact copy of anything in play." once you use the action how would it become David Bowie again. Perhaps if you made it, "Action:David Bowie may become an exact copy of anything in play until the beginning of you next turn." I would also move the win condition to before the action ability to make it clear that the action was not require to fulfill the win condition. --Gill smoke 17:48, 16 June 2009 (BST)

You mean "Until you control At Least three things", right?--ChippyYYZ 00:52, 17 June 2009 (BST)

Good, better, and yes. Changed, Moved, Edited. Aldus Valor 22:29 17 June 2009 (EST)

Arramore

"... all things all things target opponant controls" all things is in there twice and opponent is misspelled, which might be intentional. --Gill smoke 21:49, 18 June 2009 (BST)

Mordok, The Shapeshifter

Severe terminology issues. When you say "choose a discard one thing in play" do you mean "discard a Thing from your hand", "destroy a Thing" or "destroy a Thing you control"? (also, note that destroying one of your opponent's Things each turn is well above the 'fair play' power level the deck's settled on)-Bucky 05:24, 30 June 2009 (BST)

Well this card take one thing in play and sends it to the discard pile, that can be anything in play. As for it destroying one monster each turn, it doesn't It would be every other turn. It would behave like this.

Player 1's turn, he plays Mordok
Player 2 plays David Bowie
At the beginning of Player 1's turn, he destroys David Bowie and copies it onto the other side.
Player 2 takes his turn
Player 1's David Bowie copy would turn back into Mordok at the beginning of his turn, and would remain until the next turn.

If Mordok is the only thing left in play it would become a copy of itself. AldusValor 07:01, 30 June 2009 (BST)

(a)If you meant 'destroy', please edit the card to say so. As per the Glossary, 'discard' refers to Things in players' hands.
(b)If Mordok is the only Thing in play, he destroys himself end ends up face-down in the discard pile. Then stays flipped because his 'flip me back' text is no longer in effect (he isn't in play).-Bucky 17:51, 30 June 2009 (BST)

Addendum:Even ignoring the shapeshifting bit, the 'destroy a Thing each turn' ability is rather obnoxious.-Bucky 17:53, 30 June 2009 (BST)

Xerox, the Copycat Giant

Just saying, normally you get one action per turn since I become a copy of what I destroyed until the end of (my) turn when I use an action. How would I normally use my new copied abilities? Double Chin would not be pleased. --Gill smoke 14:43, 30 June 2009 (BST)

Cards by Dcty2

These cards were added to a page of the archives rather than the main deck. I have moved them here.

Shiftswap
Action
All Actions turn into things and vice versa. Note: This card will be unchanged.
Card by Dcty2
When Mobile Phones Rule The Earth
Action
Every two Things you have, draw two cards.
Card by Dcty2
Immortal -- To Things, That Is
Thing
You are immune to Things for one turn, which is the turn after this one.
Psycho Dude
Thing
You can control one of your opponent's cards.
Card by Dcty2
Who Ate My Carrots
Action
One of your opponent's cards are considered useless and cannot be used.
Card by Dcty2

Of these cards, only "When Mobile Phones Rule The Earth" actually works (it's also overpowered). Of the others, "Psycho Dude", "Who Ate My Carrots" and "Immortal to Things" are so vague as to be useless. As for "Shiftswap", the vast majority of Things' texts dont make sense on an Action and vice versa.

Cards by Velicue

Welcome to Dvorak! It's good to see a new contributor. While your first cards are mostly fine, there are some ambiguities which could be fixed by clearer and more regular wording. First, for "The Time of Harvesting", it's not specified what the cards are chosen for. Presumably, each player chooses one and puts it into his hand, but the card should state this. In "The Beauty", it's unclear what it means to be "ordered" to destroy a Thing. Ordered by cards or by players? Is it meant to be used with cards that say "destroy X tokens/Things you control to do something"? Also, it should be noted that, in Dvorak, "discard" always means "from your hand". I hope that my comments don't sound too harsh. My first cards were probably ten times worse than yours. -- Corrigan 20:16 January 12, 2011

Cards by Ltn Koen

One With The Rubbish: this appears to break the game when your hand size hits 6; you need to discard down to your hand size limit, but the cards you discard end up back in your hand. -Bucky 05:08, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

I should probably just add "You don't need to discard at the end of your turn." The idea is that you're playing with the discard pile instead of your hand, so very soon you're have much more than five cards. Ltn Koen 10:45, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Cards by JakeTheWolfie

Hey there, welcome. Some of your cards are a bit confusing so I was hoping I could put some things out to make sure they are workable. -The T (talk)

Unfinished Tome

This was the card that left me the most puzzled. What is a tome, in the context of Dvorak? If you are planning to make cards of a type "Tome", then you should remember the rule "Cards shouldn't refer to other cards." The odds of another Tome coming up in a game are extremely small, with 6,000 cards. With that, what does "create a combination" mean? Create a card? Create a card with the text of both cards? What is the outcome card's name? And then once you create it, what do you do with it? Play it? Shuffle it into the deck? You need to specify things like this. Also "Costs 5 magic tokens" is a really unclear wording. If you're meaning something like "You must destroy 5 magic tokens to do this", then a better way to phrase it would be to start "Action: Destroy 5 magic tokens. If you do, create [...etc.]". Although purely from a balance standpoint, 5 magic tokens are something unlikely to come up, so I would remove the Action ability part of it and just make it "On your turn, you may destroy 5 magic tokens to create [...etc.]". -The T (talk)

Did I clear things up now? -JakeTheWolfie
No, I still don't understand what the card is trying to do. What is the relationship between the Thing you use and the Tome you created? Also, "Tome Card" isn't a defined card type, so you'd want to say "Thing - Tome", I suppose. This card mostly seems like a "create a card that does whatever you want" card, which have the potential to be extremely broken. Like, depending on how this card is interpreted, it's either broken or useless, and I can't tell which; but either way, cards like that are rarely fun. -The T (talk)
It creates a card that uses magic tokens to do what the original card did, more or less -JakeTheWolfie
But wouldn't that just change it into an inherently worse card? What's the advantage? Also it still doesn't explain where to put the card after you create it, and the wording doesn't make that super clear that that's your intent. -The T (talk)
Well, assume you made a Tome of The Automated Token Production Facility. Destroy x magic tokens to create x/2 tokens of your choice, rounding down. That's essentially what the Unfinished tome can do, create a Tome, or magical book, that uses Magic Tokens to do something similar to what the original card did. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 01:14, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Thorns

While this card isn't bad or broken, it's really pointless? You could just discard it at the end of your turn. So what's the point?

Your other cards, while parsable to me, couldn't hurt with having more clear, concise wording. Read through other cards and make note of conventions, and use proper grammar. -The T (talk)

A small number of "pointless" cards can have the hopefully comedic effect of disappointing the drawer and temporarily taking up space in hand. I've done a couple of those (Houseplant and Rest). Anyway, it would be right at home in the Unplayable Dvorak deck. Binarius (talk) 03:50, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
That's fair. I just think the theming doesn't really fit super well. Thorns are sharp and painful. This card is the minorest of inconveniences. -The T (talk)
Did I fix it, or what would you do for it right now? -JakeTheWolfie

Elevator To Hell

Reading this one again, I realized something that was unclear to me: "Can also" is an extremely confusing phrase to use. Is the intent of this card, when you use the action, to end your turn immediately and skip your next turn; and if you do, then you may choose to destroy 3 things? -The T (talk)

Did I clear it up? -JakeTheWolfie
Yeah, it's parseable, but still grammatically incorrect. -The T (talk)

Ponker

Goal isn't an established card type; if you're creating a new card type, you have to explain on the card what that card type does. The first sentence makes it sound like an Action, while the 2nd sentence sounds like it has some ongoing effect, which would make it a Thing. That said, this card also does not explain how one would acquire or count a Poker hand; it also says "at the end of the game"; only cards that say "a player wins [if]" etc. can end the game. So if this card is intending to, then that sentence doesn't mean anything. -The T (talk) 00:43, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Did I Improve it? Is there anything you would change? --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 01:08, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
That's actually really good, I like a lot of the changes you made. I also like your 3 newest cards. Thanks for taking my criticism! :D -The T (talk)

Curse of Baby Hands

Watch out for the typos on "Play" at the start as well as your username. Also, just to make sure I understand the concept of curses; the idea is to curse another player until they can manage to destroy the Thing the curse is attached to? -The T (talk)

Curses are meant to make people get rid of their own things (not necessarily destroy the thing, just lose control of it) because they are too powerful for whatever reason.--JakeTheWolfie (talk) 03:28, 23 August 2019 (UTC)
Ok; don't fully understand since that's not what the card does (doesn't give you an easy way to get rid of it and very few cards in the deck, if any, let you give away your Things); the card as written is still a neat idea though. Also check the typo on your name on that card. -The T (talk)

Whoops!

Is the intent of this card "Discard a Thing from each player in turn order, until you reach a player who doesn't have any Things left", or is it "Destroy all things". Because as written, I'd interpret it as the latter. It doesn't specify an order to do so currently so the order would be up to you. Also, it wouldn't hurt to include an "(including yourself)", even though it's redundant. -The T (talk)

You destroy everyone's things in rounds, until someone doesn't have any things left to destroy, at that point you stop destroying. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 21:06, 25 August 2019 (UTC)
Then it should say that. -The T (talk) 12:46, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Triforce

Cool idea. In the current version, though, it's not clear how to treat the three fragments of this card after it's ripped. For example, can they be destroyed? How might a player take control of one from another player?

