Royal Seal

Royal Seal
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Treasure
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Prosperity
Illustrator(s)	Jason Slavin
Card text
While you have this in play, when you gain a card, you may put that card onto your deck.

Royal Seal is a Treasure from Prosperity. It is worth like Silver but lets you topdeck cards you gain when you have it in play.

It was removed from the second edition of Prosperity and replaced with the cheaper Tiara which offers more varied benefits but kept the topdecking effect.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• If you gain multiple cards with this in play, this applies to each of them - you could put any or all of them on top of your deck.
• This applies both to cards gained due to being bought, and to cards gained other ways with Royal Seal in play, such as with Hoard.

Other Rules clarifications

• If Royal Seal is no longer in play when you gain a card, such as because it was trashed with Mint or top-decked with Mandarin, you cannot use its ability.

Strategy

Before it was removed, Royal Seal was a weak Kingdom Treasure whose high price and opportunity cost made it rarely worth gaining. In terms of payload, it is equivalent to an overpriced Silver (with the associated downside of being a stop card); the bonus topdecking effect, although useful, is not generally enough to justify the price. Royal Seal therefore tends to be worthwhile only in very weak Kingdoms that offer nothing better at or . Exceptions are most likely to occur with Keep, where Royal Seal can be relevant in scoring  , and occasionally in cases where no better payload than Treasures is available but Gold is undesirable (e.g. due to Bandit Fort).

Royal Seal's topdecking effect is helpful in principle: guaranteeing access to your new purchases next turn can be very valuable early in the game, e.g. with strong Attacks, and it can also help you avoid terminal collision or a dud. However, because Royal Seal is expensive enough to compete directly with the strong cards you would want to topdeck early in the game (e.g. Witch), it's rarely worthwhile in practice to gain a copy for this purpose; you would be able to play the card sooner simply by buying it instead of Royal Seal. Furthermore, since Royal Seal can usually only be played during your Buy phase, it does not facilitate gain-and-play as other topdecking effects can, except in the presence of cards like Black Market. Overall, it therefore compares unfavorably to cheaper, more flexible sources of this effect, such as Tracker and Way of the Seal. It may occasionally be worth considering in cases where it does enable gain-and-play or if topdecking newly-purchased engine components offers an especially strong boost to your deck's reliability.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		While this is in play, when you gain a card, you may put that card on top of your deck.	Prosperity	October 2010
		While this is in play, when you gain a card, you may put that card onto your deck.	Prosperity (2016 printing)	February 2017
		While you have this in play, when you gain a card, you may put that card onto your deck.	Prosperity (2020 printing)	October 2020

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Chinese	玉璽			當此卡在出牌區，當你獲得一張卡片，你可以將該卡放到牌庫頂。
Czech	Královská pečeť
Dutch	Koninklijk zegel
Finnish	Sinetti (lit. seal)
French	Sceau royal
German	Königliches Siegel			Wenn diese Karte im Spiel ist und du eine Karte nimmst oder kaufst, darfst du die neue Karte auf deinen Nachziehstapel legen.	(2016)
German	Königliches Siegel			Wenn du diese Karte im Spiel hast, wenn du eine Karte nimmst, darfst du jene auf deinen Nachziehstapel legen.	(Nachdruck 2021)
Italian	Sigillo Reale
Japanese	玉璽 (pron. gyokuji)			これが場にある間、カード1枚を獲得するとき、それを山札の上に置いてもよい。
Polish	Królewska pieczęć			Kiedy ta karta znajduje się w grze, a ty dodajesz kartę, możesz położyć ją na wierzchu swojej talii.	(2016)
Russian	Королевская Печать (pron. korolyevskaya pyechat')
Spanish	Sello Real

Trivia

Official card art.

Secret History

Originally it was "when you spend this," which is more confusing. When I got rid of those, this one got its "while this is in play" functionality. For a while it triggered on buying, but in the end it triggered on gaining, to line it up with Watchtower.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Other Secret History of the Prosperity Cards

Retrospective

The opportunity cost is clearly too high for Royal Seal. Otherwise it's nice; I'd like it in my deck, I just won't have time to get it. Obv. other cards have revisited the premise over the years.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Interview with Donald X.