Bounty Hunter
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| Bounty Hunter | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Info | |
| Cost |
 |
| Type(s) | Action |
| Kingdom card? | Yes |
| Set |
Menagerie |
| Illustrator(s) | Franz Vohwinkel |
| Card text | |
|
+1 Action Exile a card from your hand. If you didn't have a copy of it in Exile, +  . | |
Bounty Hunter is an Action card from Menagerie. It non-terminally Exiles a card from your hand, and gives + if you didn't have a copy of it on your Exile mat already.
FAQ
Official FAQ
- First you get +1 Action and Exile a card from your hand; this is not optional.
- Then if that is the only copy of that card that you have in Exile, you get +.
- If you can't Exile a card, you don't get +.
Strategy
As Donald noted in his Preview (see below), Bounty Hunter has several uses.
First, it is a trash for benefit variant where, instead of trashing a card, it exiles it. Compared to Moneylender, Bounty Hunter is the same on the first Copper, worse on all remaining Copper, isn't a terminal, and deals with Estates as well, gaining on the first exiled Estate.
Exiling, instead of trashing, Copper is mostly a wash. Exiling is obviously better with Estates and worse with Curses, so an actual trasher is desirable when cursing is present. Where Bounty Hunter excels over other trash for benefit cards, such as Forager or Junk Dealer, is when its initial money spikes get to vital cards quickly or there is variety in what it is exiling, such as Ruins, Shelters, or undesirable Heirlooms, so that it frequently earns .
Fortunately, Dominion isn't an either/or proposition. Pairing Bounty Hunter with a trash for benefit card is generally stronger than either two Bounty Hunters or two copies of the trasher and has the additional feature of being able to exile the trasher for after it has done its job.
A second use for Bounty Hunter is as a sifter variant in the end game, moving victory cards into Exile. On one hand, its sifting is better than a deck inspector, since exiling is better than discarding. On the other hand, if a copy of the card being sifted is already in Exile, it sifts a card out of hand instead of from the deck, which reduces effective hand size and average purchase power, without gaining to compensate for this.
When exiling duplicates, Bounty Hunter has much worse purchasing power than Sentry, a trasher and sifter that replaces itself and trashes/sifts your future draws (or next hand). However, if non-terminal draw, such as Caravan or Laboratory, is present, this issue goes away.
When both non-terminal draw and a complementary trasher are available, Bounty Hunter shines, enabling a deck to rapidly thin, cycle, and improve. With two of each, a deck can easily withstand attacks, such as from Mountebank, Cultist, or Witch, that would normally produce slogs.
While assembling an engine, players normally never buy an early Province with 
. Bounty Hunter changes this. Once a deck is cycling well, the first of each Victory card effectively becomes a Spoils, useful both for buying remaining engine components and gaining a VP edge against a rival engine that eschewed Bounty Hunter for a different trasher. Further, doing this can avoid the situation where an engine isn't quite ready to go but has done its thinning, where Bounty Hunter becomes a temporarily "dead" card.
Tactically, Bounty Hunter can often remove a duplicate before playing Menagerie or usefully remove single copies of not-so-useful cards bought with spare 
when Fairgrounds or Museum is present. In Silver gaining decks, it can sometimes become +
instead of being "dead" by exiling a Silver that is then brought back the next time a Silver is gained.
Strategically, Bounty Hunter and other exiling cards, such as Sanctuary and Displace, make one-province-a-turn "lean and mean" decks more viable compared to engines that buy multiple Provinces.
While a lean deck's speed can typically beat big money, it deteriorates rapidly upon greening and is generally unable to end the game, allowing an engine to catch up, if necessary, by buying lots of Duchies before ending the game by buying multiple Provinces. However, a deck that can both buy and exile a Province each turn can simply march through the Provinces to prevent this.
Since Bounty Hunter combined with non-terminal draws and complementary trashing can support either a lean deck or an engine, the decision of which to go for is a tight decision, where their relative speeds must be carefully considered, particularly when an opponent is making a similar choice.
Synergies/Combos
- Non-terminal draw such as: Caravan, Laboratory, Minion, Stables
- In-hand variety you want to remove, such as: Shelters, Ruins, Heirlooms
- Trashers that stop being useful, such as: Chapel, Forager, Moneylender, Junk Dealer
- Castles want to go to Exile, and Bounty Hunter continues to make coin to buy more Castles.
- Slogs with mass greening, such as: Duke, Gardens, Silk Road
- Kingdoms that reward deck, but not hand, variety: Fairgrounds, Museum
- Kingdoms where an early money spike is particularly useful (since it's always useful)
- Menagerie
Antisynergies
- Handsize attacks
- Discard for benefit, such as: Horse Traders, Mill, Vault
- Sifters
- Enclave
Versions
English versions
| Digital | Text | Release | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
 |
+1 Action Exile a card from your hand. If you didn't have a copy of it in Exile, + . |
Menagerie | March 2020 |
Other language versions
| Language | Name | Digital | Text | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dutch | Premiejager | +1 Actie Verban een kaart uit je hand. Had je er geen exemplaar van op je verbanningstableau, dan + . |
(2020) | ||
| German | Kopfgeldjägerin |  |
 |
+1 Aktion Verbanne eine deiner Handkarten. Wenn du dies gemacht hast und dabei keine gleiche Karte im Exil hattest: + . |
(2020) |
| Japanese | 賞金稼ぎ (pron. shōkinkasegi) |
Trivia
Preview
, so early on it helps you spike amounts, and then it's either a way to at least get rid of more cards, or you can consider collecting a bounty on something you weren't exactly planning on parting with. And after that it can keep Provinces out of your deck, so I mean, what's not to like.
Secret History
always, and +
if you jailed a unique. There was just that version and the final version; it's more fun to have a bigger reward for the unique, and it didn't want to be as good otherwise. An early poster child for Exile.Wording
When Bounty Hunter was previewed, there was some confusion if you got + if you didn't exile a card (especially with the rulings about playing Gladiator with no cards in hand).
without exiling anything. And if someone mentions it to them, there's a rulebook. My philosophy has shifted somewhat over the years, to not make the cards less readable just to handle people who like to poke at the rules.
That said, I can only repeat, I always give cards the best wordings I can, try to avoid whatever confusion I see to avoid, and then the cards are printed and it's up to future printings to change things worth changing.Here was how Donald X. explained the differences between Bounty Hunter and Gladiator.
