Broker

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Broker
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action - Liaison
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Allies
Illustrator(s)	Claus Stephan
Card text
Trash a card from your hand and choose one: +1 Card per it costs; or +1 Action per it costs; or + per it costs; or +1 Favor per it costs.

Broker is an Action-Liaison card from Allies. It is a trash-for-benefit card, similar to Apprentice and Salvager, which gives you a choice of terminal draw, terminal , a village effect, or Favors in exchange for the card you trash.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• For example, if you trash an Estate, which costs , you could choose to get +2 Cards, or +2 Actions, or +, or +2 Favors.
• If you trash a card with or in the cost (from other expansions), you get nothing for those symbols.

Strategy

Broker is a flexible card that can play many different roles, but it is often not worth the buy. As a deck thinner, it is slow, since it costs and can only trash one card at once.

Of the four benefits, usually the +Cards one is the most powerful. +Actions tend to be cheaper than +Cards or + on most boards, and once you have improved your deck, each card drawn is going to give you dramatically more than or +1 Action. An exception is early game, especially if you end up buying some card other than Silver along with Broker on a / split, as then trashing an Estate for coin can be stronger than drawing cards. Whether or not the +Favors is a good choice depends on what ally is present and whether or not it synergizes with your overall strategy.

The main benefit of the choice is not in raw strength but flexibility. Even if you primarily plan on playing terminal actions with no villages, the ability to trash a card for +Action can make it worthwhile to pack in more actions than you otherwise would. Alternatively, in a deck-drawing engine, it can decrease the chance of the engine sputtering. The ability to take can allow you to reach and purchase a Province on a turn where you otherwise could not, and it can also allow you to build an engine with less treasure, if you are reliably able to gain expensive cards to feed to the Broker(s).

Even if you're able to get a good supply of high-value cards to feed to Broker, it is not usually efficient. For example if you play it and trash a card costing (typically the most expensive card able to be easily gained), at best you are using two cards to draw four, which is weak.

Broker often synergizes with other trashers, especially those good at trashing Copper. It is weak for trashing Copper, slow and offering no benefit, and the starting coppers hugely diminish its power. Other major synergies include gainers, and Trail. Trail makes Broker much stronger as it can be trashed an endless number of times, and it yields an extra +1 Card +1 Action when trashed, effectively boosting Broker's power while also making it non-terminal. So it can effectively turn Broker into a card that costs and yields +4 Cards, with some added flexibility of taking coin, actions, or favors when it is useful. In this situation, Broker is cheap and fast.

A handsize attack can weaken Broker somewhat. A junk attack also usually cripples it, as it gets no benefit from trashing Curses, and is slow and unreliable to this end.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		Trash a card from your hand and choose one: +1 Card per it costs; or +1 Action per it costs; or + per it costs; or +1 Favor per it costs.	Allies	March 2022

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
German	Mittelsmann			Entsorge eine deiner Handkarten und wähle eins: +1 Karte pro , das sie kostet, oder +1 Aktion pro , das sie kostet, oder + pro , das sie kostet, oder +1 Gefallen pro , das sie kostet.

Trivia

Official card art.

Preview

And then Broker is the combination Apprentice / Salvager / other things that you never knew you wanted. It can make a lot of Favors at once when you want that.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Allies Preview 1: Allies

Secret History

An old idea, finally realized with help from Favors. It seemed like it could get a wording that just explained the "once per the trashed card costs" bit once and then listed the bonuses, "+1 Action; +1 Card; +; +1 Favor." But after confusing people, in the end it got a fully spelled out list of options.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of Dominion: Allies

The initial “old idea” is described in detail in the Raze Trivia.