Vanilla

Market, a vanilla card.

Vanilla cards are cards that have no effect other than some combination of +Cards, +Actions, +Buy, and +. These are the simplest card effects to understand and execute; for this reason the bulk of the game's vanilla Kingdom cards are in the base Dominion set, whose overall theme is simplicity of effect. They are often a useful baseline of comparison for the effects of similar cards.

Many cards have vanilla bonuses in addition to their other, seemingly more interesting or unique, effects in order to make them more balanced and interesting to play. For instance, a card saying simply "Each other player gains a Curse" would be too weak to be useful as a curser, so Witch has a "vanilla" +2 cards bonus in order to make it playable.

Cards that are the simplest examples of what is seen as a larger family of cards are sometimes referred to specifically as "vanilla". For instance, Village is sometimes referred to as "vanilla Village" to distinguish it from the family of other villages, even though Worker's Village and Bazaar, both in the "village" category, are both vanilla cards themselves.

List of vanilla cards

Cards in italics have been removed.

• Dominion: Festival, Laboratory, Market, Smithy, Village, Woodcutter
• Seaside: Bazaar
• Prosperity: Worker's Village
• Dark Ages: Abandoned Mine, Necropolis, Ruined Library, Ruined Market, Ruined Village
• Nocturne: Pouch

Semi-vanilla cards

Certain cards could be considered vanilla under slightly broader criteria:

• Great Hall and Harem (from Intrigue), Monument (from Prosperity), and Plunder (from Empires) are vanilla if victory points are considered a vanilla property along with +Cards, +Actions, and so on.
• Candlestick Maker, from Guilds, is vanilla if Coffers are considered a vanilla property.
• Fishing Village, Caravan, Merchant Ship, and Wharf (from Seaside), Hireling (from Adventures), Ghost Town (from Nocturne), and Barge (from Menagerie) are Duration cards that have only vanilla effects, but some or all of them take place on future turns.
• Pawn and Conspirator(from Intrigue) and City (from Prosperity) have only vanilla effects, but which vanilla effects they have is dependent on the circumstances in which they are played, or the player's choice.
• Grand Market and Peddler (from Prosperity), Nomad Camp, Cache and Border Village (from Hinterlands), Fortress and Hunting Grounds (from Dark Ages), Masterpiece (from Guilds), Port and Lost City (from Adventures), Emporium, Rocks and Villa (from Empires), Blessed Village and Haunted Mirror (from Nocturne), Silk Merchant (from Renaissance), and Hostelry, Fisherman, Destrier, and Animal Fair (from Menagerie) have special properties when you buy, gain, or trash them, or at the beginning of the game, but only vanilla effects while they are actually in your deck.
• Moat (from Dominion), Market Square (from Dark Ages), Faithful Hound (from Nocturne), Sheepdog (from Menagerie) are all Reactions that have only vanilla effects until revealed under the condition of their Reaction.
• Way of the Monkey, Way of the Mule, Way of the Otter, Way of the Ox, Way of the Pig, and Way of the Sheep are considered vanilla if Ways are considered vanilla.
• Nobles (from Intrigue) is vanilla if victory points are considered vanilla and if player's choice is considered vanilla.
• Baker (from Guilds) is vanilla if Coffers are considered vanilla and if at the start of game effects are considered vanilla
• Ducat (from Renaissance) is vanilla if Coffers are considered vanilla and if when gain effects are considered vanilla.
• Village Green (from Menagerie) is vanilla if Duration cards with only vanilla effects are considered vanilla and if it is not revealed under the condition of its Reaction

Trivia

Possibility of future vanilla cards

If you count things like Candlestick Maker then maybe there could be another one; it would take me making another set with something that could use the +1 notation, and then having a reasonable vanilla-if-that-counts card to do, but those things are possible. If you count discarding and trashing somehow, sure, maybe there's another thing there that somehow hasn't happened. If you count Ruinses and Necropolis then maybe.

A pure original +'s vanilla kingdom card, probably not happening. The one chance it would have is "secretly the cost is a mechanic but we somehow aren't counting that," like debt (which did have vanilla cards for a bit). The problem is picking a set of things that aren't just redundant with or strictly better/worse than existing cards. The smaller numbers are covered; the bigger numbers are normally too expensive.

If "worth  " counts then Empires had "double Harem" for a bit. As the bottom card of a split pile, another invisible complication.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Interview with Donald X.