Market Square
Market Square | |
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Info | |
Cost | |
Type(s) | Action - Reaction |
Kingdom card? | Yes |
Set | Dark Ages |
Illustrator(s) | Lorraine Schleter |
Card text | |
+1 Card +1 Action +1 Buy When one of your cards is trashed, you may discard this from your hand. If you do, gain a Gold. |
Market Square is an Action-Reaction card from Dark Ages. When played, it is a cantrip source of +Buy; however, when paired with a trasher (or as a defense against a trashing attack), it can gain you Golds!
Contents |
FAQ
Official FAQ
- When you play this, you draw a card and get +1 Action and +1 Buy.
- When one of your cards is trashed, you may discard Market Square from your hand. If you do, you gain a Gold.
- The Gold comes from the Supply and is put into your discard pile.
- If there is no Gold left in the Supply, you do not gain one.
- You may discard multiple Market Squares when a single card of yours is trashed.
Other Rules clarifications
You can discard Market Square before or after other when-trashed triggers. For example, if you trash a Cultist while holding a Market Square in hand, two things happen - you can discard the Market Square to gain a Gold, and you can draw 3 cards due to Cultist's when-trashed ability. You can do these in any order - you can first draw 3 cards and then discard one or more Market Squares to gain Gold (even ones that you just drew), or you can first discard a Market Square to gain a Gold, and then draw 3 cards from trashing the Cultist. You can even do both - discard a Market Square to gain a Gold, draw 3 cards for trashing the Cultist, and then discard another Market Square from your hand! (Yes, it is technically possible to discard the same Market Square twice, if you drew it again!)
Strategy Article
There is no strategy article yet for Market Square. Feel free to add your thoughts!
An obvious use case for Market Square is as a cheap +Buy in an engine. Sometimes you'll buy a Woodcutter or Herbalist for the +Buy, and Market Square is probably better - a lot of the time you'd rather have your +Buy be a cantrip that doesn't get in the way rather than a terminal.
Market Square has an obvious synergy with Hovel - if you draw your Market Square with Hovel, you can buy a Victory card, trash the Hovel, and discard the Market Square to gain a Gold. This could be either on a lucky early hand, or once you've ramped up your engine and want to add a little bit of buying power while starting to green.
Market Square typically won't help a Big Money game, with one big exception - Masquerade. Big Money+Masquerade+Market Square can supply a steady stream of Golds. I'm not sure how best to play it, but presumably you want more than one Masquerade and Market Square.
Obviously, when setting up an engine, Market Square can help with early buying power. If you open Chapel or Steward with Market Square, you can safely trash everything, buy engine components like Villages and Smithies, and forgo Silver entirely, jumping straight to Gold when your Market Square and your trasher collide.
Market Square has great synergy with a lot of trashers. Since it is a cantrip, you can freely load up on Market Squares, to match up with your smaller number of trashers. - Moneylender, Forager, Mine, Upgrade, Remodel, Junk Dealer, all can be used to activate Market Square to good effect.
Synergies/Combos
- early-game trashers like Chapel, Steward
- Hovel
- Masquerade
- Bishop
- Remodel can trash cards to activate Market Square, and can then turn the Golds into Provinces.
- Combo: Highway and Market
Antisynergies
Alternate versions
Digital version for Dominion Online
Trivia
In other languages
- Dutch: Marktplein (lit. market square)
- Finnish: Kauppatori (lit. marketplace)
- French: Place du marché
- German: Marktplatz
- Japanese: 青空市場 (pron. aozoraichiba, lit. open-air market)
- Korean: 시장 광장 (pron. sijang gwangjang)
- Spanish: Plaza del Mercado
Secret History
Once Intrigue had the top half. By the time I was working on Intrigue for publication, it didn't seem worth a slot. I brought it back here because I needed a simple top for the reaction. Before that I tried the reaction paired with Fool's Gold's top.
Originally the reaction was, you could trash this to gain a Gold when one of your cards was trashed. Time has shown that gaining a Gold is not as awesome as it looks (btw spoilers), and I eventually got around to testing the stronger version that made it into the set.
The reaction also dates back to Intrigue. I had a reaction that let you gain a copy of a card of yours that was trashed. To be good enough it had to give you Gold instead.