Cage

Cage
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Treasure - Duration
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Plunder
Illustrator(s)	Jessi J
Card text
Set aside up to 4 cards from your hand face down (on this). The next time you gain a Victory card, trash this, and put the set aside cards into your hand at end of turn.

Cage is a Treasure-Duration card from Plunder. It is a one-shot that lets you thin your deck by temporarily pseudo-trashing up to four cards. The cards return to your deck when you start greening, however, so you may need to be prepared for a larger-than-usual decrease in deck quality at that stage of the game.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• The cards go to your hand after drawing your regular hand of 5 cards for next turn.
• For example you might set aside two Estates and two Coppers on a Cage on an early turn; then on a late turn, buy a Province, trash the Cage, and add the two Estates and two Coppers to your hand at end of turn.

Other rules clarifications

• See the Additional rules section for Duration cards in Dominion: Plunder regarding things happening "the next time".
• If you set aside nothing with this, it will still stay in play until you gain a Victory card.
• If gaining a Victory card causes you to play this (e.g. you gain a Province, then gain a Cage with Haggler, and play it with Mining Road), that won't trigger the Cage (it triggers off the next Victory card you gain).

Strategy

Cage is initially a lot like a Chapel that can only be used once, but has the added benefit of removing itself from your deck as well. As such, it is a powerful tool for setting up an engine. This benefit usually needs to be offset with a strategy to deal with the sudden influx of unwanted cards later in the game, when the first victory card is purchased. In the case that there is a strong strategy involving only victory tokens, the removal can be permanent, but such situations are uncommon.

Expensive cards that provide powerful trashing such as Forge can easily deal with the unwanted late-game cards.

However, there are other uses for Cage especially late-game once an engine has been created: instead of using it as a pseudo-trasher, you can use it to set aside key cards for the next turn, to allow you to start your engine. A powerful strategy with Cage is often to use it initially as a pseudo-trasher, build an engine, and then once you start buying VP, use Cage again to set aside cards to ensure that you will start the engine smoothly on the next turn. This technique can somewhat mitigate the decrease in deck quality associated with the return of the estates and coppers from the first Cage play. Because Cage is trashed, this strategy relies on +Buy or gainers to obtain the extra Cages.

Cage synergizes with Pendant: As Cage is a treasure, it sits on the table every round until a victory card is purchased, effectively increasing the value of Pendant by on every round. The setting aside of specific cards for later can also set up powerful turns in which Pendants will achieve their maximum value. When Cage and Pendant are both present, Pendant can reach a minimum value of through playing the three basic treasures, and possibly if Cage itself is also played on that turn.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		Set aside up to 4 cards from your hand face down (on this). The next time you gain a Victory card, trash this, and put the set aside cards into your hand at end of turn.	Plunder	December 2022

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
German	Käfig			Lege bis zu 4 deiner Handkarten verdeckt zur Seite (auf diese Karte). Das nächste Mal, wenn du eine Punktekarte nimmst, entsorge diese Karte und nimm die zur Seite gelegten Karten am Ende des Zuges auf deine Hand.	(2023)
Polish	Klatka			Odłóż na bok (na tę kartę) maksymalnie 4 karty z ręki, awersem do dołu. Kiedy następnym razem dodasz kartę Zwycięstwa, wyrzuć tę Klatkę na Śmietnisko, a na koniec tury weź na rękę odłożone na niej karty.	(2023)

Trivia

Official card art.

Secret History

Initially it wasn't a Treasure, didn't trash itself, and put the cards into your hand on the same turn that you gained a Victory card (where typically you'd then uselessly discard them). The idea was that it just locked up four cards for a while for you. First I made it a Treasure, then put the cards into your hand at end of turn, to make the card better; then to tone it back down, and also make it less like Grotto, it trashed itself.

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

Why is it a Treasure?

The key thing was, that I wanted to take cards that could be treasures and have them be treasures. It wasn't for balance, though it's better/different due to being a treasure rather than an action. It's Cage and not some other random Action because in fact most Actions do not just turn into treasures if I want them to. They need to have +1 Action but not more, no +Cards yes except the one time I do that, and not do things that make you want it to still be your Action phase.

We can make this argument the other way. Militia is basically a Treasure; why wasn't it tweaked to a version that could have the +1 Action and then made a Treasure? Originally, Actions didn't randomly get + like that; that changed because I had to give them resources to make the game work, and man they didn't all want +Cards or gains.

Historically Treasures have made or gained cards. It's great to have conventions like that. But a Treasure can do other things and here's one that does. It's also fun to defy conventions sometimes; to get this fun, you have to have a convention, and then have to break it.

Grotto was also a Treasure at one point; one reason it changed was to distinguish it more from Cage. That was only possible by having one of them be a Treasure.

Now I am looking through the cards, wishing I'd tried Shaman as a Treasure. +1 Action, + - it's perfect. Of course it would have needed the verboten small font then.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Interview with Donald X.