There are two alternatives to ripping this card that I would suggest. One is to make a token for each piece, and then Triforce can explain how they interact. This has the disadvantage that when a token is destroyed, it doesn't go into the discard pile or anywhere else, it just vanishes from the game. The other alternative would be to add each fragment to the deck as a Thing card, like "Triforce of Power: You may play an additional Thing during your turn. If you control the Triforce of Wisdom and the Triforce of Courage, you win." Then the original Triforce card (which could now be an Action) could direct the player to search the draw and discard piles for them and distribute them. Binarius (talk) 03:57, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Alternately, if you really want to keep the functionality exactly as it is, make it an action with the text "Create a Thing called Triforce of Power, with the text "You may play an additional Thing during your turn. If you also own Triforce of Wisdom and Triforce of Courage, you win." Create a Thing called Triforce of Wisdom, with the text "You can look at one card hidden from view once per turn. IF you also own Triforce of Courage and Triforce of Power, you win." [...etc.] Take one of these cards for yourself and give the other 2 to 2 opponents, if possible." (The last part is due to: what if there is only 1 opponent left.) -The T (talk) 12:45, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Could anyone suggest how I could make it shorter (As well as make it clear that there can only be one of each token) --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 03:37, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Here's a rewrite that clarifies a lot of the wording, drops the super-ambiguous Twilight Realm (risky against a single opponent), and doesn't put the win condition (or the Triforce tokens' indestructibility) on a Thing that can be destroyed.--ChippyYYZ (talk) 23:28, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Guessing Game

Guessing Game doesn't make any sense. It doesn't mention to roll the die at any point. Also, assuming the intent is to roll the die and hope you get the number you guessed, you could choose a 2-sided (or even 1-sided) die. -The T (talk) 14:00, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Very Big Sign that says "No"

This card is impossibly broken. -The T (talk) 01:24, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

How so? --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 01:33, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
It's impossible to destroy and you can use it to block any action your opponent makes against you. -The T (talk) 01:41, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
Fixed? --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 01:42, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
I mean, now it's just boring. And you should still be aware of your grammar on cards. -The T (talk) 01:47, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
Boring relative to what? A card that does nothing? A card that does more? Boring is relative. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 01:58, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Twilight Realm Portal

Can Things sent to the Twilight Realm come back? Binarius (talk) 02:59, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Yes.--JakeTheWolfie (talk) 03:01, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
I'd recommend wording that a little more explicitly for clarity, something like "Transport one tangible Thing to or from the Twilight Realm while the portal is open." Binarius (talk) 03:05, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Cheater

The absolutely weakest restriction I would put on this card's ability is "You may not win this game. At all." Otherwise I can just draw 90 cards, or take 10 extra turns, or steal all players' hands and Things, or change the text on a card in my hand to "You may win this game as though you had not activated Cheater."--ChippyYYZ (talk) 23:50, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

""You may not win this game. At all."" This would conflict with how the card works, as you could simply Cheat by ignoring that text and still be following the card. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 20:54, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
So... you're agreeing that there's no way to design this card that doesn't break the game?--ChippyYYZ (talk) 22:46, 20 September 2019 (UTC)
Yes, but I disagree on the intent. Sure, you could just say "I win the game". Oooorrr.. you could just fuck with the game however you want, and perhaps make it a more fun experience for everyone. This is like a Knife. Sure, you could go out and stab some people. Or you could help make a 5 star meal. Or even make a better tool to help improve the knife. Anything is possible. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 00:07, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

The 1% of the 1%

Is the purpose of this card for you to just wipe out your opponents' entire boards by saving the Most Valuable Thing for last? The obviously correct move is for everyone to vote Yes on Most Valuable to stop your chain reaction early, regardless of the card in question, which seems against the spirit of things. Also the last sentence is redundant.--ChippyYYZ (talk) 23:50, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Cultists

This is where I want all Cultist Criticisms to go instead of making a new section for each card, for organization. <3 <3 --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 17:09, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Interesting, I was wondering where the Cultist angle was going. The wording of the cards with "instead" isn't clear to me. The Cult Leader can do those actions instead of its original ability? Can the Cult Leader's controller choose to use its original ability instead? I'd recommend rewording it for clarity. A bigger problem is that the players are being asked to remember what the other Cultist cards said after they are destroyed to create Cult Leader. Binarius (talk) 04:28, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
Cultists that are destroyed can no longer have their abilities used, as it is another card altogether --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 05:34, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
So the last sentence of Ritualist, Acolyte, Invoker, etc. only apply when they remain in play (because Cult Leader was played first)? That makes sense. Binarius (talk) 06:16, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
I think it's stated somewhere on the page that you only have to look at the cards on the table to know what's going on. Also, you no longer control it so you can't use it's abilities. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 18:57, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

I would standardize cult leader alternate abilities such as "The Cult Leader may destroy a thing instead of doing their action." to "The Cult Leader gains "Action: Destroy target Thing."" to clarify that the alternate ability is still an Action and that it doesn't incur the two turn cooldown (I assume this is the intent).

Seeker: Seems really really weak.

Preacher: "The Cult Leader may take control of 2 things from the same opponent instead of one." This is a curious wording, since cult leader doesn't take control of things. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by ChippyYYZ (talkcontribs).

Questions about Cultists:
1. "If you do not control the Cult Leader" - so if someone else controls it, there are going to be 2 in play, right?
2. "create it" - and then do what with it? ie, you need to specify "create and play".
3. Generally, preferable wording is "create a copy of", but I suppose no one would confuse "create it" with "search the deck for it".
4. It's kind of arbitrary that these cards don't just say "Action: [their thing]" instead of saying the Cult Leader does it. Like the only event in which it will ever matter is if the Cult Leader's Action ability is nullified in some way. Even if that were the case, I'd arguably feel that "This card's Action can't be used unless a Cult Leader you control could use their Action." is a more elegant way to phrase it. (Some of the later ones, like Preacher, are probably better off as they are. In fact, I feel like it'd be safe to disregard this point, but I'm leaving it just to give you some ideas on how to expand your wording.) -The T (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Many of these cards read better after your edits yesterday, although I would still encourage careful attention to precise wording for clarity. For better or worse, our game has developed two conventional usages of the word "gain": one for when a card is granted extra text by another card (Attached Thing gains "Action: Destroy an Energy token and draw a card."), and the more common use case, in which a player "gains (control of) a Thing" when they "put it into play". In the latter case, if a specific card is called for, "Gain control of a copy of Cult Leader" has been preferred for the player's convenience in avoiding the need to search through a deck that already has almost 7,000 cards in it. The intent of the Cultist series seems to be that many of these cards serve as proxies for the Cult Leader, and morph into it when they are played if the player doesn't already have a Cult Leader, so that's the wording I would recommend.
There's also one ambiguity that came to my attention: Apostle, Preacher, and Priest currently call for "a Cultist" or "a Cultist card" to be played or destroyed. Is this any card in Cultist series, or specifically the card titled "Cultist"? It's obvious to me that it should be the former, since the Cultist card itself will only be in play if Cult Leader already is, but it still seems like something that should be addressed. The simplest solution might be to just rename the Cultist card to something like Initiate or Novitiate. (I would also suggest Corax, but that name is taken.) Binarius (talk) 04:04, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Invoker

Should probably say "another player's Thing's action" unless the intent is you could use the action of any Action/Thing card in the discard pile, or even in the deck. -The T (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Priest/Mithras

If you use Priest to convert Cult Leader into Mithras, wouldn't Mithras's effect of creating a Cult Leader automatically occur? Why not word it as just "Create a copy of Mithras and put it into play"? -The T (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Well, the act of destroying the Cult Leader would cause all of the cultists to have that line kick in, so one of them becomes the Leader. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 20:49, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
Yeah, it might be worth throwing in a "Choose one", but, that'll expand the wording a lot. -The T (talk) 04:49, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Corax

According to Wikipedia's article on Mithraism, Corax is the name of the lowest rank of initiation. I'm curious why this card's flavortext is so much more self-serving than the other Cultists'. Secret society intrigue? Dissention in the ranks? Binarius (talk) 04:19, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Actually, this (Along with Blue Dragon and Unseen) are from Throne of Lies --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 16:44, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Ritualist

I think you accidentally pasted the intended addition for Ritualist into one of my cards (Weedle), which I've fixed, but it means you still have to add it to Ritualist. -The T (talk) 16:31, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

Black Rose

Same as Cultists, just organization.

Alcoholic, Herbalist, Sage, Enforcer: I think you're confused about what "Action:" means. These seem to be Reactions used during other players' turns.

Herbalist: I'm honestly not sure how to read this card. "When a Thing gets destroyed, remove it [f]rom play"? Things that get destroyed leave play anyway. Do you mean remove it from the game? "create another card in its place to destroy"? Create what kind of card? And you do destroy it instead of the card that already got destroyed according to this ability's activation? Does the Thing you removed from play come back?

Timesnatcher: Setting aside the ambiguity of whether any given Thing could be expected to be "destroyed later", what is the point of this card's ability if you're guaranteed to also have the Assassin?

Alcoholic is clearer now as "Activate an opponent's Action ability (as if you controlled their Thing). They may not use that ability during their next turn." Timesnatcher and Enforcer seem to both guard against failed destruction attempts by Assassin. I still don't know what to make of Herbalist though.
Enforcer Makes sure that the Assassin's destruction happens, while the Timesnatcher can still be prevented on it's own. The Difference is that the Timesnatcher's ability doesn't happen immediately, and it is also infinite. The Enforcer is much stronger, but the Timesnatcher has more applicability. Failing to destroy also means that if the Timesnatcher herself fails, then she can still try again.
"Destroy" has the established meaning of "send a Thing in play (i.e. under a player's control, not in their hand or in the draw or discard pile) to the discard pile". "Removing a card from the game" is not formally defined, but the longstanding consensus is that it has a much stronger meaning: the equivalent of taking it off of the playing table and putting it away. Incidentally, the meaning of "create" is not defined either, and seems subject to ambiguity. My reading would be either "Search the draw pile for a specific Thing and gain control of it" or "Gain control of a copy of a specific Thing"—preferably the latter, in a deck that is nominally infinite. This seems reasonable for the Black Rose cards that invoke Assassin (or Assassin's invocation of Mastermind), but if a particular card is not specified, as in Herbalist, the ability to choose any Thing becomes extremely overpowered. In any case, why create a Thing just for it to be immediately destroyed? Functionally, this is the equivalent of "If one of your Things would be destroyed, you may discard a Thing to prevent its destruction." If that is the intent, then the "remove it from the game" bit seems superfluous and counterproductive. Binarius (talk) 03:36, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
The desired effect I'm going for is the thing was destroyed as what it truly was, but it gets discarded and treated as something completely different. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 03:48, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
Wow. That is...as convoluted as I would expect from a secret society-type theme, but it's also a very unconventional mechanic, and as such should be worded very carefully. Bear in mind that there's no established way for cards that are removed from the game to reappear in play. (Then again, I seem to recall a few cards that are even more violent: "Rip target Thing into little pieces" or "Take target Thing and burn it", or whatever...) Binarius (talk) 03:55, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

It should probably mention "create [a copy of] the Assassin from the Infinite Dvorak Deck", as you did with the Cultists, because "create the Assassin" is meaningless if you don't realize such a card exists. -The T (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Mastermind

"control at most 3 Black Rose Members"--does that specifically refer to having 3 cards titled "Black Rose Member", or are any "Black Rose" Things considered Black Rose members? If the prior, I'd word it "You can control at most 3 cards titled Black Rose Member." I'd also probably toss that on the Black Rose Member card instead, unless you only want that effect to occur when you have Mastermind? -The T (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Assassin

"This only applies if you play this Assassin from your Hand". Which part only applies, the prior or latter part? If the prior, it should say, "When you play this card, if you do not control the Mastermind[...]" -The T (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Servant

This is a wording thing, but it should instead say "You cannot use an Action on your next turn." -The T (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Alcoholic

Typo: thsi -The T (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Timesnatcher

This Action ability isn't going to get used often unless you have a card that lets you play multiple Actions. My best choice would be to change it to "When the Assassin destroys a thing, it can not be prevented." -The T (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Imagine this card as an alternate way to destroy things, or if something is by default indestructible, this can destroy it. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 20:17, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
How exactly does it do that? The card doesn't say. -The T (talk) 04:43, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Marshal

I don't understand this card. You just read the card out loud? Why? -The T (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Herbalist

This cards lets you design a new card with no restrictions, yes? So the ideal card would be "If this card is in the discard pile, [your name] wins the game". -The T (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Enforcer (and Herbalist)

I understand the desire for shorthand but I feel like just saying "2 uses" isn't clear enough. "Until this card re-enters play, this effect may only be used twice." is the only way to word it without requiring keeping track of information long after this card is discarded. (and removes the worry of a copy of it existing). -The T (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Duchess

Typo: CHoose. Also, cards like this and Handmaiden that require your opponents to be honest are super iffy to me, but I don't really know if a better option besides letting you look at the card (which tbh I don't get why it isn't just that). -The T (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Illutionist

You spelled Illusionist wrong. -The T (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Clothier

Some important details need to be specified. How do Dress tokens interact with Things? I gather that a Dress confers some benefit (on a Thing? on its controller?) when it is "worn by" a Thing, but how does a Dress become attached to a Thing? Detached? What kind of positive effects can occur, and what are the limits of the effects? Does Clothier's controller decide the effect when the Dress is created? Could I create a Dress that said "Attached Thing's controller wins the game"? Binarius (talk) 03:07, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Seconding this. I also have no idea what a supercategory is supposed to be. You have to define terms when you make them. -The T (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

A Sword, Shield, and Wand.

