Draw

Revision as of 05:56, 5 May 2015

To draw is to take a card from your deck and put it into your hand. Cards which do this come in two flavours, terminal and non-terminal, with the distinction being whether or not the drawing card also provides at least +1 Action. Cards which provide +1 Card and +1 Action are often called cantrips. These cards mostly do no harm to your deck, but rely on their other abilities to actually do some good for you.

Most non-terminal draw only provides +2 Cards, which is fairly powerful on its own. The baseline for this is Laboratory, with others such as Hunting Party, Wishing Well and Menagerie providing similar abilities but playing differently. Note that some of these cards can be simply cantrips in some cases, but usually they are purchased for their ability to increase your handsize.

Most terminal draw cards which are desirable primarily for their draw ability provide at least +3 Cards. In general, +2 Cards is a bonus ability tacked on to a card (see Moat), or an ability which synergizes with or complements the other features of the card (see Masquerade, Ghost Ship). However, Oracle provides selective terminal draw and so needs only the 2 cards. The power of terminal draw is to increase your handsize and therefore have more buying power. However, this comes with the risk of drawing Actions which you can't play. So terminal draw is typically used in a Big Money deck with few actions, or with villages in a +Cards / +Actions engine.

The -1 Card token, used by Relic, Raid, and Borrow, directly attacks your drawing ability by preventing you from drawing a card when you otherwise would.

Official Rules

• "+X Card(s)" – the player immediately draws X number of cards from his Deck. If there are not enough cards in his Deck, he draws as many as he can, shuffles the Discard pile to form a new Deck, and then draws the rest. If he still does not have enough cards left after forming a new Deck, he just draws as many as he can.