Silk Road

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Silk Road
Silk Road.jpg
Info
Cost $
Type(s) Victory
Kingdom card? Yes
Set HinterlandsHinterlands old icon.png
Illustrator(s) Martin Hoffmann‏
Card text
Worth 1 VP for every 4 Victory cards in your deck (round down).

Silk Road is a Victory card from Hinterlands. It is worth more depending on how many total Victory cards in your deck. As such it is especially useful when you are able to buy a lot of green cards without stalling out, but can be potentially useful in just about any game.

Contents

FAQ

Official FAQ

This is a Victory card, not an Action card. It does nothing until the end of the game, when it is worth 1 VP for every four Victory cards in your Deck (counting all of your cards - your Discard pile and hand are part of your Deck at that point). Silk Roads count themselves. Round down; if you have 11 Victory cards, Silk Road is worth 2 VP. During set-up put all 12 Silk Road in the Supply for a game with 3 or more players, but only 8 in the Supply for a 2-player game. Cards with multiple types, one of which are Victory, are Victory cards and so are counted by Silk Road.

Other Rules clarifications

Strategy Article

Originally posted by WanderingWinder on the forum

The first card you to compare Silk Road to is GardensGardens.jpg (okay, VineyardVineyard.jpg might be the first thing that comes to mind, but they play COMPLETELY differently). And Gardens is a pretty good comparison. You can, for the most part, play the same rushes for Silk Road that you can for Gardens. And the rushes with Silk Road are going to tend to be a little bit stronger than the Gardens versions - it's generally much easier to rush to 12 green cards than 30 cards overall, and easier to get to 16 green cards than 40 cards overall.

Now there are some cases where Gardens works really well and and Silk Road won't. So Gardens work with cards like TalismanTalisman.jpg, GoonsGoons.jpg, TraderTrader.jpg, cursing attacks, and Ill-Gotten GainsIll-Gotten Gains.jpg especially, in ways that don't really go for Silk Road. Cards like BureaucratBureaucrat.jpg and CopperCopper.jpg are good with both, but much better with Gardens. In short, it's the mid-range and long-term strategies where these two cards really diverge.

Which brings us to the second comparison - DukeDuke.jpg. Duke is a long-term card where you need a lot of other victory cards (in Duke's case, they have to be DuchiesDuchy.jpg) in order to make it powerful. But in a Duke deck, your main Victory points eventually come from the Dukes themselves. The same is true with long-range Silk Road decks. Think about this: 1 Duchy, 8 Silk Road, 8 Estates, plus your three starting estates, that's 20 victory cards. And that's 54 victory points - enough to match against someone who's gotten a duchy and all the provinces. So apart from just rush strategies, using Silk Road as your primary victory strategy in longer games is perfectly viable. Of course, you need a little bit of support for this, but it's definitely doable.

The biggest support for Silk Road are your dual Victory cards - HaremHarem.jpg, NoblesNobles.jpg, and IslandIsland.jpg are huge boons (as is Gardens, actually). Great HallGreat Hall.jpg and TunnelTunnel.jpg are pretty good, too. With these cards, and I want to stress especially Island, you can very often ignore cards that are outlandish and exorbitant, like ProvinceProvince.jpg, and even GoldGold.jpg. Here's a game I played where I used an Island/Silk Road rush (just buying them!) to totally overwhelm my Big Money/MasqueradeMasquerade.jpg opponent: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201201/01/game-20120101-131237-6c191900.html

Even with just the basic victory cards, it's possible to use Silk Road to power an alternate strategy, especially since most decks going for Provinces are built for 4 or 5 much more than all 8. But you have to be a bit careful about this; your VP engine has to be put together in the proper order - it's a bit fragile. You're going to probably want your 20 victory cards and at least 7 copies of Silk Road. That leaves you with a dilemma: do you go for the Duchies first, or do you go for Silk Road? The issue is, the Silk Road are more important to get, but the Duchies are harder to get. So you basically want to get the Silk Roads first, then go back for the Duchies - if you can. Either way, you want to have enough of an economy built up beforehand not to stall out hard.

Here's a game where theory tired to do this against me, but by going too hard for Duchies early, and, more importantly, not building his economy quite enough before taking the plunge, allowed me to get enough of the Silk Roads myself to effectively block him and have a fairly secure path to the victory: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201112/09/game-20111209-091227-a49d3a4d.html

Silk Roads in Non-Rush Strategies

Finally, Silk Roads don't necessarily lose their bite in ColonyColony.jpg games quite as much as most other alternate VP strategies do (though they are substantially weaker). It's not super rare that, if you start greening a bit sooner, going a little sooner and stronger for Provinces, maybe only one Colony, and supplement with Silk Roads, that you can have 4 point silk road + 6 point province to fight that 10 point Colony. Now, this is not terribly common, but with the right support, it's something you want to watch out for. Here's a game where I start with a bit of a fiery blitz, then, having spent much of my fuel and with my opponent's deck hitting it's stride while mine whimpered, I switched to Province + Silk Road to close things out: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201201/02/game-20120102-121441-95cda622.html

In games where the board favors engines rather than rush strategies, Silk Road still changes the optimal strategy. Engines with abundant +Buy (such as in the presence of Grand MarketGrand Market.jpg, especially if played with King's CourtKing's Court.jpg) can execute a mega-turn where you buy up a lot of Silk Roads and end the game on piles. This can be a primarily Silk Road strategy that works with a deck that would normally get clogged up with all the victory cards. Even when engaging in a strategy that does not primarily focus on Silk Roads, it is important to factor in Silk Roads into your timing of buying VP, especially as the game approaches its end, as the card alters the total amount of VP available, and, being cheap, the Silk Roads can be snatched up suddenly in quantity by an opponent who has not shown any sign of pursuing a Silk Road strategy.

Synergies/Combos

Antisynergies

  • Fast engines
  • Trashing
  • Savvy opponents who also have the time to stop to buy a couple cards to block you. BishopBishop.jpg is a poster child here.

Okay I'm cnovinced. Let's put it to action.

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