2016 Errata and Formatting Changes
As part of a plan to adjust wordings in all pre-Empires sets, the following changes were made to very few cards for their sets' next print runs between the years 2016 and 2018.
This was the first Errata and coincided with the Second Editions of Base and Intrigue.
Changes to card layout were first announced in May 2016, a few days before Empires was previewed.
Contents |
[edit] Errata
[edit] Shuffling rule
Previously, when you wanted to draw a card (or otherwise do something with your deck), and your deck was empty, you shuffled, then continued drawing. So if you played Smithy with 2 cards left in your deck, you would have drawn those 2, then shuffled, and drawn 1 more. With the new rule, when your deck is running low, you first check to see if there's enough left to do something with, and if there's not, you shuffle your discard pile, and put that under what's left of your deck. So in the aforementioned situation, with 2 cards left in your deck when you play Smithy, you'd shuffle your discard pile, slide it under those 2 cards, and then draw your 3 cards. Donald X. has cited the ruling as making it easier for situations other than drawing with a near-empty deck.
Except when Stash is used, this change has no functional effect.
[edit] Coffers
The name Coffers was introduced to refer to the Coin tokens from Guilds and all references to "take X Coin tokens" were changed to "+X Coffers". This has no effect on any actual gameplay, but does let the text on the relevant cards take up a little less space, and highlights the taking of Coffers by making it a vanilla bonus.
[edit] Functional card changes
- Mine, Moneylender, and Throne Room received a "you may" wording for accountability purposes.[1]
- Masquerade was changed so players with no cards in hand are skipped.
- Embargo was changed so each Curse gained per token on a pile is a separate event, rather than gaining all of them at once.
- Outpost was changed to function in a similar way to Mission.
- Possession was changed so the Possessing player also receives all
tokens (from Empires) gained.
- Trade Route was changed to trash before gaining
, which matters if trashing a card that can gain Victory cards when trashed (such as Hunting Grounds).
- Scheme no longer allows you to discard Actions that are not discarded that turn, such as Durations.
- Oracle was rephrased to "draw 2 cards" instead of "+2 Cards". (This was later reverted by the 2020 Errata.)
[edit] Other card changes
A few cards did not receive functional changes, but instead had their wording changed to match their intended function, where previously it was ambiguous:
- Nomad Camp was changed to make it clear it doesn't visit, as previously its wording matched Villa's, which does visit.
- Coin of the Realm, Royal Carriage now refer to finishing "playing" an Action, as opposed to "resolving", which had never been referenced on any other card.
- Black Market now explicitly says the player may play Treasures before buying a card from the Black Market deck.
- Envoy now says "put in hand" rather than "draw", matching its intended function to ignore the -1 Card token.
- Stash lets you look at what remains of your deck when you shuffle, in order to retain its function despite the new rule.
[edit] Formatting changes
- The font size was increased when the amount of text is small enough to allow it.
- +X Cards, +X Buys, etc. in the body text were changed to bold.
- References to players were changed from masculine pronouns ("he", "his") to the gender-neutral pronouns ("them", "their").
- Card texts became better centered.
- All Promo cards now have the same icon
instead of having individual icons.
[edit] Card Gallery
Examples of cards where the formatting changes are notable:
[edit] Trivia
[edit] Reasoning
- A bigger font is used on cards that don't have lots of text.
- "They" is used instead of "he."
- +'s in the body of text are now in bold.
- Card texts are more carefully centered than ever before.
- ↑ In the first edition of Dominion, Moneylender's text did not include "you may": trashing a Copper was mandatory if Moneylender was played. Donald X. Vaccarino revised the card because that offered no provision for keeping the player honest: if a player claimed that they had no Coppers in hand, and that was why they weren't activating Moneylender's ability, there was no way for their opponents to verify that this was the case. This rarely made a difference in gameplay—if a player didn't want to trash a Copper, they simply refrained from playing Moneylender.