Are there any limits on how or when the Wand token can be used to play another card? Must its controller use its ability during their turn? Does it only apply to the controller, or can they force an opponent to play a card? As for the Shield token, can it protect any Thing or must one Thing be specified when the Shield is created? Binarius (talk) 03:07, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Fixed?--JakeTheWolfie (talk) 03:21, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
Shield is definitely clearer. If the intent of Wand is that it should be used during its controller's turn to allow a third card or a second Thing or Action to be played, then I'd suggest something like "allows you to play an extra card during your turn". Binarius (talk) 03:26, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Not sure if the wording has changed since the above comments, but based on the current reading: Tokens with effects are always super clunky, but this is an extremely clunky way of handling it. You're essentially creating 3 titleless tokens with long text of rules attached to them, and unless you write those rules elsewhere, the rules aren't going to be visible when this card is discard. Always better to just make them things IMO, and give them proper titles. -The T (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)


Mine

The wording could be simplified greatly by skipping the numbering and RNG details and just saying "Choose one of the cards set aside at random." Instead of "setting aside" cards, you could also attach them to Mine for clarity in the event that Mine is destroyed, since the convention is that attached cards are also sent to the discard pile. Finally, if the intent is that the player who activates the global Action ability gains control of the created token, this should be made explicit.

It's worth mentioning that there's an ambiguity over what happens when an Action card is tokenized like this, as tokens are explicitly defined to be Things. But I like your wording of "with the properties of"; my interpretation of an Action being turned into a token by Mine would be "(Title) token - Action: (Ruletext) and destroy this token", which works just like an Action should. Binarius (talk) 04:48, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

Yet another instance of "Tokens with long rule text when a card would be better." Only thing it really needs though is specifying you destroy a token that is based on an Action card after using it. For wording, "with identical properties out of" should just be "identical name and rules text." -The T (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Sudden End

Typo: sson. Also I don't get this card. "If you are playing with Infinite cards." You never are, you're playing with 6000 some odd cards. This card is never going to not be destroyed before 6000 cards comes along. A more interesting variant might be: "Shuffle this card back into the deck. When it is drawn a 2nd time, immediately reveal it. The player with the most Things in play wins the game." Although with that variant, I feel like it needs a different name. -The T (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

"If you are playing with Infinite cards." was meant to be the 2nd interpretation of this deck. Instead of it being a finite amount of cards, it is infinite (by printing extra cards whenever the deck would "run out"), and thus there would never be an "end" --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 01:46, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
Ok, well this changed version of it is just my card Wacky Watch, except because you can control when you play it, it doesn't give your opponents any time to react to it and thus feels "cheap". -The T (talk) 02:26, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Right to keep and bear Underwear

Preferred wording is "Gain 10 Underwear Tokens that cannot be destroyed." Really don't like a creep like Ted Cruz's name being on a card, either. -The T (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

https://youtu.be/2vHR4KX9tzU?t=124 --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 01:48, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Card Shuffler

Again, awkward wording. Doesn't make it clear if you can use this effect any time someone were about to draw a card. "Any time someone is about to draw a card, [you may] shuffle the deck." -The T (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

The reworded version changes it's effect (and makes it seem even less useful). -The T (talk) 02:27, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
"(and makes it seem even less useful)" Suppose there was a shit card that had the mechanics of putting it atop the deck and drawing, and winning when you drew it again. That's one +1 from useless which is technically better. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 20:25, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
But now it only shuffles when you draw a card, not when everyone else does. -The T (talk) 04:45, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Clone

Could you not put any effort into writing your cards?
1. Create a card and do what with it?
2. what even does "with this card" mean? Are you trying to say, "Write on this card"?
3. Creating a brand new card with no conditions means writing "I win the game" on the card and calling it a day. Pointless. -The T (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

The new version of it is still unclear.

1. "Select any card." from where? In play? The Infinite Dvorak deck? From any game ever?
2. How long does this effect last? If it's permanent, there is no reason for this card not to say "Create a copy of a card [from wherever you want it to come from] and play it." -The T (talk) 02:31, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Fusion

I would change this to say "Reveal 2 cards. Have all players openly contribute to creating a card that is a reasonable mix of both of those cards. [Remove from play/discard] those 2 cards." Personally, I think those card should be removed from play if they were "used up" by the fusion. You don't need to specify that an Action card is discard when you use it. -The T (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

The Stars are right

So, Mithras and Corax both create the Cult Leader under their control (making two copies of it?)... and, that's it? Those 4 cards are just going to sit under no one's control and have no effect on the game, as other people can just create more copies of Cult Leader if they get Cultist cards. -The T (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

I would reword this to: "Create a copy of both Mithras & Corax from the Infinite Dvorak Deck. Treat them as players, as well as cards under their own control. Before each of your turns, draw the top card and have Mithras play it. If Mithras has any cards with Action abilities in their control, randomly use one on a random valid target. Repeat for Corax." -The T (talk) 02:37, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Elevator

Should probably word this: "All Things start on the middle floor. The upper floor and the lower floor are both adjacent to the middle floor, and not adjacent to each other. As an Action, any play may move a Thing they control to an adjacent floor. Things can only affect other things on the same floor as them." -The T (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

The new version doesn't define the other floors. -The T (talk) 02:38, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Jackpot!

Not a criticism, but I want you to know I thought the words "This card is bad" seconds before reading the flavor text. Good job. -The T (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

AntiToken Factory

"opposite properties" is extremely nebulous. Does this just mean "Name it the opposite of that token type"? When you "Select a token type", does it mean "Select a token type in play", or could I just go: I need Gold tokens, so I will make up the token type "Nonmetallic", and say that "Gold" is the opposite of it, thus gaining a Gold token? This is a super roundabout way to make a token. Or are AntiTokens supposed to be something else entirely? If so, what and why. -The T (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Book Burning

I wouldn't normally nitpick about this, but since most cards are printed on paper, I feel like it'd be worth clarifying it as "Destroy any Things which could be said were made out of paper." -The T (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Mirror

This card is super confusing.
1. Gain, not Create.
2. "give each one a token." No idea what this even means.
3. Is "Create another token for every new thing you play." supposed to be "Gain another token each time you play a Thing."?
4. "If a card has an ability and a token, use it twice." What? When? Why? I'm trying to parse this, and the best I can interpret as is "If a Thing with an Action ability has a token (of any type) on it, use that Action ability twice (each time you create a Mirror token(???))."
5. "Whenever they would get destroyed, destroy its mirror token instead." Whenever what would??? You never mentioned assigning mirror tokens to Things???? -The T (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

The second sentence should become "Each time you play a Thing, place a Mirror token on that Thing." The rest of the grammar on it is really clunky, but it seems playable now. -The T (talk) 02:41, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
"The second sentence should become "Each time you play a Thing, place a Mirror token on that Thing." The rest of the grammar on it is really clunky, but it seems playable now." So if I were to steal an opponent's thing, this would not apply to it. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 20:27, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
Ok then, "play or gain control of a Thing". -The T (talk) 04:45, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Although you can absolutely go back and edit archived cards, it's a good idea to keep those cards on the main page if the cards are still in a state to where they still need to be edited. For example, Mirror currently reads "Gain Mirror tokens equal to your things, and place one token on each thing", which means "Gain Mirror tokens equal to [the number of] Things you control; and then place a token [of any type] on each of your Things", which to me seems like not the intended purpose. I assume what it's meant to be is, "Place a Mirror token on each of your Things." -The T (talk) 18:44, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

Completely Inelligible

This card wouldn't have an effect on most of your cards....... but no seriously, what is this card's effect actually supposed to be? When playing with actual cards which don't make sense, players will often have to vote on what their intended meaning is. Is this an open invitation to re-vote on cards intent? Also, the title of this card doesn't really have anything to do with it's effect, which... I suppose fits. I just, I don't understand the point of making cards like this that don't make sense. -The T (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

My interpretation of the initial wording is that it's one of those "alternate destruction" cards that bypasses indestructibility/uneditability via some gimmick, in this case just rendering a card's text null (without actually altering its text). Also I'm >95% sure it's supposed to be Completely Unintelligible.--ChippyYYZ (talk) 22:34, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Reflect

So wait, do you reflect it back at the original user, or do you choose a new target? Also, this could technically be labelled as a Reaction, but that doesn't matter. Reactions as a separate type mainly exist to make players more aware that they can play the card any time and not just on their turn. -The T (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Forbidden Knowledge

"Remove from play" is another one of your "too concise wording that makes things unclear." I would guess this means, "Before starting the game, remove this card from play." And the idea being if it someone makes it's way back into play..... shrug. Makes it kind of a pointless card. -The T (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Infinity Token

Why isn't this just a Thing with said text? -The T (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Because if you destroy the IT, there is no getting it back. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 02:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
So, Scenario A: it's a Thing. It gets destroyed. You play a card to get it back from the discard pile.
Scenario B: You play this Action, create it. It gets destroyed. You play a card to get the Action card back from the discard pile.
What's the difference? -The T (talk) 02:47, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Very Specific Counter

I have no idea what this means. -The T (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

The new version doesn't clear it up at all. Not sure what the 2nd sentence adds. How is the card determined? -The T (talk) 02:42, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
The current version of it.... I understand now what it's trying to do, but I think most players aren't going to realize they're going to need to define it at the start of the game, so instead it turns into: *draws this card, reads it* "oh, we forgot to... oh well, this card is useless now." I don't really have a good solution for this. I also feel like, asking the players to define it (especially the first time they play the game) is in itself a monumental task. One alternative to that problem could be, "Randomly choose a card at the start of the game. You may play this card as a Reaction to that card to prevent it's effects and discard or destroy it." -The T (talk) 15:26, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Mexican Standoff

The wording on this is super awkward. The last part should also probably specify "randomly" distributed; unless the intention is to somehow fight over which cards are split up. -The T (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Technically a _____

Not sure I get the point of this card. So you write whatever you want up top, but the card still isn't considered whatever you wrote up there, for some reason. Why? -The T (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Double the Takings!

