Bureaucrat
| Bureaucrat | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Info | |
| Cost |
 |
| Type(s) | Action - Attack |
| Kingdom card? | Yes |
| Set |
Base |
| Illustrator(s) | Matthias Catrein |
| Card text | |
| Gain a Silver onto your deck. Each other player reveals a Victory card from their hand and puts it onto their deck (or reveals a hand with no Victory cards). | |
Bureaucrat is an Action-Attack card from the Base set. It is a gainer which lets you gain Silver cards without buying them, and puts them on top of your deck; it also slows down your opponents by making them put Victory cards from their hands back on top of their deck.
FAQ
Official FAQ
- A player with no cards in their deck will have the card they put on top become the only card in their deck.
Strategy
Bureaucrat is an extremely weak card. It does two things: it attacks your opponent and it gains a Silver to the top of your deck. The Attack is weak and is often only a minor annoyance. It does nothing for most of the game if your opponent is able to trash their Estates. Furthermore, although gaining Silvers can be helpful, it is usually best not to have them on top of your deck. You would rather have drawing cards, such as Laboratory, on the top of your deck and payload cards, such as Silver, at the bottom where you can draw them later in your turn. Playing a Bureaucrat also often hurts your current turn by taking up space in your hand and using an Action but not providing any benefit until the next turn, when you draw the Silver. Since good turns now lead to better turns later, cards that do not improve your current turn can be difficult to justify.
Bureaucrat is a card that is only worth getting in a few scenarios. The main use is when you can draw your deck, play the Bureaucrat, and then play another card to draw the Silver that turn. In that instance, Bureaucrat can be a relatively efficient way to increase your deck’s 
. Alternatively, on a very weak board, gaining many Silvers can be worth it, and the top-decking can actually be helpful. Furthermore, your opponent is likely to be unable to trash their Estates and will be adding Victory cards to their deck gradually, so the attack will have more opportunities to succeed. In very rare cases, Bureaucrat can also disrupt decks that rely on very precise shuffle management (e.g., some Golden deck variants), although other Attack cards will usually be more effective. Even in these contexts, there is almost always some better card than Bureaucrat to be playing.
Trivia
It's technically possible to use repeated Bureaucrat plays to 'pin' your opponent indefinitely in a position where they can never do anything on their turns because they're forced to repeatedly topdeck and then draw the same 5 Victory cards. In practice, this is almost never a viable strategy.
External strategy articles
Note: Article(s) below are by individual authors and may not represent the community's views on cards, but may provide more in-depth information. Caveat emptor.
Versions
English versions
| Digital | Text | Release | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
 |
Gain a Silver card; put it on top of your deck. Each other player reveals a Victory card from his hand and puts it on his deck (or reveals a hand with no Victory cards). |
Dominion | October 2008 |
|
 |
Gain a Silver onto your deck. Each other player reveals a Victory card from their hand and puts it onto their deck (or reveals a hand with no Victory cards). | Dominion (Second Edition) | October 2016 |
Other language versions
| Language | Name | Digital | Text | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chinese | 官員 (pron. guānyuán, lit. administrator) | 獲得一張銀幣，將銀幣放置在你的牌堆頂，其他所有人展示一張手上的分數卡，將它放到各自牌堆頂(或是展示手牌沒有分數卡)。 | |||
| Czech | Úředník (lit. official) | ||||
| Dutch | Bureaucraat |  |
Leg uit de algemene voorraad een zilverkaart op je trekstapel. Iedere andere speler legt een overwinningskaart uit zijn hand op zijn trekstapel. (of laat zien dat hij deze niet heeft) |
(2009) Tweede editie "... | |
| Bureaucraat |  |
Leg uit de algemene voorraad een zilverkaart op je trekstapel. Iedere andere speler toont een overwinningskaart uit zijn hand en legt deze op zijn trekstapel (of laat zien dat hij deze niet heeft). | Tweede editie (herdruk 2019/2020) | ||
| Finnish | Byrokraatti | ||||
| French | Bureaucrate | ||||
| German | Bürokrat |  |
Nimm dir ein Silber und lege es verdeckt auf deinen Nachziehstapel. Jeder Mitspieler muss eine Punktekarte aus seiner Hand aufdecken und sie verdeckt auf seinen Nachziehstapel legen. Hat ein Spieler keine Punktekarte auf der Hand, muss er seine Kartenhand vorzeigen. |
(2008) | |
| Bürokrat |  |
 |
Nimm ein Silber und lege es auf deinen Nachziehstapel. Jeder Mitspieler deckt eine Punktekarte aus seiner Hand auf und legt sie auf seinen Nachziehstapel (oder deckt auf, dass er keine Punktekarte auf der Hand hat). |
(2019) "Nimm ein Silber | |
| Bürokrat |  |
Nimm ein Silber auf deinen Nachziehstapel. Jeder Mitspieler deckt eine Punktekarte aus seiner Hand auf und legt sie auf seinen Nachziehstapel (oder deckt auf, dass er keine Punktekarte auf der Hand hat). |
|||
| Hungarian | Hivatalnok (lit. clerk) | ||||
| Italian | Burocrate | ||||
| Japanese | 役人 (pron. yakunin, lit. government official) | 銀貨1枚を山札の上に獲得する。他のプレイヤーは全員、手札の勝利点カード1枚を公開し、山札の上に置く (勝利点カードがない場合、 手札を公開する)。 | |||
