Village (card category)

Village is the informal generic name for the family of Dominion Kingdom cards which offer the ability to generate +2 (or more) Actions—so called because many of them have "village" in their names. The simplest and most vanilla village card is Village itself. Typically, these cards will also offer +1 Card as well, but there are some village cards which will offer other benefits instead. Cards that do not explicitly or usually give +2 Actions are sometimes called pseudo-villages.

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".

Every Dominion expansion has at least one village.

List of villages

For some cards, +2 actions is an option you can choose when playing the card, not an automatic effect. In the lists below, these cards are italicized.

Drawing villages

These villages replace themselves in the hand by drawing at least one card when played—thus ensuring that the mere presence of the village in your deck doesn't prevent you from having in hand the terminal Actions you want to play it with.

Dominion: Village
Intrigue: Mining Village, Shanty Town (sometimes draws)
Seaside Bazaar
Prosperity: City, Worker's Village
Cornucopia: Farming Village, Hamlet, Trusty Steed (optionally draws)
Hinterlands: Border Village, Inn
Dark Ages: Bandit Camp, Fortress, Madman, Wandering Minstrel
Promo: Walled Village

Disappearing villages

These villages do not replace themselves in hand when played, which can sometimes make it more challenging to line them up with the terminals they need to support.

Dominion: Festival
Intrigue: Nobles, Shanty Town (sometimes draws)
Seaside: Fishing Village, Native Village (can increase handsize through the Native Village mat)
Alchemy: University
Cornucopia: Trusty Steed (optionally draws)
Dark Ages: Dame Molly, Necropolis, Squire

Conditional villages

These cards provide +2 or more actions sometimes, and the player cannot always control whether they will; how reliable they are as engine components may therefore vary greatly from game to game.

Intrigue: Tribute works as a village only if one of the two cards on top of your oppenent's deck (to your left) is an Action card.
Hinterlands: Crossroads works as a village (providing +3 Actions) only the first time it is played per turn.
Dark Ages: Ironmonger works as a village only if an Action card is revealed from your deck.

Pseudo-villages

These cards cause you to make 2 or more additional plays of Action cards without actually giving you +Actions (though the cards they play for you might do so).