Very awkward wording. Should specify that you can play this in addition to any other Action, otherwise it won't be possible to use it much. I would absolutely change "take" to "take, draw, take control of, or gain", assuming you want it to apply to all of those things. -The T (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

I feel like this change made it make less sense. I have no idea what this card is supposed to do now. -The T (talk) 02:44, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
Drawing from the deck is just taking cards in disguise --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 20:32, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
Ok, I don't know if there's some kind of language barrier here, but, the card literally does not syntactically mean anything. The words on the card do not form a sentence. -The T (talk) 04:48, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Train

This is more or less identical to my card Bullet Train. That's fine, just pointing it out. -The T (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Bullsh*t

Typos: "player" should be "the player", dicard This card seems like it would be really wonky in theory. I would probably allow players to be able to check cards they control; and I guess the idea would be, they would try to slightly re-word the effects of Action effects (and Actions?) and play those new effects, hoping not to get caught? Probably would be worth putting the Discard pile face down, and thus allowing you to discard any card you want and claim it's an Action that does whatever you want. Which, since you can get called out on it, isn't broken at all. -The T (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

It's up to you, but I feel like the change to losing the game is a bit harsh of a penalty. I would absolutely rule that people can peek at their face down cards if I got this card, though. -The T (talk) 02:45, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Chronomancer

Extremely awkward wording. "It will get destroyed" needs to make it clear "That Thing", and it would probably be worth specifying when during your next turn it's destroyed (likely, the end). I'm guessing the Action ability is to change which card is to be destroyed? It might be worth specifying that it has that effect. One way to word this card could be: "If none of your cards have a Token of Delay and a Thing you control would be destroyed, you may instead place a Token of Delay on it. Things you control with a Token of Delay on them are destroyed at the end of your next turn. Action: Move a Token of Delay on a Thing you control to another Thing you control." -The T (talk) 02:55, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

The new version is much better, but why did you add a typo in the most recent edit? :P -The T (talk) 20:53, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Noble

Definitely needs to say "Thing" and not "card", and for proper game syntax, "control" and not "own." -The T (talk) 03:05, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Princess

You should describe how to enforce this. It's physically impossible to view a card's type without also seeing it's name, or something else on it to identify it. Even saying "Choose a card in an opponent's hand. They must tell you what type it is." is open to them cheating. It's not viable. Also; it's a Thing but it reads like an action. Either it's missing the "Action:" ability indicator or it should say, "When you play this card," -The T (talk) 03:05, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Butler

Like my Rattata, it'd be worth adding "You cannot use this unless you would be able to use an Action on your next turn." to prevent someone from blocking every single Action played, and then only losing out on their one Action next turn. -The T (talk) 03:05, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Drunk

Is the intention that you get the benefit of the Action, or that you're forcing them to use an Action? The current wording would lead me to believe the prior, even though I feel balance-wise the latter is more interesting. -The T (talk) 03:05, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Throne Room

Is the intent merely to prevent other cards from blocking that card's text? Also, "ability" is meaningless, you should say either "Action ability" or "card text", depending on which you mean. -The T (talk) 14:36, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Portal Room

Should say "may use the Action abilities on Things owned by other players with a Portal Room." -The T (talk) 14:36, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Coal Chute

Saying the words "that is not overpowered" really puts an onus on the other players. Also the wording should say, "design a card [that is not whatever] and play it in your control." But generally cards that allow you to design new cards and add them to the game without hard limitations, or without requiring they go into the deck where everyone has a chance to get them, are Bad. -The T (talk) 14:36, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Film Room

I'm guessing this means "Use another player's Thing's Action ability, targeting one of your Things"? Would you still be able to use that Action ability if it didn't target another Thing to begin with? -The T (talk) 14:36, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Jack in the glocks

This needs to say either "Each turn" or "During your turn, you may". Without either of those, it isn't clear when to do it's initial text. -The T (talk) 14:36, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

And since you can only pass it on your turn, it should probably only trigger during your turn, and probably at the beginning of your turn so you can't just pass it first and keep it from ever even rolling. It also probably needs to say "If there are more tokens on this card" or it's an automatic KO.--ChippyYYZ (talk) 14:20, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Ink Machine

"gain a copy of a card in play" is unclear wording; "gain" needs to be either "play" or "draw", depending on intent; and "a card in play" should just be "a Thing in play", since that's the only type of card that can be in play. -The T (talk) 14:36, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Free Tacos

You may want to change either the text color or the card color to make the title readable. -The T (talk) 21:35, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Unholy Summoning

Ok, I wanna look at a root of a problem with your cards, to understand why these things keep occurring. Why would you want to create a nameless token, and then be forced to remember it represents something else? Why not given the token a name? Why not just create 1000 money tokens? If you had a single token that could count as 1000 money tokens, what would it be useful for, since you'd just have to spend them all at once anyway, right, since it's still one token? -The T (talk) 15:27, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Cherry Bomb

This was going to be about Cherry Bomb, but instead it's about over-accurately recreating source material in general. Yes, it's neat that a Cherry Bomb requires a Sunflower to produce sunlight 6 times, just like in the game, but the card is as close to Unplayable Dvorak as any card in that deck. There's a vanishingly small number of cards able to create Sun tokens, and even with one of them six turns is a very long time. Surely there's some other way to convey the idea of the Cherry Bomb. The effect doesn't need to exactly match in every way. The fact that you only have so many cards and can only play a couple each turn can stand in for the sunlight cost. I would carry this design philosophy over to some other cards that are weighed down by unnecessary complexity, like Good King. Sure, the one king at a time clause and the 3 ability uses per game look just like Throne of Lies, but those things have reasons to be in that game. In Dvorak, it's more work to keep track of how many times this or that ability has been used, when it's unlikely to end up even mattering given the ease with which Things can be targeted and destroyed.--ChippyYYZ (talk) 16:06, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

I've given up on offering them criticisms like this. They don't listen. -The T (talk) 20:32, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Good King

"You cannot control more than 1 king at a time." or else what? What happens if you somehow gain control of another? Also more clear wording should be "A thing with a safeguard token cannot be destroyed." -The T (talk) 20:32, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Crown

Is it your choice whether it becomes a King or a Queen? -The T (talk) 20:32, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

It's an extra title... --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 20:46, 28 September 2019 (UTC)
That doesn't answer my question. Also you added a new sentence: why is it in caps, and why did you add it? It completely contradicts the first sentence on the card. -The T (talk) 20:55, 28 September 2019 (UTC)
Fine. It' Flavortext. I don't care anymore. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 21:03, 28 September 2019 (UTC)
It seems like you are getting mad at other people because you're refusing to word cards correctly. We're just trying to make sure cards are playable and make sense. This isn't a place to just post random broken ideas. Put some thought into cards; make them for a reason, give them effects that make sense and fit into Dvorak, and word them such that they make sense. -The T (talk) 21:07, 28 September 2019 (UTC)
"give them effects that make sense and fit into Dvorak" Technically, all ideas fit into Dvorak. Maybe not any one deck, but they can still fit. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 21:13, 28 September 2019 (UTC)
See? You just proved you can understand when people use wording incorrectly. What I should have said was, "used jargon on cards correctly", "had effects that make sense", and "word cards such that they have the effect I intend for them to have." You constantly ignore all 3 of these things, and when people call you out on them, you reword the card to do something completely different instead. -The T (talk) 21:30, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Role Reversal

Actions on Things are generally called Action Abilities to differentiate them from Action cards. "Turn target thing, with 1 action..." would be clearer as "Turn target Thing with 1 Action ability into an Action card with that ability's text". Similarly, "turn a discarded action into a Thing with that action," would be clearer as "turn a discarded action into a Thing with that action's text as an action ability".--ChippyYYZ (talk)

Secret Winner/Loser

Declaring a winner or loser "at the end of the game" is a little weird because when the game ends, it generally ends because somebody already won or everyone else already lost. If I win via Single Pool of Creativity, but someone else is the Secret Winner, do we both win or do they win? And if I eliminate all other players with Psycho King and CounterAttack of Jake, but I'm the secret loser, do I still lose? Or if one of them is the secret winner, do they still win, even though they were eliminated?--ChippyYYZ (talk) 23:05, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Tango with the Reaper

Are the "you"s on this card referring to you who played the action, or you who flipped the coin? "You" generally refers to a card's controller, so if it's supposed to be the player who flipped the coin, they should be replaced with "that player".--ChippyYYZ (talk) 23:05, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Grab Bag of Rags

"each turn" should probably be "each of your turns". Also this card doesn't seem to do what it's probably supposed to. You play it as your action for the turn, then you can't pass any rags unless you have extra action plays (rare) so you have to discard 5 cards/destroy 5 things, and since I'm assuming you meant to say "destroy a non-rag thing you control" that pretty much locks you out of the game until you can pass all 5 rags to other players without getting any back, since you can't hold on to a thing for one turn without a rag eating it. Perhaps "Each player gains a rag token" instead?--ChippyYYZ (talk) 23:05, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Blackmail

Needs a "This card is revealed while it's in your hand." since that's where it affects the game from. Also, to clear up confusion over whether the X's in the card's text count as X's on the card (I assume they don't) I would replace "for every X on this card" with "for every X added to this card"

Where would I put it? --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 00:44, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
"If Blackmail would enter play under your control, put it in another player's hand instead and add an X to it. They play with this card revealed in their hand. While Blackmail is revealed in your hand, you can't discard it, and your maximum hand size is reduced by 1 for each X on this card, including the two already on it." This wording even handles effects that would put Blackmail directly into play without someone playing it, and keeps it from activating until it's public knowledge that a player has it (it's preferable to not put players in a position where they can be dishonest about their hand, which is why something like "target player discards all their actions" would need to be "target player reveals their hand and discards all their actions" for example).--ChippyYYZ (talk) 04:33, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
The point of this is for other players to not know what it is. Public Blackmail is called a Scandal. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 04:55, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Unrelated

