Knight

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Knights
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action - Attack - Knight
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Dark Ages
Illustrator(s)	Matthias Catrein
Card text
Shuffle the Knights pile before each game with it. Keep it face down except for the top card, which is the only one that can be bought or gained.

Knights are a type of Kingdom card from the Dark Ages expansion. There are 10 differently-named unique Knights with a single randomizer card; when Knights are selected as a Kingdom card for a game, they are shuffled into a single supply pile, of which only the top card can be seen and gained at any given time.

Every Knight costs except Sir Martin, who costs .

Every Knight is an Action–Attack-Knight card (Dame Josephine is also a Victory card) with the same main trashing attack ability—''Each other player reveals the top 2 cards of his deck, trashes one of them costing from to , and discards the rest. If a Knight is trashed by this, trash this card"—and each Knight has a unique second ability.

The individual Knights (and their second abilities) are:

• Dame Anna - You may trash up to 2 cards from your hand.
• Dame Josephine - 2  
• Dame Molly - +2 Actions
• Dame Natalie - You may gain a card costing up to .
• Dame Sylvia - +
• Sir Bailey - +1 Card +1 Action
• Sir Destry - +2 Cards
• Sir Martin - +2 Buys
• Sir Michael - Each other player discards down to 3 cards in hand.
• Sir Vander - When you trash this, gain a Gold.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• This is a pile in which each card is different. There is the same basic ability on each card, but also another ability unique to that card in the pile, and they all have different names.
• Shuffle the Knights pile before playing with it, keeping it face down except for the top one, which is the only card that can be gained from the pile.
• Follow the rules on Knights in order from top to bottom; Sir Michael causes players to discard before it trashes cards.
• The ability they have in common is that each other player reveals the top 2 cards of his deck, trashes one of them that he chooses that costs from to , and discards the rest; then, if a Knight was trashed, you trash the Knight you played that caused this trashing. Resolve this ability in turn order, starting with the player to your left.
• Cards with Potion in the cost (from Alchemy) do not cost from to .
• The player losing a card only gets a choice if both cards revealed cost from to ; if they both do and one is a Knight but the player picks the other card, that will not cause the played Knight to be trashed.
• When Sir Martin is the top card of the pile, it can be gained with an Armory and so on.
• If Sir Vander is trashed, you gain a Gold; this happens whether it is trashed on your turn or someone else's. The player who had Sir Vander is the one who gains the Gold, regardless of who played the card that trashed it.
• The Gold from Sir Vander, and the card gained for Dame Natalie, comes from the Supply and is put into your discard pile.
• When playing Dame Anna, you may choose to trash zero, one, or two cards from your hand.
• Dame Josephine is also a Victory card, worth 2   at the end of the game. The Knight pile is not a Victory pile though, and does not get a counter for Trade Route (from Prosperity) even if Dame Josephine starts on top.
• If you choose to use the Knights with Black Market (a promotional card), put a Knight directly into the Black Market deck, rather than using the randomizer card.
• Sir Martin only costs , though the other Knights all cost .

Strategy Article

There isn't yet a strategy article for Knights.

They each have their own unique benefit, so the power of the Knight pile will in general depend on which one is on top of the pile and how that particular Knight fits in to your strategy. The use cases for the individual knights will be discussed on their strategy pages.

The trashing attack of Knights is not as destructive as it seems; better than Saboteur, but worse than Cursers and more swingy than handsize attacks.

Synergies/Combos

• Various Cornucopia cards which reward variety will like the different Knights in the pile.
  • Fairgrounds
  • Horn of Plenty
  • Menagerie

Antisynergies

• Fortress engines counter Knights
• gainers can flood the opponent's deck with cheap cards they don't mind trashing

Trivia

Secret History

How about a pile where every card is different? To keep from being too much to remember, they could be variations on a theme. Thus was my thinking back when, and the 2007 version of the set had a pile of Knights. They each had "Each other player trashes the top card of his deck," which was my standard trashing attack in those days, plus a bonus that varied by Knight. At that time kingdom card piles were 12 cards, and exactly 12 people had played Dominion when I made the first version of the expansion, so I had a Knight for each of them.

When the top-card-trashing attacks all died their deserved deaths, I had to find a way to fix up the Knights. I settled on trashing cards in the range –. I tried other ranges, man, don't think I didn't. If the lower limit is , you always buy Silver over 's, which makes the game less fun. If the top limit is , you always buy Gold over 's, which makes the game less fun. – is the range that does not actually stop you from building a deck with actions, while not helping your opponents by trashing junk, and not being so swingy as to trash Provinces. I could have gone – but decided to let the 's be excitingly immune to Knights.

The Knights slowed down the game, and needed some penalty to mildly keep them in check. They still slow down the game, but you know, not quite as much. They are for the people who like this kind of thing, and well some people adore them, slower game and all. Some people are all, my cards, my precious cards, and well there are plenty of other cards in the set for those guys. Sometimes someone else's cool fun thing trashes your cards, that's just the way it is. Anyway where was I. A penalty. I let them Moat each other, which was okay, and also tried letting any attack Moat them. I think Bill Barksdale suggested having them kill each other. It's a good penalty because it means if people go heavy into Knights, they kill each other off and then there are not as many of them.

The 12-card pile had a few abilities that have not survived. There were a few that scaled with the number of players in a way that I sometimes am okay with but which wasn't great. Like, + per treasure trashed. There was one that attacked the turn you got it: the Hinterlands Knight. And all of the original resource abilities were weaker—it was +1 Card etc. rather than +2 Cards etc. The Knights needed to be better, and improving the bonuses was more fun than improving the attack.

The Knights are still all named after real people, so hey let's meet them! Some of them are even illustrated on the cards, although two declined, two are small children, and some of the remaining six resemble the actual person more than others.

Dame Josephine / Dame Natalie / Dame Sylvia: My wife and daughters.

Dame Molly / Sir Destry: Two friends who were in the first game of Dominion, along with me and Dame Josephine. For you Prosperity fans, Dame Molly is the one who suggested "spendy" as an expansion theme.

Sir Martin / Dame Anna: A friend who would have been in that game, but he'd moved away some months earlier, and his girlfriend.

Sir Bailey: Dame Molly's boyfriend, and the second person to have a copy of Dominion. He was also the first person to make homemade cards, if mine don't count, and he made Courtyard.

Sir Vander / Sir Michael: My e-friend who suffered through endless conversations about Dominion but did not playtest much, and another e-friend who playtested a bunch.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of the Dark Ages Cards