Alt-VP

Alternate VP refers to ways of scoring victory points other than gaining the basic Victory cards Estate, Duchy, Province, and Colony. The presence of alt-VP in a kingdom can sometimes drastically change the strategy of the game by making it possible to construct a deck that cannot easily hit or $11 turns but can still achieve high scores; and even when the best strategy still involves pursuing Provinces or Colonies, the presence of alt-VP can allow slower-building engines time to catch up simply because there are more victory points in total available to be obtained.

There are three basic types of alt-VP.

Scaling Victory cards

These are Kingdom Victory cards whose VP value is dependent on the contents of your deck. They can enable strategies that ignore Provinces altogether, while focusing on building your deck instead in such a way as to obtain and maximize the value of the alt-VP cards.

• Dominion: Gardens
• Intrigue: Duke
• Alchemy: Vineyard
• Cornucopia: Fairgrounds
• Hinterlands: Silk Road
• Dark Ages: Feodum

Functional Victory cards

These are Kingdom Victory cards whose VP value is constant and rather small, but they have other functions which may help in improving or maintaining a deck's efficiency. A deck that contains these cards can afford to get fewer of the basic Victory cards, since a score bonus is as it were already built into the engine.

• Intrigue: Great Hall, Harem, Nobles
• Seaside: Island
• Hinterlands: Farmland, Tunnel
• Dark Ages: Dame Josephine
  • Feodum, a scaling victory card, also has a functional on-trash effect.

Victory tokens

Three Action cards in Prosperity, when played, can grant victory tokens. These are counters which add to your score without taking up space in your deck. A deck depending on these can achieve high scores without adding dead cards to interfere with the deck's productivity.

• Bishop
• Goons
• Monument