Unrelated: Neutral King, Devout King, and Cherry Bomb are missing creators, and Peashooter destroys money sun tokens. Make you're using Show Preview to proofread your cards.--ChippyYYZ (talk) 23:05, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Peashooter still doesn't specify how many tokens to destroy, and neither it nor Cherry Bomb specify that you have to destroy your own tokens.--ChippyYYZ (talk) 04:33, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
Well, most cards hat deal with destroying tokens don't say that you have to destroy your tokens either. Also, when looking for reasons to show you the contrary, I came across "Big Macintosh", which talks about spending tokens. "Spending" tokens aren't a think that I am aware of. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 04:55, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
The term "Spend" appears in reference to tokens on four cards by Bucky on pages 63, 65, and 66, and likely further back. "Spending" is a useful term because it carries the implications that (1) the tokens go away, as though destroyed, (2) you have to spend your own tokens, and (3) since the word "destroy" is not used, there is no interaction with effects that involve Things being destroyed (especially effects that prevent destruction).--ChippyYYZ (talk) 15:47, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
Well, let's look at someone who told me off for using "Costs", which is equivalent to "Spend" "...Also "Costs 5 magic tokens" is a really unclear wording. If you're meaning something like "You must destroy 5 magic tokens to do this", then a better way to phrase it would be to start "Action: Destroy 5 magic tokens. If you do, create [...etc.]"...-The T (talk) " Now either Me and The T are wrong, or you're wrong. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 16:13, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
What you mean is "Now either The T was wrong, or you and I and Bucky are wrong" because your old wording of "Costs 5 magic tokens" is fine, as is my use and Bucky's use of "Spend". The T's criticism of that particular point was unfounded. --ChippyYYZ (talk) 17:05, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
"And likely further back" indeed. Bucky used it in Photocopy Machine and Chinese Factory in the first 100 cards, and several others since then. I never picked up on that usage until Chippy pointed it out, though. I wouldn't advocate elevating it to the keyword status of "destroy", but its conciseness in describing the mechanic of destroying your own tokens for effect makes it feel like a pretty useful term. Binarius (talk) 02:50, 6 October 2019 (UTC)
Both of these terms unknowingly prevent the ability to stop destruction of Things. As it would be a niche ability to "Stop the Spending of Tokens", these are practically unstoppable actions (Unless you had actions which could prevent opponent's actions) --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 03:05, 6 October 2019 (UTC)
I agree that the effect of "spend an Energy token" is somewhat more robust than "destroy an Energy token", in that the latter exposes the player to the potential for some other card to negate the act of destruction. (In that respect, I'd compare it to writing a number in word form rather than digit form to avoid effects that act on digits.) That's a tradeoff for implicitly expressing that only one's own tokens may be used. If "spend" is accepted as a term of art on the basis of this distinction, then the debate is whether a card's creator could choose either depending on how easy or hard they would like it to be for an opponent to prevent the effect, or on the other hand, whether the act of spending, which is not explicitly defined, counts as destruction as described in the special rule. For example, if Player A controlled a Thing that said "You may return this card to your hand to prevent the destruction of another Thing" and Player B controlled an Energy token and a Thing with "Action: Spend an Energy token to draw a card", could A return their Thing to their hand to prevent B from using the Action ability? I feel like this discussion is substantial enough that we could justify migrating it to its own top-level subdivision. Binarius (talk) 03:56, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

Well of Infinite Mana, Prism, Gem Crusher

The intention of the "Cards shouldn't refer to other cards" rule is that a card should be able to function in any game its drawn in. Well of Infinite Mana only affects cards that spend Mana Tokens or variants (you could just say "Mana Tokens or Meta Mana Tokens" since that's what you seem to mean) and even then those cards have to share a cornervalue letter. That's 16 cards out of about 7500. If it were less restrictive about what kind of tokens it provides, and probably also didn't have the cornervalue restriction, and maybe also had some kind of limit on its usage per turn 'cause the wizards sure don't, it might be a usable card outside the very specific context it currently inhabits. Same goes for Prism. It should probably have some sort of additional functionality (target thing becomes the color of your choice?), so it isn't a dead card in the absence of the 23 cards it affects.
Gem Crusher has all the narrowness of the above with a fraction of the impact. Forcing everyone (not even just opponents, but everyone) to discard cards that are already nearly useless is not what I'd hope for from a card that only functions in such a specific scenario. Broadening its effect could be as simple as "Each player discards a non-Gem card, and all Gems." or "Destroy target tangible Thing, and each player discards all Gem cards."--ChippyYYZ (talk) 02:13, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

Time Dilation or whatever

Action cards that permanently change the game state with no visible record are exactly the kind of situation that the No Special Rules rule prohibits. Binarius (talk) 13:00, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Hackers and Bases

(1) "Every turn gain a Glitch/Crypto Token" needs to specify that it's only every one of your turns (it is, right?), and should probably specify what part of your turn ("At the beginning of your turn, gain", "At the end of your turn, gain", or for maximum versatility, "Once during your turn, you may gain"). (2) Also, to avoid storing up bonus uses of hacks without a way to keep track of them, "Gain 2 uses of [color] Hacks" should probably be "Gain 2 uses of [color] Hacks this round" or something. (3) Lastly, "Gain a copy of [color] Hack/Hacker" should probably include "if you don't already control one." Otherwise White Hacker is extremely powerful since you can destroy it and use White Hacks to bring it back, creating a new White Hacks. Two White Hacks lets you use one to recover the other unless both are destroyed at the same time, and it quickly spirals out of control as every Thing in the discard pile ends up under your control. For this reason, White Hacker Base is even more bonkers, and Rainbow Hacker Base is easily one of the most powerful cards in the entire deck that doesn't directly cause a player to win or lose.--ChippyYYZ (talk) 00:20, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

For #1, sure. #2, that is the actual intent. You can store up as many as you want to. #3 makes sense, sure. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 22:20, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

The Master's Hands

I know that this isn't news, but I feel obligated to bring up that (1) activating The Master's Right Hand's ability even once breaks the game. Being able to change the game in any you want means what you're playing is no longer Dvorak. Yes, you could use this card's infinite power to "fuck with the game however you want, and perhaps make it a more fun experience for everyone", but this card only has the potential to be more interesting than an "I Win" button if its controller is explicitly not trying to win the game, and for a lot of players, a game where you aren't trying to win is a tensionless, uninteresting game where none of the moves mean anything. I would not want to play in a game with this card.

Also not news: (2) The Master's Extra Hand should have some sort of functionality on its own. As is, it's not only a dead card in the absence of the other Hands, but it's a dead card even in their presence, since Right Hand wins the game by itself. Yes, some blank/nonfunctional cards exist, but this seems like a card that you would want to have do something. ChippyYYZ (talk) 17:50, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

How would it be able to make an I win Button? -JakeTheWolfie
Technically Not Winning (Thing) - When you gain control of this, gain control of a number of copies of Technically not Elimination (#7059) equal to the number of your opponents. Binarius (talk) 03:57, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
While I assume "create a thing that does not contain a way for you to win by itself." allows you to create a brand new thing card, I can win using just pre-existing thing cards made by JakeTheWolfie on just two pages. #7132 Comic Book allows me to use the Right Hand two more times to create two more Comic Books, which lets me make three more Comic Books and a #7033 Reaper. With my remaining Actions, I reap a Comic Book for a soul token, then spend the soul token for an extra turn. On my extra turn, I use 4-5 of my Actions to (1) create a #7151 Rando King, (2) turn him into a random king, (3?) eliminate an opponent if I get Psycho King (I'd create him directly, but he arguably contains a way to win if I have one opponent), (4) reap my king, and (5) spend the soul to take an extra turn, returning to step 1.
Alternatively, I make one Comic Book and the other two Master's Hands, since the Extra Hand doesn't contain a win "by itself".
So even with a needlessly heavy restriction on an already conservative interpretation of its ability, I get infinite turns and actions. "Action: Draw a card" is really strong. "Action: Draw any card" is game-breaking. --ChippyYYZ (talk) 05:20, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
If you can pull this Rube Bullshit Contraption, I think you deserve to win. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 22:34, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
Thanks, I think I do too. Problem is I don't need to build a contraption, I was just being masochistic. I can take infinite turns off one card with Binarius's method, or I can just win directly with Comic Book -> Master's other two hands. Is this card supposed to work this way?--ChippyYYZ (talk) 00:40, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

Pray

So if I'm interpreting this correctly, you write a request on the back of the card, put it into play, and the next time someone answers something you say with Yes, No, or Maybe, you reveal the request and apply its effects. Could I pray for the lack of an event, like "I ask to not immediately draw twenty cards", so that when another player answers No, I necessarily immediately draw twenty cards? If so, this card is a 50% autowin with no downside. If not, why would any opponent say anything besides No?
Also, obligatory comment about how Pray and Create Creation carry on your tradition of game-breaking "do anything" cards, which I presume will continue.--ChippyYYZ (talk) 20:17, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

  1. You can do that, and you don't just have to ask your opponents that question. You could ask a non-player a totally irrelevant question and use that answer.
  2. If you are playing this game with winning solely in mind, then you're probably playing wrong. This game is mostly for the mad alchemist who wants to find the most Rube Goldberg way to win, while also being able to open itself up to more casual players. Create Creation is not meant to be utilized as an "I instantly win" card, but more of a way for Alchemists and Casuals alike to find more enjoyment in their game. They also allow for "Bastard Dvorak" to be played (The game where there are no social rules on how to play, along with wildly unbalanced games.) more efficiently. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 22:59, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Vent

How am I supposed to take the action to hop out of the vent while I'm skipping all my turns? -Bucky (talk) 04:10, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

'Mancers

The Electromancer zaps itself if it targets a player who already has an Electromancy token. It should probably be immune to its own tokens like the other two. The Cryomancer targets "freezable" things, which is a little ambiguous. Assuming any tangible thing that doesn't already call itself out as ice-proof can be frozen in a big block of ice, you can probably just say "target tangible Thing", or "target tangible non-fiery Thing". Also, a new wording for their action abilities (that will save you some critical space on Electromancer) is "Action: Target player or [applicable] Thing gains a ['mancy] token"--ChippyYYZ (talk) 15:47, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

Mana Polarizer

Cool mechanic, but this might need to be reworded a bit since tokens are also Things. As it is, I could just gain a Mana token and either gain a Life Drain token or destroy the Life Drain token I got last turn. Binarius (talk) 10:10, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Doomsayer

Definitely shouldn't be able to name Things that are already in play for an instakill. -Bucky (talk) 05:09, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

Rule of Three

Unfortunately doesn't appear to authorize players to actually play extra Actions/Things, so it almost always forces skipped turns unless the player already has a way to play extra cards on the table. Even if they have something like Energy Bar that allows them to play extra cards, they can't necessarily play that card itself. And if one player can play cards and the others can't, the game becomes one-sided. This doesn't seem to be the intent of the design.-Bucky (talk) 19:45, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Half-Baked Idea

Is the idea that the card's deliberately underspecified so that players are supposed to arbitrate what happens when you counter a card that's Exiled, or whether it has the other effects if it counters itself, or who controls a card in the discard pile for the purpose of the sacrifice clause? -Bucky (talk) 21:42, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Que? -JakeTheWolfie (talk) 22:52, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
Half-baked idea targets a card. So I can use it targeting any card in the game at any time, not just cards it would make sense to counter in the MtG sense or that have a defined controller for the sac effect. I'm not sure whether that's a defect or whether it's the punchline of the joke set up by the card's name. -Bucky (talk) 23:22, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
For most of your Counterspell variants to be readable by non-Magic players, they really need to explain when they're supposed to be played and what they actually do. "Counter" just means to act in opposition somehow. Negate, Prevent, Nullify, and Ignore are words that better convey the idea. Unless the intention is for me to counter a Thing that's already been in play, it needs a "in response to an opponent's Action" or "in response to any card being played" or something. That said, I think it's reasonable to suppose that if the countered card isn't controlled by anyone (something in the discard pile gets triggered, for instance), no one has to sacrifice a Thing.--ChippyYYZ (talk) 00:57, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
On a similar any-time note, I'm not sure what "Ritual" is supposed to do when played long after a Thing's cost has been played. Allowing a card to be played out of turn while preventing it from being played when it doesn't make sense is what the now-standard "play in/as response" wording on Reactions is supposed to do. -Bucky (talk) 04:49, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
Ritual negates any additional costs to a card that's being played, similar to how a Counterspell negates a card that's being played. Sure, you could play Ritual and have it's effect do nothing because the cost has already been played, but it's more meant to be used in conjunction with cards like Mind over Matter (You don't discard your hand), Nevinyrral's Slipped Disk (Not having to sacrifice any Things to play it) or, and this would be especially devious, Corporate Espionage (THe Amount of Money Tokens you spend will be 0, effectively nullifying the card.) -JakeTheWolfie (talk) 08:38, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

