Merchant Guild
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|name = Merchant Guild | |name = Merchant Guild |
Revision as of 17:23, 4 March 2021
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Merchant Guild | |
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Info | |
Cost | |
Type(s) | Action |
Kingdom card? | Yes |
Set | Guilds |
Illustrator(s) | Eric J Carter |
Card text | |
+1 Buy + While this is in play, when you buy a card, +1 Coffers. |
Merchant Guild is an Action card from Guilds. It gives an extra Buy, and puts tokens in your Coffers for every card bought this turn. It seems to do best in engines where multiples of it can be played every turn: the Coffers tokens they earn at the end of the turn replace the Coffers tokens earned last turn, which are spent now.
Contents |
FAQ
Official FAQ
- When you play this, you get +1 Buy and +.
- While this is in play, any time you buy a card you also add a token to your Coffers mat.
- Remember that you may only remove tokens from your Coffers prior to buying anything, so you will not be able to immediately use the added tokens.
- This ability is cumulative; if you have two Merchant Guilds in play, each card you buy will get you two tokens.
- However if you play a Merchant Guild multiple times but only have one in play, such as with Throne Room, you will only get one token when you buy a card.
Strategy Article
original article by Qvist
I can see why this is true. Coin tokens are really powerful.
Merchant Guild feels like a Duration card; all coin token cards in general do. But all other coin token generating cards let you spend the coin token right away. So, this feels more like a Duration card as you get the good effect not before your next turn.
Let's compare it with a few cards:
Treasury and Merchant Guild have the same cost. Treasury gives you +1 Action +1 Card and + this turn and a free the following turns as long as you don't buy a Victory card. Merchant Guild doesn't give you an Action and doesn't give you a card, instead only +1 Buy. This is really weak. But you get at least a Coin token which you can spend on any following turn. So, this feels a little bit like an opposite Treasury. While Treasury is good early in the game in ramping up your economy, Merchant Guild is the opposite. It's getting better later in the game.
I've seen many players buying Coppers from it right of the bat. I feel this is a misplay, similar to why additional Coppers for Goons is a misplay because usually you want to play your good stuff more often early on and those Coppers prevent that. But in slogs this might be a good move as those Coin tokens will be super handy soon. But you can pick up those Coppers as soon as you green and then it's great.
Similarly to how you could combine both effects from Duration cards into one card to get a feel for its strength (So Caravan is like a Lab, especially if you play one each turn), we could do this here too. Merchant Guild is then a Woodcutter at worst, which is pretty weak, sure. But even if the Coin token is delayed, I think a fictional card that says: "+1 Buy +. Gain a Coin token" would be a solid card, just only because it's strictly better than Woodcutter, but also mostly better than Nomad Camp. But Merchant Guild is later in the game mostly like "+. Gain 2 Coin tokens. Gain a Copper" if you ignore the delayed effect. A terminal Gold for the cost of a Copper feels like a Mandarin or a Count, so is already a solid card.
Interactions with other cards:
I've picked Merchant Guild up for the +Buy and the gaining of Coin tokens only a lot of the times. But, so far we are totally ignoring the stacking effect where the true power is revealed. It shines more with other cards that give you Coin tokens because you can save some Coin tokens and then use the additional buy in not only buying a Copper, but two good cards. It's even better if your deck manages to give you additional buys. As you may have noticed, Candlestick Maker is a very powerful card and gives you not only Coin tokens but also giving you +Buys. A stack of Candlestick Makers and some Merchant Guilds is already a very solid deck. While you're using some buys to pick up Candlestick Makers and get 2 Coin tokens instead of the normal 1 Token you can start greening much earlier. Play 4 Candlestick Makers and a Merchant Guild, buy what you want and 5 Coppers. You just gained 10 Coin tokens! That should be enough for a couple of Provinces in the next couple of turns! (This is just an example, I'm not saying that you should do this)
Multiple Merchant Guilds
As you already can see Merchant Guild is great in setting up an engine with cheap engine pieces like Hamlets. You get a little bit of a loss of tempo, but you have a lot of endgame speed up and control (Coin tokens give you in general a great endgame control). Now let's have a look at multiple Merchant Guilds. Here's where it starts getting crazy. If you have 2 Merchant Guilds in play, you usually should buy at least 2 cards and at that point you usually have some Coin tokens, so you really should spend some, because you get them right back. If you buy 2 cards, you get 4 Coin tokens (for total), so you have a terminal Gold in Merchant Guild (as said before), but not for the cost of a Copper; usually you can buy useful stuff for that. But your goal if you want to setup a Merchant Guild megaturn engine is at least 3 Merchant Guilds in play. This is usually right when you want to starting greening so that you have 4 Buys which you should all spend for 12 Coin tokens so that each Merchant Guild was like a terminal , but even better: In Coin tokens.
Let's have a look at some examples:
Here I've built a Hamlet/Library draw engine with Merchant Guild as my endgame mega turn plan. I loaded up on the Hamlets because they are really important for me as I will need all the +Buys for Merchant Guild. This was probably a mistake, an early Merchant Guild while picking up Hamlets would have been great. / would have been awesome here. I got my first Merchant Guild only in turn 8 as I picked up a Library earlier. My opponent already bought his first Province the turn before. Turn 10 was my first bigger turn where I bought my second Merchant Guild and an Ironmonger. My opponent then bought his second Province. I was getting worried because I needed at least one more Merchant Guild and especially more Libraries. My opponent bought his third Province in turn 12 and I got really really unlucky with a hand of "Merchant Guild, Library, Copper, Estate, Library". The turn after I got unlucky again, but I knew I had to get Coin tokens now, so bought 3 Coppers for 3 Coin tokens only. Two dud hands and I felt I already lost. Turn 14 for my opponent and his fourth Province while I had none. Then I had to start greening. In turn 15 I bought a Province with only one Merchant Guild in play. I had to use 1 Coin token, but got 3 back. Opponent buys Duchy then - still down 21 . In turn 16 my engine finally starts kicking in. I get all my Merchant Guilds in play and can buy a Province and a Duchy and 4 Coppers for 18 Coin tokens! My opponent buys another Duchy, I'm still down 15 with only 2 Provinces left. But with so many coin tokens I'm not that worried anymore. I can buy 2 Provinces and 1 Duchy and 2 Estates for a 2 win on the last turn. Man, this was great and shows in my opinion the strength of a Merchant Guild megaturn and how you can "equalize" the loss of tempo you get from buying those at the beginning. What's even better in those games is that even if you aren't able to finish this turn you can delay the game in picking up Duchies while still getting Coin tokens and try to finish the next turn. This endgame control is great.
Let's ignore the fact that I got / on a board with Familiar that basically was an auto-win here. I was just wanted to show you: Man, Scrying Pool+Village+Merchant Guild is amazing. Let's just look at the last turn where I got 5 Merchant Guilds in play to get 30 Coin tokens. That's just crazy. One or two more turns and I could have piled out the Provinces.
Summary:
Merchant Guild is no top card, but it's definitely way better than many on the forums commented. It has many uses (Slogs, other Coin token cards, Engines with cheap components) and is not only useful in megaturn strategies, but there it can really really shine.
Synergies
Antisynergies
Versions
English versions
Digital | Text | Release | Date | |
---|---|---|---|---|
+1 Buy. +. While this is in play, when you buy a card, take a Coin token. |
Guilds 1st Edition | June 2013 | ||
+1 Buy. +. While this is in play, when you buy a card, +1 Coffers. |
Guilds 2nd Edition | March 2018 |
Other language versions
Trivia
Secret History