Raze
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Raze | |
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Info | |
Cost | |
Type(s) | Action |
Kingdom card? | Yes |
Set | Adventures |
Illustrator(s) | RC Torres |
Card text | |
+1 Action Trash this or a card from your hand. Look at one card from the top of your deck per the trashed card costs. Put one of them into your hand and discard the rest. |
Raze is an Action card from Adventures. It is a trash-for-benefit sifter, turning the cost in of the trashed card into cards from your deck to select from. It is relatively weak as a trasher, but unlike most trashers it's able to trash itself once it stops being useful.
Contents |
FAQ
Official FAQ
- If you trash a card costing with this, you do not get any cards.
- If you trash a card costing or more, you look at a number of cards from the top of your deck equal to the cost in of the trashed card, take one into your hand, and discard the rest.
- For example if you trash an Estate, you look at the top two cards of your deck, put one into your hand, and discard the other one.
- You can trash the Raze itself; normally it costs , so you would look at two cards.
- Costs may be affected by cards like Bridge Troll.
- Raze is unaffected by the -1 Card token; if it is on top of your deck, replace it after resolving Raze.
Other Rules clarifications
- You may make either choice — trash the played card or trash a card from your hand — even if the played card is not in play anymore (e.g. from playing it twice with Throne Room) or you have no cards in your hand. You won't look at any cards if the choice you made causes you to not trash a card.
Strategy
There is no strategy article for Raze yet, but it has been discussed on the forum.
Raze is similar to, but weaker and cheaper than Apprentice. It trashes a card, and checks a number of cards from the top of your deck based on the cost of the trashed card. Apprentice, however, puts all of those cards in your hand, whereas with Raze you can choose one of them to put in your hand and discard the rest. As such, Raze is most useful for trashing Estates. If you open Raze with a strong or terminal, which could be a very good idea, drawing Raze with an Estate on turn 3 or 4 guarantees that your terminal does not miss the shuffle.
Unlike most trashers, including the trashing king Chapel, Raze can remove itself from your deck if you don't want it anymore, and you get a new card in exchange for it, which is a nice little bonus. This means that you can't really overbuy Raze; if you don't want it after all, immediately trash it again once you draw it, and skip a Copper in the process.
Raze trashes on play, which means it is quicker than Ratcatcher at the same cost, but trashing Copper decreases handsize further than with Ratcatcher. The community initially felt Ratcatcher was slightly stronger on average, but this opinion quickly switched. This change of opinion can be viewed in the List of Cards by Qvist Rankings.
Versions
English versions
Digital | Text | Release | Date | |
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+1 Action Trash this or a card from your hand. Look at a number of cards from the top of your deck equal to the cost in of the trashed card. Put one into your hand and discard the rest. |
Adventures 1st Edition | April 2015 | ||
+1 Action Trash this or a card from your hand. Look at one card from the top of your deck per the trashed card costs. Put one of them into your hand and discard the rest. |
Adventures 2nd Edition | August 2017 |
Other language versions
Trivia
Secret History
Further thoughts by Donald X.
In the Secret History, Donald X. described a trash-for-benefit card that Raze replaced, and later explained why that outtake was problematic.
It did everything for you - it got rid of junk, drew your deck, gave you the +Actions and +Buys you needed, made . There would be games where you had a way to get cards to feed it and you would have all these crazy turns, where you sat working out, okay I trash this Gold and take +1 Action +1 Buy +4 Cards. Other cards got in on the act and did their own broken things and got fixed or taken out, and this card kept trying to survive and acted like the other cards were the problem. They were not though.
On the surface it seemed reasonable because you are down a card or action compared to Apprentice. But the flexibility was huge. And as LF notes the +Buys were surprisingly powerful; there kept being combos where you cashed in on that one way or another. Like at one point Quest didn't require discarding, just having the cards. You could gain a giant pile of Gold and then burn through it next turn to draw your deck and make lots of and Buys. There was the duration card that gained you a Gold if you bought the named type (applying to everyone else too but to you on two turns); same deck, takes a lot of +Buys one turn, gain infinite Gold and explode.
The card was fun, that was part of why it hung around so long. It's great getting that immense flexibility. It's fun trashing good cards and having it be the move. The decks where you gained lots of Golds and ate them were high skill.
I then tried weakened versions and they were also too strong. I tried a card that just gave you +1 Action and +1 Buy per the trashed card cost; those were the two things not covered by previous cards. And I had another version that was just +Buys but a different size/shape. It turned out that with no broken combos, the +Buys were still a problem. Just +Actions didn't seem compelling but I tried that too, just in case we liked it.
It's possible there's some doable thing along these lines - drop the +Buys, make it expensive, no self-trashing. Trader's "gain a Silver" can try to get in there. There is also the issue though of how it compares to other cards - it doesn't want to just look awful next to Salvager and Apprentice. The flexibility doesn't look great next to always getting an extra Buy or Action.
Anyway we gave the concept endless chances.