Disappearing money
Disappearing money is an informal term for non-terminal Action cards that give +
and do not give +Cards. They resemble most Treasure cards in that they give + and reduce handsize when played, and any number of them can be freely played on a turn; but unlike Treasure cards they can "disappear" from your hand before other Action cards are played. They therefore fit well into engine strategies that depend on Action cards that benefit from, or can compensate for, reduced handsize. In a Big Money game with little or no terminal draw, these cards essentially function like Treasure.
Many strategies that benefit from disappearing money also benefit from cantrip money; which of the two is better for an engine will depend on how the other engine cards interact with reduced handsize. With sufficient support from villages, termina Actions that give + can be treated as "disappearing money" as well—and some of the disappearing-money actions are villages themselves.
Engines which benefit from disappearing money
- Terminal draw cards that draw up to a specific handsize: Library, Watchtower, and to a lesser extent Jack of all Trades.
- Tactician, especially the double Tactician engine: since playing Tactician discards your whole hand, it's desirable to be able to play -giving Actions before you do so.
- Minion, which discards your hand and draws up to a specific handsize—and can function as disappearing money itself to boot, making Minion in effect a single-card engine.
- Menagerie: unlike Treasure, you can have any number of copies of the same disappearing-money Action and play them all before Menagerie to create a hand with no duplicates
List of cards that can provide disappearing money
Fringe cases
- Oasis is a Peddler variant that discards a card from your hand, and thus it reduces handsize in the same way the cards above do. It can be thought of as a cantrip that turns another card in your hand into "disappearing money".
- Junk Dealer is a similar handsize-reducing Peddler variant that trashes from your hand instead of discarding.
- Tribute can provide disappearing money, but it is not under the player's control whether it does so.