Lattice Breeder

We don't really distinguish between a Token's token type and a Thing's printed subtype (except that the former by definition is on a token). For example, Token Node (#3774) has a Node subtype and makes Node tokens, and they both count as Nodes for the other Node-related cards on that page. Therefore, Lattice Breeder's Thing ability can, and probably should, just say "Create a Lattice token". -Bucky (talk) 04:40, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Monopoly

I see two interpretations of this card. One is almost always an instant win, since a player generally can't play out of turn; an opponent must reveal they have an exception at the end of the turn you play it or you win. The other allows "any cards" to include cards they might hold but don't actually, in which case Monopoly is a paperweight. Which is intended? -Bucky (talk) 01:26, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

My first impression is that the win is contingent on your opponents not being able to play any cards on their respective turns, either because they're frozen by some sort of "you can't play cards on your next turn" effect, or because they only have Reactions in their hand, or something. Though it's not always possible to prove that a player has no legal plays if you can't see their hand.--ChippyYYZ (talk) 03:42, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

Drain the Library

Is this card supposed to be for the Unplayable Dvorak deck? It works fine there, but for regular play the fact that you can't possibly follow all its instructions is a problem. -Bucky (talk) 02:26, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

I see it more as you draw as many cards as you can. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 03:16, 10 May 2022 (UTC)
What it actually says, though, is to draw up to a number that doesn't exist.-Bucky (talk) 03:42, 10 May 2022 (UTC)
Upon a re-reading of the card, it looks more like you can draw anywhere from 0 to your Handsize number of cards. This would be a consistent interpretation for cards like Oil Rig & Refinery, which allows you to take an extra action up to 2 times per turn. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 05:56, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

The Infinity Tree

Ambiguity about what "triggering" means aside, I assume from the words "Infinity" and "recursive" that the intention here is for The Infinity Tree to trigger from triggering itself, thereby triggering itself again, thereby continuing to trigger itself in an infinite spiral?--ChippyYYZ (talk) 14:26, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

Warping Hourglass

Is there any reason why I wouldn't target myself every time to take all the turns? - Bucky (talk) 18:03, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

Thing Types and Subtypes

> there are just two types of card - Things and Actions. - Basic Rules Your "Changeling" cards' "all Thing types" finds one Thing type - Thing. And "To Dust" can define its own card type, but accidentally(?) erases the text saying it's a Thing. I assume you had something else in mind? -Bucky (talk)

For the sake of maximum cross-compatibility between designs and thus minimum Rule 3 issues, I would advise against cards that search for specific subtypes as subtypes, i.e. following a pattern like "a card with the subtype Lattice". Instead, you should use the most generic "a Lattice" which would also find, for example, a thing named Black Lattice or a thing with text like "This counts as a Lattice." On a related note, thanks to most cards not directly referencing subtypes, a Thing having a subtype that is in its name is generally redundant.- Bucky (talk) 18:03, 24 August 2022 (UTC)


Cards Shouldn't Refer to Other Cards

You seem to make a habit of borderline and occasionally flagrant failures of the fish test. Breathe in Space, Salt the Earth, Deface Currency, Lattice Tower and Pet Eye Remover, of just the ones that haven't been archived yet.

Pet Eye Remover and Breathe in Space are borderline. I checked four random pages (45, 62, 72, 74) and three of them each had cards that were at least arguably pets or astronomical, with pets being more common if the definition's stretched. Plants only showed up on a single page (72), but frequently because it happened to riff on that exact theme. Money tokens are hit-or-miss; they come in clusters, but many pages (2/4 here) have none. They're very common for a token type, enough to be borderline, but I usually treat them as too rare. And AFAICT Lattice Tower was the first Lattice to appear in the entire archive. I (and other longtime card creators) do skirt this rule frequently myself, but by making sure the card does at least something useful if that specific sort of other card isn't drawn. This has several different forms; for example, Nevinyrral's Slipped Disk gives an easier alternative cost, Lattice Electrifier is fine because it at least affects itself no matter what, Obscuring Mist (Shroud booster pack) creates the very Thing it relies on, and the "eliminate all players with any Doom tokens" effect of Programmer's Hubris could be removed entirely and still leave a functional card. These are all good patterns that uphold the spirit of the rule. Breathe in Space, in contrast, has no practical effect whatsoever in the absence of astronomy cards.

Incidentally, Lattice Tower is also ungrammatical in Dvorak because we don't have M:tG keyword abilities; it should either say the other cards are indestructible or that they have the text "Indestructable."-Bucky (talk) 20:28, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Disruption Agent in a world with no lattices? -Bucky (talk) 03:26, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

Lattice is a type of card, but isn't a card unto itself. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 13:25, 30 April 2022 (UTC)
It has the fishing rod problem. It completely fails the random archive page test - there are no archived Lattices at all. Although a few "any type" Things can fake it, they're almost all textless tokens that don't affect other Things anyway.-Bucky (talk) 15:35, 30 April 2022 (UTC)


Futuristic Latticeworks

On its own it has Rule 3 problems because neither rearranging 1 card nor looking at a card just before drawing it has any effect. With other lattices, it gets silly because rearranging the same cards over and over again is redundant. -Bucky (talk) 06:41, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

No Special Rules

Void Shatter is an archetypical example of an "invisible effect that significantly outlives the lifetime of the card". But it could easily just be a Thing instead. -Bucky (talk) 21:39, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

Seeing as Void Shatter would be exiled instead of hitting the Discard Pile, it could remain in the game as a reference for what should happen if either if it's effects were to trigger. It isn't really an invisible effect as a result of this interaction. -JakeTheWolfie (talk) 12:52, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
We do not typically give cards a pass on Rule 4 just because they remain in the discard pile. I don't see how being exiled is any different, assuming the table vote interprets it in an MtGlike way. But even then, in a game where cards can do arbitrary things, it's not quite guaranteed to remain in exile for the rest of the game.-Bucky (talk) 15:02, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
The main idea of Exile is that cards that are sent there cannot be retrieved, except by the effects that sent them there. (See: Blinking and Suspend) -JakeTheWolfie (talk) 16:45, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
Even within Magic: The Gathering, it's been possible to yank cards from exile since at least Pull From Eternity back in 2006 (from the same set that brought us Suspend, no less) or with any Eldrazi Processor from Battle For Zendikar. Bucky's Isle of Exiles and The Great Return, and your Revivification Gambit and (interpretationally) Visions of the Future can all pull cards exiled in other ways. While "destroy the discard pile" isn't super hard to keep track of as long-term invisible effects go, it may be a better design choice to anchor it to something visible in the gamestate (either "While Void Shatter remains in exile," or rework it so Void Shatter stays in the discard pile where it exiles anything in there with it).--ChippyYYZ (talk) 18:25, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
"Return a card from exile back into the game" is not something I'd expect them to put on a Magic card. then again these are the wizards which gave us protection from everything After reviewing this, I'll create a sort of anchored reminder token. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 18:32, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
But what if I somehow get rid of the reminder token?-Bucky (talk) 19:51, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
Why would you? It provides no advantage or disadvantage to any player while it exists. It would be a lot like lighting the rules to a board game on fire midway through playing the game. Sure, the rules still apply, only now you don't have a reference to them. -JakeTheWolfie (talk) 08:45, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
It provides a disadvantage to whoever's close to winning by threatening to draw the game early, as well as being a hard counter to an opponent controlling the board with discard pile-based cards like Texas Red or White Hacks. I can come up with a dozen more combos if pressed, but that's not important; the problem with this card is that it creates a special rule that is unbound from the card itself. Putting the reminder on an uninteractable token is only a step removed from "write down this new special rule; it applies for the rest of this game" which is exactly the sort of thing rule 4 is there to prevent. All you gotta do is either of the things I suggested.--ChippyYYZ (talk) 16:06, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

Card Idea: Deck Builders

I've had an idea for a card to change the gameplay to be like a Deck-Builder card game but it's way too much text to fit on one card. I sort of want to make a card that says "Follow the rules on (links to:) this page to change the game into Deck-Builder mode" but I feel like that's cheating. Thoughts? -The T (talk)

There's no limit on what a card can tell a player to do when played, and there are already plenty of cards that call for action to be taken away from the playing table, so I don't think having the player access a webpage is out of the question in itself. On the other hand, the spirit of the deck strongly implies that each card should function with a high degree of modularity and that the state of the game should be apparent just from inspection of the table (hence the "No Special Rules" rule).
Of course, the most idiomatic way to establish a new rule is to put it on a Thing. If that's not possible in this case, then perhaps a small handful of Things, each of which instructs the player to search the deck for the next one and play it—possibly in a neutral location rather than being under any individual player's control. This is the next most natural option that I can think of, albeit probably also the clunkiest.
What kinds of changes do you have in mind? How would Deck-Builder mode work? How permanent is the switch, or what mechanism could revert gameplay to normal? Binarius (talk) 15:10, 23 August 2019 (UTC)
The permanence would be like any other "Special Rules" thing; if the Thing is destroyed, gameplay returns to normal. Here is my first draft of the card, based heavily on the card game Dominion. (I will also say even my attempts to shorten things have made some text more confusing, so a rules page version would expand it heavily):

"Each player gains 7 Copper cards. [Type: Currency, CV: 0, Text: 1 Money] Shuffle those cards with their hand to form that player's deck. Then draw 5 cards from their deck. The Dvorak Deck is now the Cache. Place [number of players + 1] cards face up on the table from the Cache; this is the Supply. Each card in the supply now has a cost, equal to the first digit in it's Corner Value [CV]. If it has none, roll a d9 to determine it's cost. Players now have personal discard piles. At the end of a player's turn, they discard their hand and draw their hand limit from their deck. Players no longer draw at the start of their turn. Once per turn, a player may play any number of Currency equal to the cost of 1 card to buy it and add it to their discard pile; if they do, add a card from the Cache to the Supply as above; or they may buy Copper, Silver [Currency, CV: 3, 2 Money], or Gold [Currency, CV: 6, 3 Money] for their corner value. Currency cards are unlimited and 1 of each should be visible in play near the supply at all times. If this Thing is destroyed, remove all Currency from the game. Continue to use player's decks until they are depleted." -The T (talk)

Yeah, that's a mouthful. Certainly an interesting concept though. Hopefully we can get some opinions from people who are more experienced with deck-building games than I am, but for this much of a shift, and particularly for this volume of supplemental cards, I think an expansion pack is the way to go, probably along the lines of the Dvanguard set. Then the only addition to the Infinite deck itself would be a Thing saying "The XYZ expansion pack's rules are in effect. Add the XYZ expansion pack's cards to the game. Remove them when this card leaves play." Binarius (talk) 16:34, 23 August 2019 (UTC)
Yeah, that's basically how I planned to word it if I went that route. I'd include example versions of the Currency cards as well, and clarify/flesh out the rules to make things more clear. To be honest, I think "Deck-Building Dvorak" as a format wouldn't be a bad idea, but I think bringing it into the absurdity of Infinite Dvorak is too good an idea to pass up. -The T (talk)

