Victory

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Province, a Victory card.

Victory is a card type. Victory cards typically give the player a certain number of victory points. Four Victory cards are basic cards: EstateEstate.jpg, DuchyDuchy.jpg, and ProvinceProvince.jpg, which are in the supply in every game; and ColonyColony.jpg, which may be added in games using Kingdom cards from Prosperity. One, Overgrown EstateOvergrown Estate.jpg, is a Shelter (and the only Victory card that is never worth any victory points). The remaining Victory cards are Kingdom cards, collectively referred to as alt-VP, or "alternate victory points". (The "alt-VP" category also often includes cards that give victory points via victory tokens; however, these are not considered Victory cards.) Some alt-VP cards are worth a variable number of points, depending on the state of the deck of the player who owns them; others, like the basic Victory cards, have a constant value.

The majority of Victory cards are dead cards during the game—i.e., although you score victory points by having them in your deck at the end of the game, they have little or no use during gameplay itself; and therefore having them in your deck weakens what you can achieve on each turn. The few victory cards that are not dead in your deck are typically worth relatively few victory points. Therefore the central strategic tension of Dominion is the following: how can you gain the Victory cards that you need in order to win the game, without unduly burdening your deck each turn with dead cards that will prevent you from being able to gain additional Victory cards on future turns?

One of the major ways of resolving this tension is to wait to buy Victory cards until late in the game, once one has built a deck that can withstand the addition of a few dead cards without losing much efficiency. Once the game is nearing an end, players often try to gain victory cards on almost every remaining turn; this process is referred to as "greening" or "going green" because victory cards have green frames. The extreme version of this approach is known as a megaturn, in which players buy no or almost no Victory cards at all until ending the game by buying a large number of Victory cards on a single turn. Many of the alt-VP cards enable an alternative approach by having low costs and therefore being not too hard to buy even in a deck with a lot of dead cards in it. This alternative approach underlies the rush and slog strategies: if a deck can achieve a winning score via cheap or otherwise easy-to-obtain Victory cards, gaining them early does not very much impair your ability to keep gaining more of them as the game goes on. Only some games of Dominion are amenable to such a strategy, however; most games follow the usual pattern of holding off greening till the end.

Victory card piles in the supply start with 8 cards in 2-player games and 12 cards in larger games. (The Province pile is increased further for games with more than four players.)

Most Victory cards have names referring to areas of land.

Contents

[edit] List of Victory Cards

Cards in italics have been removed.

[edit] Basic

[edit] Kingdom

[edit] Non-Supply

[edit] Cards that interact with Victory cards

Cards in italics have been removed.

[edit] Card gallery

Cemetery.jpgColony.jpgCrumbling Castle.jpgDame Josephine.jpgDistant Lands.jpgDistant Shore.jpgDuchy.jpgDuke.jpgEstate.jpgFairgrounds.jpgFarmland.jpgFeodum.jpgGardens.jpgGrand Castle.jpgHarem.jpgHaunted Castle.jpgHumble Castle.jpgIsland.jpgKing's Castle.jpgMarchland.jpgMill.jpgNobles.jpgOpulent Castle.jpgOvergrown Estate.jpgPasture.jpgProvince.jpgSmall Castle.jpgSprawling Castle.jpgStronghold.jpgTerritory.jpgTunnel.jpgVineyard.jpg

[edit] Removed Cards

Great Hall.jpgSilk Road.jpg

[edit] Trivia

[edit] In other languages

  • Czech: Vítězné body
  • Dutch: Overwinning
  • Finnish: Piste (lit. point)
  • French: Victoire
  • German: Punkte (lit. points)
  • Polish: Zwycięstwo
  • Russian: Победа (pron. pobyeda)

[edit] Why do only Victory cards scale in player number?

The pile sizes are different to save on cards. Originally there were 12 cards in every pile. There was some worry that people wouldn't buy a game that was "just cards" for what 500 cards would cost. RGG tried it anyway and that all worked out. But part of having it be "just" 500 cards was shaving those 2 cards off of those 24 piles. ProvinceProvince.jpg wanted to stay with 12 because it tended to determine the game length (and arguably it should go to 16 with 4 players). Then I decided that other VP piles would match, because somehow you are going for a something besides ProvinceProvince.jpgs. Setting aside some copies of LabLaboratory.jpg in 2-player games seems like extra set-up for nothing. I also felt like it was neat that in 2-player games you could get more copies of cards (it's neat when you normally play 3-4 anyway).

[edit] The recent lack of Victory cards

Many of the more recent expansions/second editions (specifically RenaissanceRenaissance.jpg, MenagerieMenagerie (expansion).jpg, Seaside 2ESeaside2.jpg, Hinterlands 2EHinterlands2.jpg, and PlunderPlunder (expansion).jpg) have not included any new Victory cards (and/or alt VP).

You can endlessly do victory cards where there's just 2VP tacked onto an action or treasure. You can even sometimes make that relevant (e.g., IronmongerIronmonger.jpg but also worth VP). "Classic" victory cards where the whole idea is that they're worth VP based on something, well, you can read the Secret Histories for lots of things I've tried there that didn't make it. Some of them turned into Landmarks, which further eat into the remaining space. If I had to have new classic victory cards, I know what my front-runners would be, but if I can make better cards instead, I'll do that. So that's what's been happening. I haven't forgotten that some people would like new victory cards, and haven't stopped trying things there.


I have nothing against VP cards, and I haven't been saving them up; in fact AlliesAllies.jpg started out pursuing a Victory cards sub-theme (and you can read about a few in the Secret History). The cards just didn't work out. As noted in the link, it's hard to make a good new one that isn't just "N VP, also does something else." Hinterlands 2EHinterlands2.jpg might have replaced Silk RoadSilk Road.jpg with a new VP card, but the update pack was a limiting factor there, since VP cards require 2 extra cards.


Dominion Card types
Basic types ActionTreasureVictoryCurseCurse.jpg
Multi-expansion special types AttackDurationReactionCommand
Single-expansion special types PrizeShelterRuinsLooterKnightReserveTravellerGatheringCastleNightHeirloomFateDoomSpiritZombieAugurClashFortLiaisonOdysseyTownsfolkWizardLoot
Non-card types EventLandmarkBoonHexStateArtifactProjectWayAllyTrait
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