Overpay

Masterpiece, an overpay card.

Overpaying is a mechanic in the Guilds expansion. Some cards allow the player to spend more coins than their cost when buying them, for additional effects. Such cards have a "+" added to their cost symbol. Cards having an overpay effect are:

• Stonemason, which allows you to gain 2 Actions each costing the amount you overpaid.
• Doctor, which allows you for each you overpaid to look at the top card of your deck; and you can choose to trash it, discard it, or put it back.
• Masterpiece, which allows you to gain a silver for each you overpaid.
• Herald, which allows you for each you overpaid to look through your discard pile and put a card from it on top of your deck.

Official Rules

• Some cards can be "overpaid" for. The costs for these cards have a "+" next to the coin symbol. A player may pay any additional amount for such a card, and then gets an effect based on how much extra was paid.
• Potions (from Dominion: Alchemy) may be used in overpaid amounts if desired, although this is not always meaningful.
• Debt (from Dominion: Empires) cannot be overpaid.
• Players may choose not to overpay, even if they have extra coins, but cannot choose to overpay by ; to overpay, a player has to actually pay more than the cost.
• The coins used to overpay are gone after spending them to overpay; they cannot be then used to buy something else.
• Overpaying happens when a card is bought, which is before it is gained.
• Players can only overpay for a card when buying it, not when gaining it some other way.
• The "+" is just a reminder; a card with "+" in the cost still has its normal cost for all purposes. For example if a player plays Haggler (from Dominion: Hinterlands), then buys a Masterpiece, overpaying, Haggler will still gain them a card costing less than , the cost of Masterpiece. Similarly, Masterpiece could be the Bane card for Young Witch, since it costs .
• Reducing the costs of cards via cards like Bridge (from Dominion: Intrigue) does not interact with overpay; for example, if you play five Bridges and have total to spend, Herald would cost , but if you bought one the most you could overpay for it would still be .

Trivia

Secret History

To supplement the tokens, I added the overpay cards. Overpay was a natural extension of the when-gain cards in Hinterlands, and was a good match for the tokens, since you could save up tokens for a big overpay. Two sub-themes is plenty for a small expansion, but I also flirted with a "name a card" sub-theme. In the end there's just a hint of it.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of the Guilds cards

Retrospective

These days I am not fond of how wordy the overpay cards are, except for Masterpiece. It's not impossible to avoid that, to have a single-line vanilla top, but. An Event with a variable cost would be better since it doesn't have to also say what the card does. Of course an Event with +Buy is already like this.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Interview with Donald X.