314 current cards

As of right now, there are 314 cards in the current deck. Doesn't it cut off every 100 cards? --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 04:15, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Not automatically. Someone needs to manually create the next archive page and copy the oldest 100 cards into it. I should learn how, but I always worry I'll mess it up. And anyway, I enjoy looking back at such a long list and noting our progress. Binarius (talk) 05:08, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
HEY KEVAN! DO DA THANG --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 12:18, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
Ok, but how do you get that text that links back to the IDD? --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 21:09, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
Either the page title or something in the infobox does that automatically. I don't know which, and I apparently don't need to.--ChippyYYZ (talk) 02:44, 16 September 2019 (UTC)


Don't change other people's cards

I noticed User:ChippyYYZ changed some of User:JakeTheWolfie's cards to fix spelling and grammar. This breaks one of the rules of Infinite Dvorak. If we were going to start allowing this now, there's probably 500 cards I would go back and make changes to. I would much prefer Wolfie go back and fix their own cards than have other people fix it for them. -The T (talk) 02:19, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

My bad. I figured it'd save a step compared to making an entry here, and I assumed the rule referred only to substantive changes (haven't actually read the rules in a while).--ChippyYYZ (talk) 02:36, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
I genuinely have mixed feelings about it (the "filter specific person's cards" thing never happened) and would love to delete some of the more broken or completely unintelligible cards, but. At the very least, we need to put pressure on people making "bad" cards to make them good instead. Don't just throw ideas down, curate them carefully before you add them, and proofread them! -The T (talk) 03:07, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
While you did break the rules, you also improved the quality of the deck. (lol) --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 03:55, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
But instead of forcing other people to do that for you, why not improve the quality of the deck yourself? :P -The T (talk) 12:53, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Exporting the deck

How would I export this deck? Is there an image file I could get? --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 05:53, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

In terms of generating actual images, I'm afraid the only "export" option is to print to PDF. The printing page is outdated, to say the least, and I've failed in previous attempts to correctly size the cards and format them on the page. We definitely need better solutions, for both image graphic and printing onto actual paper. (In the latter case, there's also the issue that the entire deck is more than 2 meters tall...) Binarius (talk) 06:03, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
So right now, there's no way to create images? Kevan, why have thou abandoned this dead project? --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 06:06, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Archived Cards

Am I allowed to edit cards that have already been archived? --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 00:29, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

I think the archive pages are mainly for the convenience of not having to wait for thousands of cards to load and then scroll through all of them. Also, people originally figured that 100 was a good number of cards to divide the deck into subsets that could be reasonably assumed to be generally playable. As long as they're your cards, feel free to edit them. Binarius (talk) 03:06, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

Am I allowed to "tidy up" the cards in the archives? (Right now the first few cards in each 100 set aren't really aligned with the rest of the cards, and I want to fix it) --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 17:30, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

I don't really know how you'd do that, without adding a bunch of blank space to the page. There really wouldn't be any point in doing so. -The T (talk) 18:34, 22 September 2019 (UTC)
[br clear=all] would do it, and while it would align the cards, it would make the top of the page mostly blank (see Adiart subset)--ChippyYYZ (talk) 18:37, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

7,000 Cards

Eleven years and 5,000 cards later, I've compiled some updated statistics on our game's progress, posted on the 6901-7000 Talk page. Keep up the good work, everyone! Binarius (talk) 07:27, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

Specific goals are now getting even rarer to accomplish --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 18:53, 24 September 2019 (UTC)
You are a wonderful person Binarius. (Also, it's taken me eleven years to make as many cards as gill_smoke made in three?)--ChippyYYZ (talk) 23:33, 24 September 2019 (UTC)
Aww, shucks. Civic duty and all that. To be fair, that was back in a period of sustained vigorous activity; the 6200s alone took two and a half years to get through. What we need now is a renaissance. Binarius (talk) 04:07, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
Mayhaps a new Special rule should be created? Not that we need more, but the current ones feel.. Limiting. Maybe we could strike through the "No adding SR's via cards?" --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 05:01, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
They are limiting, in that all of a card's mechanics need to fit on that single card. But at the risk of begging the question, I think that bug is actually an indispensible feature of this deck. Individually designed decks with coherent themes can be written a lot more sparsely with a framework of special rules in place (Shaft of Light comes to mind), but this deck is constructed by a variety of people with different design considerations, and it necessarily lacks a theme. So anything a card needs to function, it has to bring with it. I'd guess that's why there are so many Things in this deck: many of them are inventive mechanics that could easily constitute a special rule in a smaller deck with a more limited scope. At any rate, I quite enjoy the challenge of concisely contributing interesting ideas. Constrained writing breeds creativity. Binarius (talk) 02:42, 26 September 2019 (UTC)
Perhaps you should make more cards /s --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 19:14, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
This rules. -The T (talk) 14:10, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
Oh. Something I'd always loved to see someone compile, is a list of all possible known Token types. That's a tall order, though. -The T (talk) 14:13, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
Done. The list of single-card tokens is a huge wall of text, but I can post it if you're really interested in the full miscellany. Some pretty spicy types in there. Binarius (talk) 17:00, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
How on earth did you collect (all) this data so quickly? What's your secret -The T (talk) 18:57, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
Just some fun with Go, Excel, and a text file of the entire archive. More requests are welcome! Binarius (talk) 03:30, 28 September 2019 (UTC)
How do you do these, though? --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 22:01, 14 December 2019 (UTC)
A couple of simple scripts in Go - one to download the entire archive page by page and compile it all into a single text file, and another to analyze the text and extract statistics of interest - plus some Excel work to knead the data and resolve various typos, irregularities, and special cases by hand. Binarius (talk) 06:21, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Fast skip to the end

So, the card list is long, and I want a fast way to see the new cards without having to scroll down. Can we make a new section that does this via the Table of Contents? --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 20:24, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

If you do it as a subsection, it should have a name that doesn't imply that it contains cards. -Bucky (talk) 21:23, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Attribution

Jake's card copy idea returns attention to the question of how to attribute cards written by one person and subsequently contributed to the Infinite deck by another. There's no standard way to do this, and contributors have adopted various methods through the years. The most prolific contributor of cards explicitly marked as coming from other sources and creators thus far is gill_smoke, who has preferred to sign cards as e.g. "Kevin added by gill_smoke"; there are a couple dozen of these. Kevan, Bucky, Raven, and Zaratustra originally favored including the original deck name in the creator field, as for example "Bucky (Unplayable Dvorak deck)", and a few others have occasionally adopted this approach as well. I have added several cards and attributed their sources in their flavortext, as in "From the Mirage deck", but this is unsatisfactory as it fails to properly credit the original author. On the other hand, at the very least, it is clear that a card should not only bear the name of its author if a different person contributed it to the deck, particularly if the author is also a contributor to the deck, leading to a confusing mismatch between the user who added the card and the user whose name is on it.

There seems to be a consensus that both the original author and the person who contributes the card to the Infinite deck deserve credit, but how that credit should be denoted remains an open question. Alternatively, to the extent that this ambiguity can be viewed as a shortcoming of Template:Card, editing the template to include an optional "Contributor" field—and perhaps even a "Source" field for cards imported from other decks or games—might be worth considering. Binarius (talk) 03:48, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

I think "Card by ChippyYYZ, added by JakeTheWolfie" is a reasonable and concise way to attribute a card. ChippyYYZ (talk) 18:28, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

"No More than 3 cards at a time"

I believe that this rule should be amended, as it was most likely made in the early days of the project where people were more active. Now, a few years later, the project is much slower. Thus, I believe this rule should be amended or repealed, as it's more frustrating than convenient for the people currently adding cards. Thoughts? --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 19:29, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

I think it's a useful guideline to have. Never mind that I have intentionally ignored it in the past with #6107 Fourthright, and again with #6252-6254, which I wasn't sure wouldn't be the final cards. Even so, I wouldn't be against increasing the limit to 5 or 6, or allowing consecutive updates if no one has added cards in the last three days.--ChippyYYZ (talk) 23:30, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
Assuming we don't get a response from Kevan, how should we, the community, solve this supposed issue? --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 02:29, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
Get Binarius's input, then agree on a guideline to follow. The rule isn't ours, so we shouldn't change it, but we don't need to enforce it either.--ChippyYYZ (talk) 02:58, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
I'd definitely be interested in hearing Bucky weigh in on this idea too, being the most senior of us all and a guiding force from the project's very beginning. In my opinion, this rule is indispensable, at least in spirit, for setting the communal tone of the deck. I've never violated it; when I've been brimming with ideas in slow times I've worked up a hefty list of finished cards to contribute whenever I heard back from anyone. That said, I don't see any reason that the rule couldn't be modified; in particular, the number 3 is reasonable but arbitrary. I have a pretty conservative attitude toward changing the project's parameters themselves, though: they help to connect us with those heady early days of the art. But the following sentence illustrates the spirit of the rule: "give someone else a chance to add some, before you add any more." Might it be permissible to add another group of 3 after waiting some number of days? Maybe. The essential point is to avoid dominating the tenor of the deck's progress. But the clearest way to do that is to ensure that the deck's progress is collaborative every step of the way. Binarius (talk) 06:59, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

Card Numbers

Given the tendency of some cards to reference card number (I'm sure there's at least one that refers to cards added after it, but I forget its name), would it be feasible (or even desirable?) to edit the card template itself to make a place for card numbers? --ChippyYYZ 01:18, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

That's pretty much always been a wish of mine, but its utility (and maybe desirability) would be limited if not all creators populated that field. It would be nice if a template could do it automatically somehow, but it doesn't appear to me that there's a lightweight way to accomplish that, particularly across multiple pages. As for editing Template:Card to give the option to any creators who want to use it, that should just be a matter of wiki template parsing and HTML, if we come to that consensus. I'm not opposed. Binarius (talk) 03:03, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
I'd be in support of this. How would you suggest archived cards fit into this? --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 02:24, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
It only took Some Time fiddling with it, but I think I got it. If we want to number the whole archive (not just our own cards), I would vote in favor of that, on the grounds that (1) it fits unobtrusively into each card's design, and (2) it does not change any card except to indicate something that is already true about that card.--ChippyYYZ (talk) 20:56, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
It looks exactly like I'd want, and overall I think it's great. I agree with Chippy's reasoning about numbering the whole archive and I'm in favor of it. We wouldn't be adding any content, just revealing intrinsically available information—information that has frequently proven relevant and that enhances the expressive power of our deck-building idiom.
I do have two small concerns though. First, it's a little unfortunate that using this field imposes some additional workload on the contributor; that adds friction and introduces a potential for mistakes, albeit simple to correct. Second, I hope current and future contributors will agree that this field shouldn't be populated creatively or arbitrarily, but only with correct values. Both of these concerns are reflections of the fact that sequence information is objective. Ideally, of course, this field should be populated automatically, but I'm not aware of any way to accomplish that.
If we do decide to number the whole deck, though, we are implicitly agreeing by extension that anyone is free to populate missing values for contributors who haven't added them - for example, as each hundred cards is archived. Archiving is the only step where counting is strictly necessary, after all. So here are the questions before us, as I see them:
  1. Do we want this field in Template:Card at all? Based on the above discussion, there seems to be a consensus. If so,
  2. Should anyone be allowed to edit any card lacking an accurate number solely to add it? If so,
  3. Shall we number the entire archive?
  4. Shall we gently encourage future archivists to fill in missing values as part of the archiving process? I'd suggest doing this by adding a comment at the end of the archived subpage section at the top of the Card list.
Binarius (talk) 22:29, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
As a returning user about a year later, I would like to state the answers that I believe we have settled on.
  1. Yes
  2. No. (Although I am only judging this on the lack of numbers present on most archived cards. The three above users have cards that are archived but not numbered.)
  3. No, or not yet. See above blurb
  4. No data. Probably yes, but there is nothing supporting either position.
Hope this helps. This was really well written, Binarius. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 06:53, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
Thank you. I've developed an assumption that 2 and 3 should be "yes" for uniformity and for the utility of referring to earlier cards by number, which has been productive in plenty of cards contributed this year and previously. I enjoy the idea of all cards having numbers, and I imagine such a feature might well have been added early in the project's history. Adding them all in now seems like a tall order though; it's something I've told myself plenty of times that I "might get around to at some point"... Binarius (talk) 18:50, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