| Korean | 관료 (pron. gwanlyo) | ||||
| Norwegian | Byråkrat | ||||
| Polish | Urzędnik (lit. official) |  |
Dodaj kartę Srebrniki - połóż ją na wierzchu swojej talii. Każdy z pozostałych graczy odkrywa kartę zwycięstwa z ręki i kładzie ją na wierzchu swojej talii (lub odkrywa rękę bez kart zwycięstwa). | (2009/2011) | |
| Urzędnik (lit. official) |  |
Dodaj kartę Srebrników na wierzch swojej talii. Każdy z pozostałych graczy odkrywa kartę Zwycięstwa z ręki i kładzie ją na wierzchu swojej talii (lub odkrywa rękę bez kart Zwycięstwa). | II Edycja (2018) | ||
| Romanian | Birocrat | ||||
| Russian | Чиновник (pron. chinovnik, lit. official) |  |
Получите Серебро на верх вашей колоды. Каждый другой игрок раскрывает карту Победы из руки и кладёт её на верх своей колоды (или раскрывает руку без карт Победы). | ||
| Spanish | Burócrata |  |
Ganas una carta de Plata y la colocas encima de tu mazo. Los demás jugadores tienen que enseñar una carta de Victoria y ponerla encima de su mazo (o mostrar toda su mano si no tienen cartas de Victoria). |
Primera Edición (2008) "... | |
| Burócrata |  |
Ganas una carta de Plata y la colocas encima de tu mazo. Los demás jugadores tienen que enseñar una carta de Victoria y ponerla encima de su mazo (o mostrar toda su mano si no tienen cartas de Victoria). |
Segunda Edición (2021) "... |
Trivia
Card Art
Secret History
For a long time the main set had an attack that read "trash the top card of each other player's deck." As related in the BGN interview, it had 3 big problems: 1) adds way too much randomness, 2) can result in everyone stuck with a 5-card deck, 3) is otherwise weak. When it left during development, I tried replacing it with an expansion card called Militia: "Each other player reveals their top card. If no-one revealed Copper, trash those cards. Otherwise, gain a Silver card." This fixed the weird-game-state problem of the previous card, and was less random, but still could make for some really unfun moments. Also it had a weird interaction with Moat, the way Moat worked at the time. It made you need to resolve the attack in slo-mo. Anyway it was no good. We quickly playtested a bunch of variations on Militia and the previous card, before I realized we could go with a discard-based attack instead, and that would make Valerie a lot happier - she hated the Militia variants.
The main set already had a discard-based attack. I had started with a 3rd expansion card, Bureaucracy: "+
. Each other player puts a card from his hand on top of his deck." So it turns out there's a basic problem with discard-based attacks in Dominion. Consider "each other player discards a card." If that gets played once against you in a round, it tends to do nothing at all. Twice and it ranges from mildly annoying to annoying. Three times and it's devastating. It just nukes your turn. Now, you can get the effect three times by say having each opponent in a 4-player game play it once. You don't even need Villages and Throne Rooms. This effect naturally ranges from incredibly weak to incredibly broken.
There are solutions of course. My first solution was to go with "each other player discards down to 3 cards." That card, with +, made it into the set with the name Bureaucracy.
Now that I needed an attack to replace Militia, I took Bureaucracy a different direction. I kept the Silver-gaining of Militia, but had it go on top of your deck to make it more interesting, and went with a discard effect that only hit Victory cards, as another way to limit how devastating the discard can be. I used the "on top of your deck" part of the original Bureaucracy to make it more different from the card then called Bureaucracy. We already had art commissioned for a card called Militia, so this card was called Militia.
The original Bureaucracy had a flavor justification - putting a card back is like, you know, red tape. Bureaucracy. Slowing you down. So at this point the titles of the two cards were reversed. So we swapped them. Then, the other attacks were all guys, so Bureaucracy became Bureaucrat.Surviving Dominion 2E
Donald X. has stated that if there was a third edition, Bureaucrat would be a strong contender for being removed.
Power level was not the be-all end-all. People buy Feast; it just doesn't change the game at all. They buy Woodcutter; having +Buy will do that, but the whole point to the original card was to be simple, and I thought I had enough vanilla cards without it.
Bureaucrat is better-to-have-exist than the replaced cards. And the incentive was to just make the most important changes.Donald X.'s poem
For strumphf's 2022 advent calendar, Donald X. wrote a poem about Bureaucrat.
Another nine card board to play
It's Bureaucrat to my dismay
Everything it does is wrong
Puts silvers where they don't belong
Attacking plans but all I see
Is trying to topdeck garbage we
Put in the trash two turns ago
A dud to everyone and so
It's no surprise that now it's gone...
What's that you say? it lingers on?
Well wha'd'ya know, I see it, yes
Just barely good enough I guess
There's Gardens, er, and maybe more
Some tiny bit of fun in store
You know I've come to terms with it
Not every card's a perfect fit
A third edition might do it in
But one of these losers had to win
