Counterfeit
Counterfeit | |
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Info | |
Cost | |
Type(s) | Treasure |
Kingdom card? | Yes |
Set | Dark Ages |
Illustrator(s) | Ryan Laukat |
Card text | |
+1 Buy When you play this, you may play a Treasure from your hand twice. If you do, trash that Treasure. |
Counterfeit is a Treasure card from Dark Ages. It functions as a Throne Room variant and trasher for Treasures, allowing you to play another Treasure card twice while trashing it. Early in the game, Counterfeit can function like Moneylender, allowing you to trash Copper for a total of +; in the endgame, it acts more like a trash-for-benefit card, allowing you to trash higher-value Treasures such as Gold for large amounts of payload.
Contents |
FAQ
Official FAQ
- When you play this, you get and +1 Buy, and you may play a Treasure card from your hand twice.
- If you choose to do that, you trash that Treasure.
- You still get any coins that Treasure gave you from playing it, despite trashing it.
- If you use Counterfeit to play Spoils twice, you will get + (in addition to the from Counterfeit) and return Spoils to the Spoils pile; you will be unable to trash it.
- If you use Counterfeit to play a Treasure that does something special when you play it (such as another Counterfeit), you will do that thing twice.
Other rules clarifications
- If you use Counterfeit to play and trash a Treasure that has an effect while it is in play, you will not get to use that effect once the card is trashed. For example, using Counterfeit on Quarry will not leave you with reduced prices for Action cards.
Strategy
Counterfeit is a Kingdom Treasure that offers +Buy and allows you to trash Treasures while generating payload, which makes it useful for different purposes during different stages of the game. In the early game, it is a good trasher of Treasures, primarily Copper, and therefore useful in helping you attain deck control. Later, especially in the endgame, it can be a strong enabler of other payload given the +Buy and explosive potential of doubling that other payload.
While Counterfeit is expensive and often faces competition at from powerful Action cards, it is often worth gaining, particularly in the opening when possible. It provides a strong way to thin Coppers without consuming terminal space and while maintaining your ability to afford a useful card that turn: trashing a Copper with Counterfeit produces a total of , so you get the same payload as if the Counterfeit were a Silver plus the benefit of trashing the Copper. However, given that Counterfeit is restricted to trashing Treasures, a more general-purpose trasher is sometimes preferable. For example, Junk Dealer may be a better purchase than Counterfeit in the early game if you anticipate gaining Curses or Ruins or if the Kingdom offers no alternative, such as Scrap, for trashing Estates.
Later in the game, Counterfeit is akin to a Procession for Treasures, in that it greatly increases your deck’s capabilities at the cost of trashing some components. For example, Counterfeiting a Gold this turn may allow you to afford multiple engine pieces that you would not be able to otherwise. Because this pattern of play consumes resources, it is best enabled by effects that can provide fodder. Treasure gainers (such as Bandit) are very effective for this purpose. In the absence of such effects, you often will still have Coppers or Silvers left over from the early game to trash. After you run out of those, however, it can sometimes be worth buying Treasures (especially Copper, which are almost free with Counterfeit’s +Buy) to improve your Counterfeit's effective output. In the endgame, particularly on your final turn, you can use Counterfeit to generate a large burst of in a one-time fashion by trashing high-value Treasures without needing to use some of the resulting payload to regain them. This often includes chaining multiple copies of Counterfeit itself, which generates a large number of extra Buys that may allow you to end the game, especially with a pileout.
Even outside the endgame, Counterfeit synergizes well with Treasures that have intrinsically one-shot effects, since you can extract double the value with only the usual downside. Specifically, Counterfeiting Spoils or Stockpile is a relatively efficient way of generating , and because their own effects (returning to the pile and moving to Exile respectively) prevent Counterfeit from trashing them, they are as easy to restore to your deck as usual. Capital is also a good target: Counterfeiting it produces a large amount of and +Buy while avoiding the you would usually take, since the Capital is never discarded from play. You do need to resupply the trashed Capital if you want to do this repeatedly, so it works best when you can use a gainer such as Artisan to gain Capital or as part of a megaturn to close out the game, though simply rebuying the Capital can work as well. The trashing effect of Counterfeit anti-synergizes with while-in-play abilities, which can occasionally be relevant with cards such as Quarry.
Versions
English versions
Digital | Text | Release | Date | |
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+1 Buy When you play this, you may play a Treasure from your hand twice. If you do, trash that Treasure. |
Dark Ages | August 2012 | ||
+1 Buy When you play this, you may play a Treasure from your hand twice. If you do, trash that Treasure. |
Dark Ages (2017 printing) | September 2017 | ||
+1 Buy When you play this, you may play a non-Duration Treasure from your hand twice. If you do, trash that Treasure. |
non-Duration errata | 2022 |
Other language versions
Trivia
Secret History