Bishop

Bishop
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Prosperity
Illustrator(s)	Rom
Card text
+ +1  Trash a card from your hand. +1  per it costs (round down). Each other player may trash a card from their hand.

Bishop is an Action card from Prosperity. It is one of the four Prosperity cards which utilize VP tokens, along with Collection, Investment, and Monument. It is a trash-for-benefit card, scoring you   proportional to the cost of the card you trash; but it also allows your opponents to trash a card for free if they want to.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• Trashing a card is optional for the other players but mandatory for you.
• If players care about the order things happen for this, you trash a card first, then each other player may trash a card, in turn order.
• Only the player who played Bishop can get   tokens from it.
• and in costs is ignored, for example if you trash Golem (from Dominion: Alchemy), which costs , you get 3  total.
• If you have no cards left in hand to trash, you still get the and 1 .

Strategy

Bishop is a payload card whose primary use is as a source of alt-VP. Despite the fact that it trashes cards, it is generally not useful as a way to thin your deck because it allows your opponent to trash their cards as well (and without having to purchase or play a Bishop). Instead, Bishop is generally purchased in the mid- or late-game as a way for an engine to score.

Bishop works best when you have a way to gain expensive cards easily. The most common case is to pair it with a Gold-gainer such as Bandit. Each Gold you trash gains you 4  without significantly lowering a Supply pile or worsening the quality of your deck, so a deck that is scoring in this way can aim for a very long game. Opponents attempting to score solely by buying and emptying the Provinces may struggle to buy the last few as their deck quality deteriorates. A deck scoring with Bishops, on the other hand, is more likely to continue scoring at even pace, and thus in the long run can outscore a deck that falls apart. Gold is the most common target for Bishop, but you should also watch out for other strong targets such as Peddler or (especially) Fortress.

Occasionally, Bishop can be used to enable a golden deck strategy, which aims to keep deck composition constant while guaranteeing the continual accumulation of  . For example, with a 5-card deck of Bishop, Province, Gold, Silver, Silver you can trash Province and buy Province each turn, gaining 5 . Bishop can also sometimes be useful as a trasher if it is hard for your opponent to keep junk cards in hand to trash them to your Bishop plays, perhaps because you are regularly playing a handsize attack such as Militia, or because they are using cards like Scheme to force many good cards into their starting hands.

External strategy articles

Note: Article(s) below are by individual authors and may not represent the community's current views on cards, but may provide more in-depth information. Caveat emptor.

• theory's 2010 article

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		+ +1  Trash a card from your hand. +  equal to half its cost in coins, rounded down. Each other player may trash a card from his hand.	Prosperity	October 2010
		+ +1  Trash a card from your hand. +1  per it costs (round down). Each other player may trash a card from their hand.	Prosperity (2016 printing)	February 2017

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Chinese	主教			+ +1  移除手上的一張卡，那張卡每價值則獲得1 (無條件捨去)。 其它每位玩家可以移除手上的一張卡。
Czech	Biskup
Dutch	Bisschop
Finnish	Piispa
French	Évêque			+ +1  Écartez une carte de votre main. +1  par de son coût (arrondi inférieurement). Tous vos adversaires peuvent écarter une carte de leur main.
German	Bischof			+ +1  Entsorge eine Karte aus deiner Hand. Wenn du das machst: +  entsprechend der Hälfte der -Kosten der entsorgten Karte (abgerundet). Jeder Mitspieler darf sofort eine Karte aus seiner Hand entsorgen.	(2010) one or more other versions listed here
German	Bischof			+ +1  Entsorge eine deiner Handkarten. +1  pro , die jene kostet (abgerundet). Jeder Mitspieler darf eine Karte aus seiner Hand entsorgen.	(Nachdruck 2021)
Italian	Vescovo
Japanese	司教 (pron. shikyō)			+ +1  手札1枚を廃棄する。そのコスト(端数切り捨て)につき+1 。 他のプレイヤーは全員、手札1枚を廃棄してもよい。
Polish	Biskup			+ +1  Wyrzuć na śmietnisko kartę z ręki. +  równe połowie kosztu tej karty (wyrażonego w monetach), zaokrąglając w dół. Każdy z pozostałych graczy może wyrzucić na śmietnisko kartę z ręki.	(2016)
Russian	Епископ (pron. yepiskop)
Spanish	Obispo

Trivia

Official card art.

Secret History

When Prosperity got delayed, I got extra time to make changes. I decided, why not take out the worst card? At the same time I wanted more cards that used the VP tokens, so they'd seem less gratuitous. I tried a few different cards in this slot and liked Bishop the best.

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