Border Guard

Border Guard
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Renaissance
Illustrator(s)	Claus Stephan
Card text
+1 Action Reveal the top 2 cards of your deck. Put one into your hand and discard the other. If both were Actions, take the Lantern or Horn.

Border Guard is an Action card from Renaissance. It is a cantrip that lets you choose one of the top 2 cards of your deck to draw. If all the cards you choose between are Actions, you can get one of its corresponding Artifacts, the Lantern or the Horn. Both Artifacts extend the abilities of Border Guard.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• When you play a Border Guard and do not have the Lantern, you reveal the top 2 cards of your deck, choose one and put it into your hand, and discard the other; then if they were both Action cards, you take the Lantern or the Horn.
• When you play a Border Guard and have the Lantern, you reveal the top 3 cards of your deck, choose one and put it into your hand, and discard the rest; then if all three were Action cards, you may take the Horn.
• If you reveal fewer than 2 cards, or fewer than 3 cards when you have the Lantern, you don't take an Artifact.
• Both the Horn and the Lantern function the turn you get them.

Other rules clarifications

• Lantern will still affect Border Guards you play from the Supply (with e.g. Band of Misfits) or the trash (with Necromancer)
• If you play Border Guard using Way of the Chameleon (which may still be useful against an Enchantress attack), and you have the Lantern, you'll still reveal 3 cards. [1]
• If Border Guard is Reckless, Lantern affects both iterations, so you'll reveal a total of 6 cards. [2]
• If Border Guard is Reckless, you can topdeck one of your Border Guards with Horn, while the others will return to the Supply.

Strategy

Border Guard is effectively a cheap cantrip sifter, and as such is often a small, low opportunity cost way to improve the reliability of your deck.

Almost all decks appreciate sifting as a way to ensure good collisions and cycling to strong cards, and because Border Guard offers that in a non-terminal and draw-neutral package it is good in many decks. Money strategies can often use help finding higher value Treasures, while engines may need help finding their draw cards, for example ensuring Village and Smithy collisions. Border Guard’s sifting is not particularly strong as it only allows you to pick between two cards, and thus is much weaker than cards such as Forum, and Border Guard’s presence is usually not enough to ignore thinning and other methods of deck control.

Border Guard can be decent in the opening if you open it alongside a high-priority card such as Remake that appreciates the cycling, and if hitting higher pricepoints such as is not a priority. Given that it’s almost always a net positive addition to a deck, it’s often worth getting one if you have and a Buy left over, at any point throughout the game. In Kingdoms without sources of +Buy or gainers, Border Guard is less relevant as the opportunity cost of spending a Buy on it is likely high.

The Horn and Lantern are, like Border Guard itself, usually a small improvement to your reliability, but not so strong as to heavily prioritize getting them. The Horn is useful to help you find cards to start your turn, while the Lantern makes all of your Border Guards slightly stronger sifters. Both are easier to get if you have thinned out your starting cards and added many Action cards, and thus are usually acquired easily as a side effect of building a strong deck. If you take the Lantern first, all three cards revealed by your Border Guards must be Action cards in order to take the Horn, so it is usually best to take the Horn first, and only take the Lantern instead if you strongly want to find a specific card on the current turn.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		+1 Action Reveal the top 2 cards of your deck. Put one into your hand and discard the other. If both were Actions, take the Lantern or Horn.	Renaissance	November 2018

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Chinese	邊境守衛 (pron. biānjìng shǒuwèi)
Dutch	Grenswacht			+1 Actie Trek de bovenste 2 kaarten van je trekstapel. Doe er één in je hand en leg de andere af. Als beide Actiekaarten waren, neem dan de Lantaarn of de Hoorn.
French	Garde-frontière			+1 Action Dévoilez les 2 premières cartes de votre pioche. Prenez-en une en main et défaussez l'autre. Si les deux étaient des cartes Action, prenez la Lanterne ou la Corne.
German	Grenzposten			+1 Aktion Decke die obersten 2 Karten deines Nachziehstapels auf. Nimm eine davon auf deine Hand und lege die andere ab. Sind beide Aktionskarten, erhalte die Laterne oder das Horn.	(2019)
Japanese	国境警備隊 (pron. kokkyō keibitai)			+1 アクション 山札の上から2枚を公開する。片方を手札に加え、もう片方を捨て札にする。両方がアクションカードの場合、角灯か角笛を得る。
Russian	Пограничник (pron. pogranichnik)
Spanish	Guardia Fronteriza			+1 Acción Revela las 2 cartas superiores de tu mazo. Pon una en tu mano y descarta la otra. Si ambas son Acciones, toma el Farol o el Cuerno.

Trivia

Official card art.

Border Guard is the only Kingdom card that lets you take two Artifacts.

Secret History

For a while this had no Artifacts. I wanted more Artifacts and saw that I could add one here, which was Lantern. Then I needed to put another Artifact somewhere and saw that this could have two Artifacts, so it got Horn.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of Dominion: Renaissance

Retrospective

Again Border Guard and Treasurer both existed without artifacts, and were fine cards. Adding more text to them made them less simple, and didn't accomplish anything useful, except to fit three more artifacts into the set.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Dominion Discord, 2020