Hermit
Hermit | |
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Info | |
Cost | |
Type(s) | Action |
Kingdom card? | Yes |
Set | Dark Ages |
Illustrator(s) | Claus Stefan |
Card text | |
Look through your discard pile. You may trash a non-Treasure card from your discard pile or hand. Gain a card costing up to . When you discard this from play, if you didn't buy any cards this turn, trash this and gain a Madman from the Madman pile. |
Hermit is an Action card from Dark Ages. It is a single-card trasher, since it lets you trash a card which is not a Treasure, and a gainer, since it lets you gain a cheap card (often a Silver). However, if you buy nothing on the turn you play a Hermit, you trash the Hermit and instead gain a Madman, a powerful one-shot card.
Contents |
FAQ
Official FAQ
- When you play this, look through your discard pile, and then you may choose to trash a card that is not a Treasure, from either your hand or your discard pile.
- You do not have to trash a card and cannot trash Treasures.
- After trashing or not, you must gain a card costing up to .
- Then, when you discard Hermit from play - normally, in Clean-up, after playing it in your Action phase - if you did not buy any cards this turn, you trash Hermit and gain a Madman.
- The Madman comes from the Madman pile, which is not in the Supply.
- It does not matter whether or not you gained cards other ways, only whether you did not buy a card.
- If there are no Madman cards left, you do not gain one.
Other Rules clarifications
- Buying a card with Black Market from the Black Market deck prevents a Madman gain, even if no card is bought during the player's buy phase that turn.
- Gaining the Madman is not contigent on trashing the Hermit: when using Scheme's ability and putting the Hermit on top of your deck prevents Hermit's trashing, but you still gain the Madman.
- This works almost identically with Prince.
Strategy Article
In the early game, it can be used to trash Estates and Shelters and gain Silvers. In this role it might seem superficially similar to Jack of all Trades, but it is significantly weaker at this since it does not draw up to 5 cards - just plain Hermit-Big Money probably isn't that great. It can trash cards from your Discard pile, which makes it a tad better trasher, though.
At some point, you can forego your Buy for the turn to transform the Hermit into a Madman. This is sort of like a one-shot Tactician - you forego your buy in exchange for doubling your handsize on a future turn. You're not quite foregoing your whole turn because you did gain a card and lose a Hermit, but you're not quite doubling a future turn because playing a Madman starting from a normal 5-card hand will leave you with 8 cards and 2 actions, not as good as Tactician's 10 cards, 2 actions, 2 Buys. And since Hermit just looks at whether you bought anything, you can't do the equivalent of double Tactician.
If you use Hermit to gain a Hermit and buy nothing, then you've essentially spent your buy on a Madman. Not so bad.
Hermit may see extra use in games with Cursers. This will give the Hermit something useful to trash for much longer - and Hermit is pretty good at trashing Curses in a thick deck, since it can trash from the discard pile. It also might increase the value of Madman turns - it might be harder to reach or for important cards when you're being Sea Hagged all the time, but Madman will get you to your Goons or Forge or just Gold easily.
Hermit may be usable for mega-turns because of how Madman stacks. The first Madman you play in a turn gives you +4 Cards, the second would give you +7 Cards! Even with no other card draw, if you spend your Buys buying Hermits, Villages, Throne Rooms, or Bridges, you might be able to pull off a mega-turn when you get enough of those and a few Madmen.
Scheme and Prince allow you to get effectively infinite Madmen, by moving Hermit when it would be discarded, so that Hermit loses track of itself when trying to trash itself.
If you have comments on whether these strategies are viable, or ideas for other Hermit strategies, please feel free to discuss it on the forums!
Synergies/Combos
- Combo: Hermit and Market Square
- Cursers?
- Bridge, Ferry, Highway, and Inventor?
- Rogue - allows you to restore Hermits that were trashed to obtain Madmen. This is especially useful when the stack of Hermits is empty because multiple players have pursued Madmen.
- Fortress - use Hermit on a Fortress in your discard pile to return it to your hand to use—while gaining a
- Prince - Prince will set aside the Hermit at end of turn and prevent it from being trashed, potentially gaining many madmen.
Antisynergies
- Tactician?
- Handsize attacks. A Madman played from a Militia'd hand will only draw 2 cards, making it equivalent to a "level 1" City – better than nothing, but probably not worth the opportunity cost.
Versions
English versions
Digital | Text | Release | Date | |
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Look through your discard pile. You may trash a card from your discard pile or hand that is not a Treasure. Gain a card costing up to . When you discard this from play, if you did not buy any cards this turn, trash this and gain a Madman from the Madman pile. |
Dark Ages 1st Edition | August 2012 | ||
Look through your discard pile. You may trash a non-Treasure card from your discard pile or hand. Gain a card costing up to . When you discard this from play, if you didn't buy any cards this turn, trash this and gain a Madman from the Madman pile. |
Dark Ages 2nd Edition | September 2017 |
Other language versions
Language | Name | Digital | Text | Notes | |
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Czech | Poustevník | ||||
Dutch | Kluizenaar | ||||
Finnish | Erakko | ||||
French | Ermite | ||||
German | Eremit | Sieh deinen Ablagestapel durch. Du darfst eine Karte, die keine Geldkarte ist, aus deinem Ablagestapel oder aus deiner Hand entsorgen. Nimm dir eine Karte, die bis zu kostet. Wenn du diese Karte aus dem Spiel ablegst und in diesem Zug keine Karte gekauft hast, entsorge diese Karte und nimm dir einen Verrückten. |
HiG translation error: omitted "from the Madman pile." | ||
Japanese | 隠遁者 (pron. intonsha, lit. recluse) | 捨て札置き場のカードをすべて見る。手札か捨て札置き場から財宝カード以外のカード1枚を廃棄してもよい。コスト以下のカード1枚を獲得する。これを場から捨て札にするとき、このターン何もカードを購入していない場合、これを廃棄し、(狂人の山から)狂人1枚を獲得する。 | |||
Korean | 은둔자 (pron. eundunja) | ||||
Polish | Pustelnik | Although Polish version is not released, this card is referred to in the Polish version of Empires rulebook | |||
Russian | Отшельник (pron. otshyel'nik) | ||||
Spanish | Ermitaño |
Trivia
Preview
Hermit turns into Madman, a card that isn't in the supply. You can't buy a Madman; if you want one, you have to get a Hermit and then not buy something. And then you only get it once! Somehow it's worth the trouble.
Turning a card into a specific new non-kingdom card requires a pile of ten of those cards. Yes do you really need ten, I know. But you do. And well how much of the set wanted to go to that stuff, rather than say new kingdom cards? So in the end I just did two of those. Now you know one of them.Secret History
I tried the bottom on another card that didn't survive, then put it here. Originally I thought I would have several cards that upgraded into specific non-supply cards, but each one both requires 10 extra cards to handle it, and gives me a card with a ton of text on it. So there are only two. The premise originally came from thinking about Pirate Ship, at a point when it was too late to change it. I realized that I could have made it that Pirate Ship either attacked or upgraded, and it upgraded into a Retired Pirate that made money. This change wouldn't have addressed any problems, it was just a cute thing I could have done, if I'd thought of it in time and had been willing to give up a card slot for it. So after that I planned on one day doing such cards. "If you didn't buy anything" was an obvious simple trigger, and a nice fit for a Hermit. If he doesn't go into town often enough, he goes mad.