Village (card category)

Revision as of 09:16, 14 May 2018

Village, the archetype for this category.

Village is the informal generic name for the family of cards which offer the ability to play more than one terminal action in a turn—so called because many of them have "village" in their names. They are also sometimes called splitters. The simplest village card is Village itself. Typically, these cards will also offer +2 Actions, but there are some village cards which will give this effect in other ways.

The presence of villages in a given kingdom is important because having a cap on the number of terminal actions that can be played in a turn is a significant limiting factor in the potential of decks that can be built; kingdoms with villages and kingdoms without villages play very differently. Without the presence of villages in a kingdom, the focus of most decks shifts to the non-terminals, plus the most desirable terminal available.

Every small Dominion expansion has at least two villages, and every other expansion has at least three.

List of villages

Villages with no restrictions

These cards will always be able to give the "village effect." Some are better than others, but they can all get the job done. For most of these it’s very straight-forward in how the village effect is given because the card just gives +2 Actions.

• Dominion: Festival, Throne Room, Village
• Intrigue: Mining Village, Nobles, Shanty Town
• Seaside: Bazaar, Fishing Village, Native Village
• Alchemy: University
• Prosperity: City, King's Court, Worker's Village
• Cornucopia: Farming Village, Hamlet
• Hinterlands: Border Village, Inn
• Dark Ages: Bandit Camp, Fortress, Squire, Wandering Minstrel
• Guilds: Plaza
• Adventures: Champion, Coin of the Realm, Lost Arts, Lost City, Port, Royal Carriage, Teacher
• Empires: Bustling Village, City Quarter, Crown, Encampment, Villa
• Nocturne: Blessed Village, Conclave, Cursed Village, Ghost Town
• Promo: Walled Village

Throne Room and its variants (Crown, Royal Carriage, King’s Court) are definitely villages, even though it may not be obvious at first. The effects of these cards will enable the same types of decks that other villages do.

Lost Arts and Teacher can give the +1 Action token, which gives the same effect, just with a different flavor.

Villages that need a little support

These cards are definitely villages, but you have to jump through some hoops to get the effect.

For some people it may be useful to think of these cards separately than the above list because you have to go through an explicit check to make sure it actually works on a given kingdom, other people don’t see it that way. Some people might even bring Royal Carriage, Lost Arts, or Peasant/Teacher down to this list because they make more sense here.

• With Prince and Summon, there has to be an action that can cost $4 or less, or else the effect doesn’t work.

• With Diplomat, there needs to be a way to have 5 or less cards in hand after playing it, or else the effect doesn’t work.

• With Golem, there needs to be some other non-terminal on the board for the effect to work past the first play of Golem.

• For Herald and Ironmonger, you need to have Action cards in your deck to reveal an Action card often enough to get the effect a useful amount of times.

• With Tribute the player on your left needs to have that same kind of Action density.

Villages with some restrictions

These cards are definitely villages, but they have some limiting factor that should probably be taken into account when considering the decks that can be built with them.

When given a kingdom with only these villages, it can be useful to go through the line of reasoning for when there are no villages, but modify it with the limiting factor — “What can I do when I can only play 2 terminals per turn?” instead of just one per turn, for example.

• Crossroads will only allow two additional terminal actions per turn.

• Necropolis and Trusty Steed will only allow one additional terminal action per turn.

• Dame Molly has the same issue, only on top of that she can sometimes be lower in the pile or your opponents could get her instead; plus, she dies to other Knights.

• Tactician only gives one extra action, and it requires playing a Tactician on the previous turn to get it.

• Procession and Sacrifice can require you to trash cards you might prefer to keep in order to get the village effect.

• Sauna/Avanto, as a split pile, is difficult to get a lot of, so the number of terminals that can realistically be played is limited by that and the fact that sometimes it can be difficult to line them up properly and get maximum value.

• Disciple and Ghost can be hard to get in multiples and there is a limited supply of them.

• Madman works great when played, but it’s a one-shot and in order to get more of them, you have to not buy any cards on a turn, which is a very high cost.

• Pixie is also a one-shot and only gives a 1/12 chance of actually getting the village effect each time it's played.

Not villages

With the definition of village used here, it can be possible to misunderstand and think of certain cards as villages that don't provide the effect of playing multiple terminal actions in a turn. These cards are not villages. These cards don’t actually give the same effect as other villages; they don’t enable the same types of turns. Without something else present that is actually a village, you are subject to the same limitations as a kingdom with no villages.

• Conspirator, Cultist, Vassal: The logic with these cards is that Cultist, for example, is a terminal action which allows for playing more Cultists in the same turn, so multiple terminals have been played. The argument is similar for Conspirator and Vassal.

The flaw in this logic is that in this case, most of those Cultists that were played weren’t really terminal. It makes more sense to think of these cards as “sometimes non-terminal” or as having a “non-terminal mode” to them. This categorization is more appropriate to the way these cards actually work in games of Dominion.

• Ruined Village is not a village, even though it has "village" in the title.

Cards Gallery

Removed Cards

Trivia

Donald X. Vaccarino has explained that the reason cards that give +2 Actions are often named after "villages" or other populated places (e.g., City, Hamlet) is because extra Actions are thematically represented by "a group of people doing things for you". The only cards that always provide +2 Actions but whose names do not represent populated places are from Dark Ages: Dame Molly, Madman, and Wandering Minstrel.

Ruined Village is the only card with "village" in its name that does not provide +2 Actions; as a Ruins, it is notionally a village that has been stripped of most of its ability.

An inexperienced player who buys too many villages and not enough terminal Actions is informally referred to as a "village idiot".