Adventurer

Adventurer
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Base
Illustrator(s)	Ryan Laukat
Card text
Reveal cards from your deck until you reveal 2 Treasure cards. Put those Treasure cards into your hand and discard the other revealed cards.

Adventurer is an Action card from the first edition of the Base set. It is similar to a terminal draw card that only draws Treasures, and was removed in the second edition of the base Dominion game. It is considered to be one of the weakest cards in the entire game.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• If you have to shuffle in the middle, shuffle. Don't shuffle in the revealed cards as these cards do not go to the Discard pile until you have finished revealing cards.
• If you run out of cards after shuffling and still only have one Treasure, you get just that one Treasure.

Strategy

Adventurer is similar to a terminal draw card that is guaranteed to draw two Treasures. Like Moat, it only increases hand size by one, but for triple the cost.

In engines which aim to draw the entire deck every turn, Adventurer is often undesirable as it will be unable to find any Treasures. It also has the unfortunate side effect of skipping the Actions you may have wanted to play in that shuffle.

In money strategies, Adventurer is almost never better than Gold, which has the same cost. Adventurer draws fewer cards than Smithy, and in most cases its sifting ability does not compensate for it.

Adventurer becomes slightly more useful in Kingdoms with strong junkers (e.g. Witch) and Treasure-trashing (e.g. Moneylender) as the only trashing. Without Coppers, Adventurer is more likely to find your better Treasures, and can also sift through the Curses.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		Reveal cards from your deck until you reveal 2 Treasure cards. Put those Treasure cards into your hand and discard the other revealed cards.	Dominion 1st Edition	October 2008

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Chinese	冒險家 (pron. màoxiǎnjiā)
Czech	Dobrodruh
Dutch	Avonturier			Draai achtereenvolgens de bovenste kaarten van je trekstapel om totdat je in totaal 2 geldkaarten hebt. Neem ze op handen. Leg de overige omgedraaide kaarten af op je aflegstapel.
Finnish	Seikkailija
French	Aventurier
German	Abenteurer			Decke solange Karten vom Nachziehstapel auf, bis du 2 Geldkarten aufgedeckt hast. Nimm diese auf die Hand und lege die anderen aufgedeckten Karten ab.	(2013)
Greek	Τυχοδιώκτης (pron. tykhodhioktes)
Hungarian	Kalandor
Italian	Esploratore (lit. explorer)
Japanese	冒険者 (pron. bōken-sha)
Korean	모험가 (pron. moheomga)
Norwegian	Eventyrer
Polish	Odkrywca (lit. explorer)
Romanian	Aventurier
Russian	Искатель приключений (pron. iskatyel' priklyuchiniy)
Spanish	Aventurero

Trivia

Official card art.

Donald X. has described Venture as "to some degree a fixed version" of Adventurer.

Secret History

For a while the main set did not have an action costing . I thought it would be good if it did. At some point we decided to go with 25 Kingdom cards (it was 25, then 20, then 25 again), so there was space for a 6, and I went looking through the expansions for the most appropriate one - something interesting but not too weird that wasn't too tied to its expansion. I took Adventurer from the 7th expansion. I don't know how many expansions Dominion will actually get, all printed and everything, but my friends were insatiable, so I cranked out a lot of cards.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of the Dominion Cards

Those of you noting that Dark Ages is the 7th expansion, and that in the Secret History for Dominion I say that Adventurer came from the 7th expansion: that 7th expansion was the top-of-deck one. Ditto for Shanty Town.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of the Dark Ages Cards

Why does it cost 6?

Adventurer looked like it should cost , somehow. It cost . We bought it some, seemed fine. We never tried it at , or talked about trying it at , or anything. Several early cards have the same story. It was a while before "should this thing we're buying nevertheless be cheaper" was a thing (or knowing not to buy the thing and so making it cheaper because we weren't buying it).

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Is Ferry on Adventurer any better than Gold?

Second Edition Removal

This was the 6th card cut. My playtesters were pretty sure they didn't need to see more of it, and then I played some games with it, and man, it was not good. For casual players, it costs , Gold costs , if you want Adventurer you often want Gold first, maybe you never get around to Adventurer. Expert players will instead cite, it draws two cards and only gets Treasures, Smithy is cheaper, draws three, and can get Actions too.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of the Dominion 2nd Editions