Colony

Colony
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Victory
Kingdom card?	No
Set	Prosperity
Illustrator(s)	Martin Hoffmann
Card text
10

Colony is a basic Victory card from Prosperity. It and Platinum may be added to the supply for games using Kingdom cards from Prosperity.

At , Colony has the most expensive cost of any card in Dominion, and at 10  is almost always worth the most   of any item on the board.

Colony plays roughly the same role in Prosperity games that Province plays in other games—since it is the most valuable Victory card, and depleting its Supply pile also ends the game, many games fundamentally boil down to a race to see who can win the Colony split.

Additional rules

The rules for playing with Colony are described in the Dominion: Prosperity rulebook and are reproduced here.

Preparation

• If only Kingdom cards from Prosperity are being used this game, then the Platinum and Colony piles are added to the Basic cards in the Supply for the game.
• If a mix of Kingdom cards from Prosperity and other sets are being used, then the inclusion of Platinum and Colony in the Supply should be determined randomly, based on the proportion of Prosperity and non-Prosperity cards in use. For example, choose a random Kingdom card being used - such as the first card dealt out from the Randomizer deck - and if it is from Prosperity, add Platinum and Colony to the Supply.
• Platinum and Colony are not Kingdom cards; when those are included, there are 10 Kingdom cards, plus Copper, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Estate, Duchy, Province, Colony, and Curse, in the Supply.
• Use 8 Colonies for a 2-player game, or 12 Colonies for a game with 3 or more players.

Game end

In games using Platinum and Colony, there is an additional way the game can end. At the end of each turn, the game ends if one of these three conditions is met:

• the Supply pile of Province cards is empty
• OR any 3 Supply piles are empty (4 piles in a 5-6 player game)
• OR the Supply pile of Colony cards is empty.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• This is not a Kingdom card. You do not use it every game; see the Preparation section. It is a Victory card worth 10 VP.

Strategy

To better understand the Kingdoms in which Colony appears, it may be useful to refer to the Platinum strategy section.

Colony is an extra Victory card pile that also comes with an extra Treasure card pile in the form of Platinum. Relative to Province, Colony encourages building in two ways. First, its high   density (  gained per Buy, per stop card added, and per spent) makes the payoff for building much higher. Second, because the total amount of   available in the Kingdom is much larger, you have more   available to come back from an early   deficit, giving you more time to build overall. Thus, while money strategies revolving around Treasures (especially Platinum) can be feasible, it is far more likely that engines are strongly favored in Colony games.

Because of how much   it offers, Colony tends to make other sources of   relatively less important. For an alternative to be viable it needs to either score even larger amounts of   (most notably Dominate or in some cases Collection) or end the game via a pileout very quickly (such as a Gardens/Groom rush). Provinces are usually not a viable alternative to Colonies, and perform a similar role to Duchy in standard Province-only Kingdoms as a consolation prize and option for the equivalent of Duchy dancing. Two notable differences are that emptying the Province pile–unlike the Duchy pile–ends the game, and that two Provinces outscore one Colony, which can sometimes allow you to come back from a Colony deficit.

Milling Colonies is a viable strategy if you have a   lead, just as with Province. Remodeling Platinum into Colony, however, is much less common than Gold to Province because gainers that can gain Platinum are much more rare than Gold gainers.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		10	Prosperity	October 2010
	never implemented	10	Base Cards	June 2012
		10	Prosperity (2016 printing)	February 2017
	never implemented	10	Base Cards (2018 printing)	June 2018
		10	Prosperity (Second Edition)	June 2022

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Chinese	殖民地
Czech	Kolonie
Dutch	Kolonie
Finnish	Siirtomaa
French	Colonie
German	Kolonie			10	(2010)
	Kolonie			10	(2016)
	Kolonie			10	(Nachdruck 2021) 2. Edition (2022)
Italian	Colonia
Japanese	植民地 (pron. shokuminchi)
Polish	Kolonia			10	(2016)
	Kolonia			10	II Edycja (2022)
Russian	Колония (pron. koloniya)
Spanish	Colonia

Trivia

Official card art.

Secret History

This always cost . Originally it made 8 . At the time Province was worth 5 . When Province went up to 6 , I changed this to 9 . It stayed like that for a while. 9  seemed like a good spot for making both Colony and Province viable in Colony games. In development, Valerie and Dale really wanted it to be worth 10 . 1 - 3 - 6 - 10! Except, the 1 and 3 there really don't mean much; Estate and Duchy are not bargains. For a while I said, sure, maybe 9  isn't the right value, but you know, it sure has seemed good in testing so far. And it had. It had seemed just fine. I finally tested it at 10  anyway though. And well, it usually didn't make a difference in who won, and it made counting scores easier, and it looks prettier. And attacks and rush strategies already push you away from Colony; it's fine if some games you really don't want to stop at Provinces. So 10  it is.

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

Why does Province still end the game?

The initial idea was for it to really be a decision, do you go for Provinces or Colonies (and Colony was 9 ). Later it seemed like, it was okay if you tended to go for Colonies; it's a game with Colonies, let's have the experience. But the end-game rule didn't change, and it's nice that some games it's still a decision and you might go for Provinces instead.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Re: Can we have variants to the "3 piles empty=game over" rule?