Prosperity

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Prosperity
Prosperity.jpg
Prosperity2.jpg
Info
Type Expansion
Icon Prosperity icon.png
Cards 300
250 (25 sets)
24
25
1
Additional Material(s)  
Theme(s)
  • Wealth
  • Treasures with abilities
  • Expensive powerful cards
Release October 2010
Official Rulebook PDF

Prosperity is the fourth Dominion expansion, released in October 2010. The basic conceptual theme of the set is wealth, focusing on Treasure cards and on expensive cards with powerful abilities. It is a full size expansion, and it is best known for featuring a variety of powerful game-changing cards, including the two new basic cards ColonyColony.jpg and PlatinumPlatinum.jpg and cards that produce VP tokens. Prosperity also introduced the first Treasure cards that have effects in addition to simply providing +$. It is the only expansion to feature cards costing $7 and to have no cards costing $2, and it thereby has the highest average card cost of all expansions.

Contents

Contents

Basic Supply Cards

$9 PlatinumPlatinum.jpg
$11 ColonyColony.jpg

  • Platinum and Colony are not used in every game, unless that game includes only Kingdom Cards from Prosperity. Otherwise, their use should be determined based on the proportion of Prosperity and non-Prosperity cards in use.
  • Either Platinum and Colony are both used, or neither is used.
  • Games using Platinum and Colony have another ending condition in addition to the usual ones: at the end of each turn, if the Supply pile of Colony cards is empty, the game ends.

Kingdom Cards

$3 LoanLoan.jpg, Trade RouteTrade Route.jpg, WatchtowerWatchtower.jpg, ContrabandContraband.jpg
$4 BishopBishop.jpg, MonumentMonument.jpg, QuarryQuarry.jpg, TalismanTalisman.jpg, Worker's VillageWorker's Village.jpg
$5 CityCity.jpg, Counting HouseCounting House.jpg, MintMint.jpg, MountebankMountebank.jpg, RabbleRabble.jpg, Royal SealRoyal Seal.jpg, VaultVault.jpg, VentureVenture.jpg
$6 GoonsGoons.jpg, Grand MarketGrand Market.jpg, HoardHoard.jpg
$7 BankBank.jpg, ExpandExpand.jpg, ForgeForge.jpg, King's CourtKing's Court.jpg
$8star PeddlerPeddler.jpg

Additional Materials

Additional Rules

  • "+XVP" - The player takes XVP tokens. He takes them from the pile of unused tokens, not from another player. When a player first takes VP tokens, he takes a player mat to put them on. VP tokens are not private; anyone can count them. There are 1VP and 5VP tokens; players make change as needed. At the end of the game, players add the VP they have from tokens to their regular score. If the tokens run out, use something else to track any further tokens; players are not limited by the number of tokens available. VP tokens are used by Bishop, Goons, and Monument.
  • “In play” - Action cards and Treasure cards played face-up to a play area are in play until they are moved somewhere else—usually until they are discarded during a Clean-up phase. Only played cards are in play; set aside cards, trashed cards, cards in the Supply, and cards in hands, decks, and discard piles are not in play. Reaction abilities like Watchtower's do not put those cards into play. Duration cards (from Dominion: Seaside), once played, remain in play until the turn they are discarded. Prosperity includes eight Treasure cards with rules on them. They are in the Supply if selected as one of the 10 Kingdom cards for the game; they are not part of the Basic Supply. They are just like normal Treasures, but have special abilities. They are played during the Buy phase like normal Treasures and are affected by cards that refer to Treasures.
  • A player may play his Treasure cards in any order and may choose not to play some (or even all) of the Treasure cards he has in his hand. During the Buy phase, a player must play all of the Treasures he wishes to play before he buys any cards, even if he has +Buys; he cannot play more Treasures after Buying a card.

Flavor Text

Ah, money. There's nothing like the sound of coins clinking in your hands. You vastly prefer it to the sound of coins clinking in someone else's hands, or the sound of coins just sitting there in a pile that no-one can quite reach without getting up. Getting up, that's all behind you now. Life has been good to you. Just ten years ago, you were tilling your own fields in a simple straw hat. Today, your kingdom stretches from sea to sea, and your straw hat is the largest the world has ever known. You also have the world's smallest dog, and a life-size statue of yourself made out of baklava. Sure, money can't buy happiness, but it can buy envy, anger, and also this kind of blank feeling. You still have problems - troublesome neighbors that must be conquered. But this time, you'll conquer them in style.


