Chapel

Chapel
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Base
Illustrator(s)	Matthias Catrein
Card text
Trash up to 4 cards from your hand.

Chapel is a trasher from the Base set. It is regarded as one of the best cards costing in the game (and one of the most powerful cards overall relative to its cost) because of its ability to quickly improve deck quality by trashing Estates and Coppers.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• You cannot trash the Chapel itself, since it is not in your hand after you play it.

Other rules clarifications

• You don't have to trash any cards; zero is included in "up to four". This may be relevant if you are forced to play Chapel (for example, as a result of playing Herald) and don't have anything you want to trash.
• When you trash any cards with "when you trash this" abilities, you trash all the cards first, then pick an order to resolve things that happen due to trashing them.

Strategy

Chapel is widely considered to be one of the strongest cards in the game. It is one of the fastest trashers, allowing a player to quickly trash away their starting cards (and any other junk cards), and should usually be gained on turn 1 or 2.

Trashing cards is usually very powerful. The Coppers and Estates you start with are very weak, and get in the way of drawing much more powerful cards that you will be gaining during the course of the game. By removing these weak cards as soon as possible:

• You start drawing hands with a higher proportion of powerful cards, enabling much stronger turns.
• You are more likely to pair up cards that want to be drawn together, such as Village and Smithy.
• By having a small deck of few cards, you do not need to purchase as many draw cards, which makes drawing and playing all your cards each turn much easier.
• You can focus on playing the powerful cards you really want to be using, such as Witch and Artisan more often.

Players should trash as many Coppers and Estates as they can the first time they draw Chapel to reduce the size of their deck as quickly as possible. Take care on subsequent plays; Copper is weak, but you can be reliant on them for money early in the game.

It is especially important to trash early when junking attacks like Witch are present. Trashing quickly prepares your deck for the incoming Curses, as a small deck can more easily draw Chapel and Curse in the same hand. Additionally, when your deck is small you can play your own Witches more often, hopefully giving most of the Curses to your opponent first.

Notable Synergies

• Events that let you play Chapel on turn 2 (e.g. Summon, Travelling Fair, Demand)
• Alms allows you to still purchase a card on the early turns where you play Chapel to trash 4 cards, working around the disadvantage of Chapel preventing you from building on these turns.
• Advance allows you to buy Chapel on both opening turns, improving the odds of trashing very quickly, then trade them in for very powerful cards when they are eventually drawn together.
• Opening Silos with Chapel gives you a high likelihood of being able to trash with Chapel on both turns 3 and 4, while also trashing Estates first.

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 or give historical perspective. Caveat emptor.

• theory's 2010 article

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		Trash up to 4 cards from your hand.	Dominion	October 2008
		Trash up to 4 cards from your hand.	Dominion (Second Edition)	October 2016

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Chinese	禮拜堂 (pron. lǐbàitáng)			移除你手上至多四張卡片。
Czech	Kaple
Dutch	Kapel			Vernietig 4 of minder kaarten uit je hand.	Tweede editie (herdruk 2019/2020)
Finnish	Kappeli
French	Chapelle			Écartez jusqu'a 4 cartes de votre main.
German	Kapelle			Entsorge bis zu 4 Karten aus deiner Hand.	(2008)
	Kapelle			Entsorge bis zu 4 deiner Handkarten.	2. Edition (2019)
Greek	Παρεκκλήσι (pron. parekklesi)
Hungarian	Kápolna
Italian	Cappella
Japanese	礼拝堂 (pron. reihaidō)			手札から4枚以下のカードを廃棄する。
Korean	예배당 (pron. yebaedang)
Norwegian	Kapell
Polish	Kaplica			Wyrzuć na śmietnisko maksymalnie 4 kartę z ręki.	(2009/2011)
Romanian	Capela
Russian	Часовня (pron. chasovnya)			Выкиньте до четырёх карт из руки.
Spanish	Capilla			Elimina hasta 4 cartas de tu mano.	First Edition (2008)
	Capilla			Elimina hasta 4 cartas de tu mano.	Second Edition (2016)

Trivia

Official card art.

Why is religion associated with trashing?

Well this one is easy. When you trash Coppers and Estates, you're giving them to charity, and when you trash Curses, that's an exorcism.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Dominion: Awesome Mechanics; Meh Flavor

Secret History

This started out "trash any number of cards" and went to the ever-so-slightly weaker "trash up to 4 cards." I tested a version with "trash up to 3 cards." It was horrible. Just, way slower than the current version, like you wouldn't believe.

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

Chapel's strength

Chapel is the most powerful Dominion card relative to its cost, and I'm unlikely to make another card that powerful (relative to its cost).

That's not the same as it being bad for the game though. I think Chapel provides a lot of play value for new players. First it seems weak - there are multiple BGG threads complaining, what good is Chapel in games without Witch? Then you try trashing Estates and then trashing everything and it's such a rush. Then you explore games where you don't just start Chapel / Silver, and some people in the end find the 5-card Chapel decks. It's this play value that got Chapel into the main set. Its power level was no secret.

For experienced players Chapel is often more like "this game has different rules" than it is like a normal card. We all buy it and have sleek decks and then see where we go from there. I still like those games, and the people who don't can stop playing with Chapel. Chapel is one of four pillars of altering the base game - Chapel, Thief, Witch, Gardens. They all shake the game up significantly, in related ways, such that combinations of them are also interesting. They play differently as people get better at the game and well I like that too.

Chapel is not unbeatable. Recently I looked at the last four logged playtest games that had Chapel in them. It lost three of them - one to Gardens and two to attacks. It's strong but still not automatic.

People often talk about changing the cost and I don't think that gets you anywhere. At you get less interesting games, not more interesting ones, and exchanging the / opening being especially good for the / opening being especially weak is a wash for me. If I had thought it was a mistake to print it at , I would have replaced it, not charged more for it.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Cost inversion between Fishing Village and Caravan?

Why does it cost 2?

As noted I think it's correctly priced; the issue is whether that text should be a card, not what it should cost if it does. I think it's great that sometimes trashing is so easy. The question then is if the main game is the best place to have one of those. The argument is that new players don't understand trashing immediately, and having such a blatant extreme trasher helps. And then it retains value for experienced players, by changing the game so much but still leaving plenty of room to be the better player. I don't know how much it actually helps new players. But when working on 2E I wasn't ever thinking, at last, my chance to get rid of Chapel. If I had replaced just one card for high power level it would have been Witch instead (replacing it with another Witch). As you can see, that didn't happen either. The cards that left were the ones that don't contribute enough to making the game different; mostly this is by being weak, though in Feasts case it's just by not changing anything.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Interview with Donald X.