Terminology

So, I feel like there are some terms which might not be entirely clear, or at the very least wouldn't be standard. The main two I see are Exile and Spend. Now, anyone who's in our circle knows what these mean, or could intuit what they mean, but I want to add more terms which may not be entirely understood (Such as reducing "Increment cardname's corner value by N" to Increment N). How should new terminology be inserted? --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 07:25, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

I think the key is for people to be able to intuit what a term means. To Spend a token is simple enough to anyone who has interacted with a board game or, like, currency. Exile is less obvious (except to anyone who's played Magic since 2010), but based on the word's definition, one can assume it means something like "Send away, not to the discard pile, just out of the way". Up Your Sleeve is much the same. It can be intuited as some kind of zone that's not quite your hand, but not in play either, just out of reach of most effects. If you want to streamline the wording of incrementing cards, the best new vocab word might be Cost. It may not save much space on the two cards currently in consideration, but it may prove more flexible than the bulky "equal to this card's cornervalue" as the possible design space is explored (alternate costs, splitting a cost betwern two payment types like MtG's Convoke, etc.).--ChippyYYZ (talk) 17:31, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
For the most part, this falls under the second special rule, "If there's an ambiguity, vote on it." Use whatever terms you think a majority of the table will understand. I think Exile as a verb fails this test for some tables. That's why the first batch of Up Your Sleeve cards used "move to" or "move from" rather than another special term so that the cards worked no matter where the table decided Up Your Sleeve actually is.-Bucky (talk) 01:36, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

So, here's a kind of unforseen consequence of abilities being able to have an activation cost of anything, not just using an action: Nevinyrral's Slipped Disk (Shown below) has a pretty straightforward cost of sacrificing itself (Destroying itself, piercing through indestructibility). As sacrificing is not a time-bound process like playing an action is, my question to the jury is this: Are you able to activate this ability on other players' turns? --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 23:14, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Nevinyrral's Slipped Disk
Thing
As an additional cost, sacrifice a thing named "Nevinyrral", or sacrifice 3 things, one of them being alive.
Sacrifice Nevinyrral's Slipped Disk: Destroy all Things.


My man, you made the card you tell me The precedent in That Other Game may be that activated abilities are usable at instant speed except when they specifically say otherwise, but the precedent in Dvorak is that you can do things on your turn in between drawing and discarding to max hand size, except when a card specifically states that it can be used outside that duration. I would expect anything using the "Bold Text Colon:" format to have been intended to use the same timing restrictions as an Action ability. Something like Glass Cannon, however, feels a little more ambiguous to me, and could probably use a "during your turn, you may" or something like that. Unless it's supposed to spawnkill two things when they enter play.--ChippyYYZ (talk) 03:42, 4 May 2022 (UTC)
AFAICT there's no actual standard here. While "per turn" Thing-based acts are conventionally interpreted as only applying to the owner's turn, Things that allow you to act for some other cost seem to vary in intent. The "Cost: Do a deed" syntax isn't Dvorak-standard, and the card doesn't spell it out, so in the absence of a relevant basic, advanced or special rule it's a table vote. The analogy to "Action: Do a deed" syntax, which is an Advanced Rule, isn't directly applicable here like it is for "Thing:", since it's clearly not intended to replace the sacrifice with some other act.-Bucky (talk) 04:27, 4 May 2022 (UTC)
The way I see it, everything before the colon is the cost of activation and everything after is the effect. If you can pay the cost, then you can use the effect. And if the cost is time-independent, then you should be able to activate the ability at any time. You usually can't play things or actions on other players' turns, but it's unclear if you're able to, say, spend money tokens on other players' turns. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 04:53, 4 May 2022 (UTC)
Formally, the definition of "Action:" is "Each turn, instead of playing an Action card, you may". In MtG terms, it's defined as an optional replacement ability rather than an activated ability.-Bucky (talk) 05:51, 4 May 2022 (UTC)
I'm not entirely satisfied with that, mainly because of repeated activation. The glossary definition allows for repeated activation of the ability, so long as you can pay the cost (Such as spending 1 Mana Token to draw a card.) --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 16:26, 4 May 2022 (UTC)
As Magic players, it is easy to think of an Action Ability as "costing" one of your Action plays for the turn (I do this), but if the actual definition of "Action:" is extrapolated to "Sacrifice this Thing:", you get "[On a] turn, instead of sacrificing this Thing, you may" which is very different. put differently, if Magic is all we've ever known, then it's easy to miss what really goes on. A wording that fewer playgroups will find ambiguous is "During your turn, you may sacrifice this to destroy all Things" or more generally "[Timing], you may [Cost] to [Effect]."
Abilities should be redefined so that they can encapsulate more modern ideas, such as unconventional costs (like spending tokens, or sacrificing things.) --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 18:30, 4 May 2022 (UTC)
The rules don't change as we add stuff, just the ideas written on the cards. The only exceptions were changes to the token rule made within the first 100 cards. Backwards compatibility with the thousands of existing cards is a serious concern. That said, those "modern ideas" aren't particularly new, as e.g. Token Gun (#126) spends tokens and Long Range Probe (#245) sacrifices them as a cost. These and other cards use "{Player} may {cost} to {effect}" syntax with an optional timing hint. This is more verbose than MTG "{Cost}: {effect}" syntax, for substantially the same result. -Bucky (talk) 19:40, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

The 10,000th card

Making It Up As We Go Along
Thing










Get a pen and draw a card.
Card by Everyone
The Ten-Thousandth Card
Action
If there are 10,000 or more cards in the draw pile, you win.
Card by Everyone

It's on its way! I think a commemoration is in order, in the form of a card we all contribute to, something with a personal touch from everyone. Is that something we'd be interested in planning in advance? Here's an initial concept along those lines.

The blank space I've marked out with line breaks will hold an image containing an "autograph" of the name of each creator who has contributed more than a few cards. It would be great to be able to let anyone download the image, add their own signature, and then upload the new version. One practical drawback to this idea is that it's hard to make a signature look decent with a mouse and most people don't have access to drawing tablets.

Other suggestions? Binarius (talk) 03:48, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Added one, copying from The Thousandth Card. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 03:55, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
I definitely like Making It Up As We Go Along as a title. It's collaborative, it's Dvorak, and it's pretty literally true. I'm not at all against the card being decorative, but if the card's going to have any gameplay effect, I think something that affects each player equally or that passes between each player would be appropriate. Maybe "Draw an extra card at the start of your turn, chosen from the top 3 cards of the deck by the next player. Shuffle the deck, then that player gains control of this card."
That said, we could also finally get Kevan a proper trophy.
Golden Card Trophy
Thing
Kevan wins the game.
Card by Everyone

--ChippyYYZ (talk) 03:23, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

That definitely needs to go in, at least as a follow-on. Binarius (talk) 03:27, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

Okay, let's do this. Anyone interested in appearing on the premiere edition of Making It Up As We Go Along can photograph an autograph of their username on a blank piece of paper, or create a digital image of their autograph, and email it to d v o r a k c r e a t o r s, which is an address at the well-known service starting with "g". I'll compose them, and presumably add some significant contributors from the project's history - let anyone you're in contact with know. Binarius (talk) 19:22, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

Mine's sent in--ChippyYYZ (talk) 02:02, 2 December 2022 (UTC)
Hecc I forgot to send it in, I just made and sent it now. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 09:57, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Congratulations everyone! File:Creator_signatures.png The name of almost every creator who has contributed at least 20 cards is there, with one prominent exception... Additions/replacements are welcome, just email me a clear photo of your autograph at the address above and I can shuffle everyone around to make room. Binarius (talk) 19:37, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

10,000 cards

Myriad statistics on a myriad of cards are now up on the 9901-10000 Talk page. Suggestions and requests are welcome! Binarius (talk) 18:45, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

What cards have particularly long rules text? I think that would be a good statistic to have at hand. --JakeTheWolfie (talk) 19:03, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
There is some textual analysis on the talk page already. In terms of character length, the longest is TORNADO! (#1309) at 485 characters. A few cards surpass this in raw wikitext form with markup and HTML tags, including Flying Spaghetti Monster (#3053), XBox 360 (#5667), and, most egregiously, Cantor's Inverse Dimensionality Lemma (#7263), with a length of 494 characters, only 341 of which are printed.
As for word count, Board Game (#6721) tops out at 91 words, followed by Poet Revolution! (#224) with 89, TORNADO! (#1309) with 88, and Gate of Babylon (#6116) and Ether Furnace (#8640) with 84 each.
Honorable mention: Politician (#8285). What it lacks in ruletext it more than makes up for in flavortext, with 53 words of, appropriately enough, not much substance. Binarius (talk) 00:59, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Playing With A (Full?) Deck

JakeTheWolfie notes that players will likely want to play with specific "blocks" of cards (e.g. 7000-7500) rather than the totality of all the cards. I figure anyone who can figure out how to play with every card deserves to, but for practical reasons one or two hundred cards is probably the limit (the Dvorak Engine on Dvorak MUSH can only go a little past 200). While the deck is theoretically infinite, any given game is likely to played with a subset, and the most immediately available subsets are the 100-card subpages. As such, any card designed to work only within the context of other cards in its subpage will work as intended in most games in which it appears. The third rule of adding cards does state that cards shouldn't depend on a particular card or mechanic to be useful, and I personally have traditionally tried to abide by this. There was once talk of a script to randomly pick 100 cards which never came to be, but if something like that could be done, I would want it to be a consistently good experience. I feel that adherence to the third rule is the difference between contributing to the Infinite Dvorak Deck and contributing to infinite Dvorak Decks.--ChippyYYZ (talk) 22:59, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

I designed cards with both in mind. Packs of cards would be intended to play together (e.g. Nodes) or reference other cards on the same page, but I was careful to make them at least minimally functional cards in isolation.-Bucky (talk) 05:26, 3 January 2024 (UTC)