Impact of Prosperity

Prosperity is a very popular expansion, as its themes lend very well to extravagant engines and frequent high-spending turns, which are usually quite a lot of fun to play. Most of the cards produce $, and Prosperity-heavy games can result in ludicrously high amounts of VP being gained (at least compared to other expansions), including cards that can indefinitely continue to produce VP. It quite firmly grounded the strategic center of Dominion in engine decks, and it wasn't until the release of Hinterlands that this changed.

Game Changing Cards

Prosperity is filled with incredibly powerful cards which often dominate the games they are a part of. Some of these include:

  • CityCity.jpg - Level 2 Cities are fantastic cards, offering +Actions, +Cards, and +$.
  • GoonsGoons.jpg - The VP chips and +Buy make Goons viable in both BM and engine games. Goons is capable of producing obscene scores well over 100 VP.
  • Grand MarketGrand Market.jpg - A powerful cantrip which players will often rush to grab.
  • King's CourtKing's Court.jpg - Being able to play a card 3 times is invaluable, and players will often gladly trade a ProvinceProvince.jpg buy to grab a King's Court.
  • MountebankMountebank.jpg - One of the most powerful attacks in the game, it is capable of damaging an opponent's deck even after the CurseCurse.jpg pile empties.

Victory Tokens

The three VP token cards - BishopBishop.jpg, MonumentMonument.jpg and GoonsGoons.jpg - allow for the acquisition of VP without gaining Victory cards. They are all quite popular cards, as well as strong ones, and can, in some cases, lead to stalemate game states where no player moves to end the game, because they can simply continue producing VP indefinitely. Despite being such a small part of the set, they are usually thought of as one of the key themes of the expansion. All of them favor engine games, as they allow not only for decks without Treasures, but decks without any Victory cards to clog a trimmed engine.

Treasures

Despite having the most Kingdom Treasures of any set, the Treasures of Prosperity for the most part favor engine and combo play more than big money.

  • LoanLoan.jpg - trashes other Treasures to help jumpstart an engine
  • QuarryQuarry.jpg - makes it much easier to purchase high-cost Actions
  • TalismanTalisman.jpg - can pick up cheap engine parts quickly
  • ContrabandContraband.jpg - terrible as a BM card, works best in Alt-VP strategies
  • Royal SealRoyal Seal.jpg - allows for the immediate use of engine parts
  • BankBank.jpg - functions best with large handsizes, which engines provide most reliably

However, a minority of the Treasures are well-suited to BM strategies:

  • VentureVenture.jpg - an "engine" onto itself, but only with other Treasures
  • HoardHoard.jpg - encourages BM play, though it can fit in certain engines

Colonies and Platinum

Colonies and Platinum impact the games they are present in in a variety of ways.

  • Longer Games - Colony games typically last longer than ProvinceProvince.jpg games, as it is more difficult to build to the $11 required to buy a Colony.
  • Engine Viability - Because games are typically longer, engines tend to be more viable than BM strategies in Colony games.
  • Alternate VP - Alt-VP are typically less viable in Colony games, as the 10 VP of a Colony is often large enough to offset the massed VP you will see from cards such as DukeDuke.jpg, GardensGardens.jpg, or Silk RoadSilk Road.jpg.

Prosperity Theme

Game designer Donald X. offered some insight into some themes of the set here.

  • 8 Special Treasure: Loan, Quarry, Talisman, Contraband, Royal Seal, Venture, Hoard, Bank (Platinum)
  • 7 Treasure interaction: Counting House, Mint, Mountebank, Venture, Grand Market, Hoard, Bank
  • 5 Non-attack player interaction: Trade Route, Bishop, City, Contraband, Vault
  • 3 VP tokens: Bishop, Monument, Goons
  • 8 Expensive: Goons, Grand Market, Hoard, Bank, Expand, Forge, King's Court, Peddler (Platinum, Colony)

Trivia

Secret History

  • Rather than a card-by-card breakdown, Prosperity's Secret History was originally written as a version-by-version look at the set as a whole. That version can still be viewed here, but Donald X. has provided it to the community in the same format as the other Histories to accomodate this wiki. [1]


As part of my ongoing effort to endlessly document Prosperity, here is a new intro.

I made Dominion. It gradually got more cards. One day I divided up the cards into a main set, a first expansion, and a second expansion. Then I moved on! My friends just wanted to play Dominion though. Okay; I could make some more Dominion expansions.

I asked my friend Molly if there was a theme she'd like to see. She said "spendy." And spendy I gave her.

