Armory

Armory
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Dark Ages
Illustrator(s)	Marcel-André Casasola Merkle
Card text
Gain a card onto your deck costing up to .

Armory is an Action from Dark Ages. It is a gainer like Workshop, with the addition that the card it gains is topdecked.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• The card you gain goes directly to the top of your deck.

Other rules clarifications

• With Trader, if you use its Reaction on the gained card, you'll get a Silver in your discard pile, not a Silver on your deck.
• If the card would be gained into your hand (such as Guardian, Ghost Town, Night Watchman, or Den of Sin) it is gained onto your deck instead.

Strategy

Armory is a weak Workshop variant. Because of its topdecking effect and its ability to gain its targets in bulk, it is best in Kingdoms where the cards it can gain are not stop cards (to avoid impeding your cycling) and non-terminal (to avoid overloading your terminal space), for example Wandering Minstrel or Menagerie. When to gain Armory depends on how you will use it. If you can use it to topdeck strong cards early in the game, opening with it may be reasonable, although this can interfere with other objectives like buying cards. If you're instead using it to ramp up your payload by gaining stop cards such as Silvers, it’s likely better to delay gaining Armory until you have a fair amount of deck control. Armory is usually skippable in Kingdoms without good targets (perhaps because all of the best cards are out of its range), where there are more flexible sources of additional gains (such as Ironworks), or where stronger terminals (such as Cultist) are available.

Armory’s topdecking effect differentiates it from other gainers. While it generally allows you to play whatever you’ve gained relatively quickly and can facilitate gain-and-play without overdraw or help set up your next turn, it also punishes you for gaining stop cards (especially Victory cards), which will decrease your overall cycling. It’s also worth noting that the better your deck control is, the less relevant Armory's topdecking effect becomes.

Like many Workshop variants, Armory synergizes with cost reduction such as with Highway or Canal because it makes gaining stronger cards possible.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		Gain a card costing up to , putting it on top of your deck.	Dark Ages	August 2012
		Gain a card onto your deck costing up to .	Dark Ages (2017 printing)	September 2017

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Czech	Zbrojnice			Vezmi si kartu s cenou až a polož ji na svůj dobírací balíček.
Dutch	Wapenkamer			Pak een kaart met een waarde van ten hoogste kost, en leg deze op je trekstapel.	(2013)
Finnish	Asevarasto
French	Armurerie
German	Waffenkammer			Nimm dir eine Karte, die bis zu kostet. Lege diese Karte sofort auf deinen Nachziehstapel.	(2012)
	Waffenkammer			Nimm eine Karte, die bis zu kostet, und lege sie auf deinen Nachziehstapel.	(2019) "...und lege sie auf deinen Nachzieh­stapel."
Japanese	武器庫 (pron. buki-ko)			山札の上にコスト以下のカード1枚を獲得する。
Korean	무기고 (pron. mugigo)
Russian	Арсенал (pron. arsyenall)
Spanish	Armería			Gana una carta con un coste máximo de y ponla encima de tu mazo.	(2014)

Trivia

Official card art.

Secret History

The lone survivor (here) from the failed small expansion with a top-of-your-deck theme. It's a straightforward card that never changed.

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

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