Governor

Governor
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Promo
Illustrator(s)	Harald Lieske
Card text
+1 Action Choose one; you get the version in parentheses: +1 (+3) Cards; or each player gains a Silver (Gold); or each player may trash a card from his hand and gain a card costing exactly () more.

Governor is a promotional Action card. It can be a trasher, a gainer, or a Laboratory variant - it gives you three options each of which give you an extremely powerful benefit and give your opponent a smaller version of the benefit.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• You always get +1 Action.
• Then you either
  • draw three cards and each other player draws a card;
  • or you gain a Gold and each other player gains a Silver;
  • or you may trash a card from your hand and gain a card costing exactly more and each other player may trash a card from his hand and gain a card costing exactly more.
• Go in turn order, starting with yourself; this may matter if piles are low.
• The gained cards come from the Supply and are put into discard piles; if there are none left, those cards are not gained. For example if you choose the second option and there is only one Silver in the Supply, the player to your left gets it and no-one else gets one.
• For the third option, you only gain a card if you trashed a card, and only if there is a card available in the Supply with the exact cost required.
• If you do trash a card, you must gain a card if you can.
• You cannot trash a Governor you played to itself, as it is no longer in your hand when you play it (though you can trash another copy of Governor from your hand).

Strategy Article

There is no strategy article for Governor.

Due to giving both you and the opponent benefits, Governor leads to a very fast game.

It is difficult to use correctly, since you need to gauge the value of the benefit to yourself against the benefit to your opponent. Will giving yourself +3 cards let you have a double-Province turn? Because the +1 Card you give your opponent will certainly enable them to buy at least one Province!

Governor has self-synergy, since you can use it to gain Gold and then trash Gold for Provinces.

Synergies/Combos

• Possession lets you give an opponent a huge hand and then use it yourself.
• handsize attacks (Ghost Ship, Militia, Margrave...) let you cancel out the handsize benefit to the opponent

Antisynergies

• If your opponent has a lot of -cost cards they can trash them and gain Duchies when you trash Gold for Provinces.
• If there is Alt-VP (Silk Road, Gardens, Island), then your opponent can trash Silver for points in the endgame!
• If there are -cost cards (Bank, Forge, King's Court), then your opponent might trash those cards for Provinces!
• Colony games make Gold much less critical.

Trivia

Card Art

The art continues art used for Puerto Rico: Anniversary Edition; the expansion symbol is from its cover.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, 'Art Trivia'

Secret History

So Jay wanted a Carcassonne-related promo for its anniversary and got Walled Village. Then he wanted another promo. The idea behind this promo was, that Stash had gone up at the BGG store paired with blanks, and well let's not do that again. So we needed another promo so it could be paired with Walled Village.

Jay initially thought, well, Power Grid was coming on its 10th anniversary too, or at least the original German version was (Funkenschlag), so how about something that tied in with Power Grid. He wanted it to be a green card of course. And we sat down and talked with Friedemann Friese about what could possibly be done. It wasn't sounding great. The flavor for Power Grid is not medieval, and then there wasn't an obvious mechanical thing to do that connected the games.

I said, are there any other games with anniversaries coming up? And Jay said, as a matter of fact. Puerto Rico was also having an anniversary. And well simulating Puerto Rico on a Dominion card was easy; the only issue was making the text fit, which I cleverly managed via "you get the version in parentheses." So while the previous promos were expansion outtakes, this one is a new card.

The first version of the card had +1 Card +1 Action, with the first option only giving you +2 Cards, i.e. it worked out the same as now if you wanted the cards, but gave you an extra card if you picked one of the other two things. The idea had been, that the bonus the other players get does not involve them spending a card or using an action, so it would be easier to balance the card if it also didn't cost you a card or an action. But the three options were not sufficiently balanced; the Remodel was especially crazy. So now you still get the same total number of cards if you pick cards, but you don't get a free card with your Gold or Remodel.

Governor will show up in the BGG store someday. I don't know if it will be paired with Walled Village, but as you may know, Walled Village has already been available for a while by itself, so it seems unlikely. There's a lesson there for all of us.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of the Dominion Promos