Initially the set's themes were: spendy, in particular Platinum/Colony; cards caring about treasures; treasures that did something when spent; and actions that let you spend money to do things. At the time the set was just 18 cards, including Platinum/Colony. Intrigue and Seaside/Hinterlands were both 15, but counting Platinum/Colony in 15 cards seemed too small, and then a page holds 9 cards. So, 18. Then I decided the sets were too small and upped them all to 20; then during work on the published version I tried all of the sets at 16 cards briefly, then finally up to 25.

The spendy theme got fleshed out by having four cards costing $7, and nothing costing $2. Seaside got extra $2's to compensate. Cards caring about treasures remained a minor theme. I added more treasures that did things, but changed "when spent" to "when played," to deal with rules questions, while having some treasures do things "while in play." The actions that let you spend money died; they weren't compelling and anyway Black Market confused some people.

I added a non-attack interaction subtheme. The set needed interaction, like any set, but it had trouble with attacks. Attacks slow down the game and push you away from buying Colonies. But this is the set with Colonies, you want those to be reachable. So in the end the set only has 3 attacks, but it has 5 non-attacks that interact (not counting Watchtower).

I also added the VP tokens. Monument hadn't always been in the set, and then at one point left, tentatively slated for Dark Ages. I brought it back as a thing people liked that seemed to fit well. I knew tokens would be used for Monument, and also that people would be disappointed if it was the only card that used them (Seaside just had one use per token type because the set did not originally use tokens). In the end I managed to have three cards that used them.

Prosperity was initially the third expansion. Around the time work on it was almost done, it turned out that the powers that be wanted small expansions, and could the next one be small? So Prosperity got put on hold while I worked on Alchemy. This gave it extra time to get extra polished. Bishop and Goons came out of that period, and various small tweaks.


Retrospective

Prosperity got more testing than any other set, due to being pushed back for Alchemy. It did not need even more testing; whatever cards could be improved, it would not be worth spending time improving them. That's time that could be spent improving other expansions or working on other games. That's how I see it.


Recommended Sets of 10

Prosperity Only

Beginners [images]
Bank Counting House Expand Goons Monument
Bank.jpg Counting House.jpg Expand.jpg Goons.jpg Monument.jpg
Rabble.jpg Royal Seal.jpg Venture.jpg Watchtower.jpg Worker's Village.jpg
Rabble Royal Seal Venture Watchtower Worker's Village
Friendly Interactive [images]
Bishop City Contraband Forge Hoard
Bishop.jpg City.jpg Contraband.jpg Forge.jpg Hoard.jpg
Peddler.jpg Royal Seal.jpg Trade Route.jpg Vault.jpg Worker's Village.jpg
Peddler Royal Seal Trade Route Vault Worker's Village
Big Actions [images]
City Expand Grand Market King's Court Loan
City.jpg Expand.jpg Grand Market.jpg King's Court.jpg Loan.jpg
Mint.jpg Quarry.jpg Rabble.jpg Talisman.jpg Vault.jpg
Mint Quarry Rabble Talisman Vault

Prosperity & Dominion

Biggest Money [images]
Bank Grand Market Mint Royal Seal Venture
Bank.jpg Grand Market.jpg Mint.jpg Royal Seal.jpg Venture.jpg
Adventurer.jpg Laboratory.jpg Mine.jpg Moneylender.jpg Spy.jpg
Adventurer Laboratory Mine Moneylender Spy
The King's Army [images]
Expand Goons King's Court Rabble Vault
Expand.jpg Goons.jpg King's Court.jpg Rabble.jpg Vault.jpg
Bureaucrat.jpg Council Room.jpg Moat.jpg Spy.jpg Village.jpg
Bureaucrat Council Room Moat Spy Village
The Good Life [images]
Contraband Counting House Hoard Monument Mountebank
Contraband.jpg Counting House.jpg Hoard.jpg Monument.jpg Mountebank.jpg
Bureaucrat.jpg Cellar.jpg Chancellor.jpg Gardens.jpg Village.jpg
Bureaucrat Cellar Chancellor Gardens Village

Prosperity & Intrigue

Paths to Victory [images]
Bishop Counting House Goons Monument Peddler
Bishop.jpg Counting House.jpg Goons.jpg Monument.jpg Peddler.jpg
Baron.jpg Harem.jpg Pawn.jpg Shanty Town.jpg Upgrade.jpg
Baron Harem Pawn Shanty Town Upgrade
All Along the Watchtower [images]
Hoard Talisman Trade Route Vault Watchtower
Hoard.jpg Talisman.jpg Trade Route.jpg Vault.jpg Watchtower.jpg
Bridge.jpg Great Hall.jpg Mining Village.jpg Pawn.jpg Torturer.jpg
Bridge Great Hall Mining Village Pawn Torturer
Lucky Seven [images]
Bank Expand Forge King's Court Vault
Bank.jpg Expand.jpg Forge.jpg King's Court.jpg Vault.jpg
Bridge.jpg Coppersmith.jpg Swindler.jpg Tribute.jpg Wishing Well.jpg
Bridge Coppersmith Swindler Tribute Wishing Well

