Poor House
Poor House | |
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Info | |
Cost | |
Type(s) | Action |
Kingdom card? | Yes |
Set | Dark Ages |
Illustrator(s) | Jessica Cox |
Card text | |
+ Reveal your hand. - per Treasure card in your hand, to a minimum of . |
Poor House is an Action card from Dark Ages. It is the only Kingdom card with a cost of and the only one that can subtract from your total. It provides you with minus the number of Treasures in your hand: great when you can get rid of treasures, not so great otherwise!
Its cost of can have weird consequences: for instance, cards like Upgrade and Remake can no longer be used to trash Copper with impunity if Poor House is in the supply.
Contents |
FAQ
Official FAQ
- First you get +.
- Then you reveal your hand, and lose per Treasure card in it.
- You can lose more than this way, but the amount of you have available to spend can never go below .
- Cards with two types, one of which is Treasure (such as Harem from Intrigue) are Treasure cards.
Other Rules clarifications
Strategy Article
Since Dark Ages is fairly new and has not been available on isotropic, many Dark Ages cards and interactions remain unexplored; this attempt at an article is quite incomplete. If you have better ideas, please share them on the forums!
In the basic case, Poor House's on-play effect is very similar to Secret Chamber's, even though the card texts are very different. In an ordinary 5-card hand with one action, you will use Secret Chamber to discard your non-Treasure cards and get + for each of them, adding up to the same amount of money you'd get from Poor House: minus the number of Treasure cards in your hand. The circumstances which make Poor House stronger, however, are very different from those that make Secret Chamber stronger. Unlike Secret Chamber, Poor House is weakened in large hands but retains its effectiveness in small hands; in the presence of extra actions, multiple Poor Houses can be played to give you the same bonus, while playing multiple Secret Chambers consecutively is worse than just playing one.
Poor House has one very obvious use—as a terminal + in a deck where you have trashed all your Treasures, or are able to discard them. This makes it a top-notch buy in games with heavy trashing such as Chapel. Without treasure in hand, a village and two Poor Houses can buy a Province, as good as three Golds.
Poor House's interaction with Ambassador is complex. If you safely open with two Ambassadors and rid your deck of most Coppers, Poor House can restart your buying power quickly. However, this strategy can be mitigated by an opponent who pursues a similar strategy and sends you Copper aggressively.
Poor House is obviously terrible in Big Money or in engine games with weak trashing.
Poor House has a love/hate relationship with Remake, Upgrade, and Develop: when Poor House is around, these can be amazing to jump-start a money-free poor-house centered deck, or they can be terrible, bloating your deck with the mostly-useless terminal action. (of course, getting actions for free, and a guaranteed 4 every turn can help Vineyards along)
Discarding
Discarding and sifters can enable you to buy (and cash in on) Poor Houses earlier than you normally would, or get by without as strong trashing or even without trashing at all. Poor House works especially well with Hamlet; Hamlet can discard unwanted treasures while providing +Action and +Buy, allowing one to play or buy additional Poor Houses or Hamlets. Warehouse is slightly less useful, and Oasis yet weaker, but still helpful. Cellar does not work quite as well as it discards before drawing, but can be useful for mostly-thinned decks with a few stray Coppers left, or to sift through to find other cards.
Vault, Secret Chamber, Storeroom, and Horse Traders can also be used to drop treasure (for benefit) and activate Poor House, but these cards are terminal and require abundant +Actions to be used together with Poor House.
Synergies/Combos
- Heavy trashing, such as Chapel or Steward
- Upgrade, Remake if Hamlet is on the board, and there are a good amount of cheap sifters/villages
- Ambassador, depending on your opponent's strategies
- Vineyard, sort of, since it's a super-cheap action card to pick up with any spare +Buy
- Wandering Minstrel, discard your treasures and play multiple Poor Houses in one turn
- Cards allowing voluntary discard, especially Hamlet but also Warehouse, Oasis, or others
Antisynergies
Trivia
In other languages
- French: Hospice
- German: Armenhaus
- Spanish: Hospicio
Secret History