Prosperity & Hinterlands

Instant Gratification [images]
Bishop Expand Hoard Mint Watchtower
Bishop.jpg Expand.jpg Hoard.jpg Mint.jpg Watchtower.jpg
Farmland.jpg Haggler.jpg Ill-Gotten Gains.jpg Noble Brigand.jpg Trader.jpg
Farmland Haggler Ill-Gotten Gains Noble Brigand Trader
Treasure Trove [images]
Bank Monument Royal Seal Trade Route Venture
Bank.jpg Monument.jpg Royal Seal.jpg Trade Route.jpg Venture.jpg
Cache.jpg Develop.jpg Fool's Gold.jpg Ill-Gotten Gains.jpg Mandarin.jpg
Cache Develop Fool's Gold Ill-Gotten Gains Mandarin

Prosperity & Dark Ages

One Man's Trash [images]
Counterfeit Forager Graverobber Market Square Rogue
Counterfeit.jpg Forager.jpg Graverobber.jpg Market Square.jpg Rogue.jpg
City.jpg Grand Market.jpg Monument.jpg Talisman.jpg Venture.jpg
City Grand Market Monument Talisman Venture
Honor Among Thieves [images]
Bandit Camp Procession Rebuild Rogue Squire
Bandit Camp.jpg Procession.jpg Rebuild.jpg Rogue.jpg Squire.jpg
Forge.jpg Hoard.jpg Peddler.jpg Quarry.jpg Watchtower.jpg
Forge Hoard Peddler Quarry Watchtower

Prosperity & Adventures

Last Will and Monument [images]
Coin of the Realm Dungeon Messenger Relic Treasure Trove
Coin of the Realm.jpg Dungeon.jpg Messenger.jpg Relic.jpg Treasure Trove.jpg
Bishop.jpg Counting House.jpg Monument.jpg Rabble.jpg Vault.jpg
Bishop Counting House Monument Rabble Vault
Landscapes and Additional Cards
Inheritance
Inheritance.jpg
Think Big [images]
Distant Lands Giant Hireling Miser Storyteller
Distant Lands.jpg Giant.jpg Hireling.jpg Miser.jpg Storyteller.jpg
Contraband.jpg Expand.jpg Hoard.jpg King's Court.jpg Peddler.jpg
Contraband Expand Hoard King's Court Peddler
Landscapes and Additional Cards
Ball Ferry
Ball.jpg Ferry.jpg

Prosperity on DS.com and F.DS.com

DominionStrategy.com

Prosperity
Cards $3 AnvilAnvil.jpgWatchtowerWatchtower.jpg $4 BishopBishop.jpgClerkClerk.jpgInvestmentInvestment.jpgTiaraTiara.jpgMonumentMonument.jpgQuarryQuarry.jpgWorker's VillageWorker's Village.jpg $5 CharlatanCharlatan.jpgCityCity.jpgCollectionCollection.jpgCrystal BallCrystal Ball.jpgMagnateMagnate.jpgMintMint.jpgRabbleRabble.jpgVaultVault.jpgWar ChestWar Chest.jpg $6 HoardHoard.jpg $6star Grand MarketGrand Market.jpg $7 BankBank.jpgExpandExpand.jpgForgeForge.jpgKing's CourtKing's Court.jpg $8star PeddlerPeddler.jpg $9 PlatinumPlatinum.jpg $11 ColonyColony.jpg
Removed cards $3 LoanLoan.jpgTrade RouteTrade Route.jpg $4 TalismanTalisman.jpg $5 ContrabandContraband.jpgCounting HouseCounting House.jpgMountebankMountebank.jpgRoyal SealRoyal Seal.jpgVentureVenture.jpg $6 GoonsGoons.jpg
Combos and Counters Bishop/FortressCounting House/Travelling FairGolden deck
Other concepts Victory tokens
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Sets DominionIntrigueSeasideAlchemyProsperityCornucopia & GuildsHinterlandsDark AgesAdventures • EmpiresNocturneRenaissanceMenagerieAlliesPlunderRising SunPromo
Collections Big BoxSpecial Edition (German) • Alchemy & Cornucopia (Japanese, German, Dutch)
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