Council Room

Council Room
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Base
Illustrator(s)	Matthias Catrein
Card text
+4 Cards +1 Buy Each other player draws a card.

Council Room is an Action card from the Base set. It is a terminal draw card, meaning it provides +Cards but no +Action. It also provides non-Attack interaction between players: the benefit to you is counterbalanced by a benefit to your opponent, making them draw a card.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• The other players draw a card whether they want to or not.

Strategy

Council Room is a draw card similar to Smithy, but giving all players an extra card. Its +Buy offers some flexibility in building.

With a village, Council Room makes for strong deck-drawing engines. Compared to a Village / Smithy engine, Council Room comes with a built-in +Buy.

There are two main problems with engines that only use Council Room as draw:

• Your opponents get to draw a card every time you play a Council Room. This free draw is very powerful - it’s as if they played a Laboratory before their turn started.
• Since each Council Room draws so much, you need fewer of them to draw your deck (which is the goal of most engines). This increases the likelihood of a dud, caused by not finding your Council Room in your starting hand. You can try to avoid this second issue by just buying more Council Rooms, but this can leave you with lots of inefficient overdraw.

However, if your opponents are also playing Council Rooms, chances are you will start your turn with more than 5 cards in hand.

Engines become more reliable when using Council Room as a supplement to other draw cards, for example Laboratory. In this case, duds are less likely, and your opponent is drawing fewer cards on your turn.

You can mitigate the drawback of Council Room by playing with a handsize attack, such as Militia. No matter how many Council Rooms you play, they'll still have to discard down to a 3 card hand. This does allow them to sift through bad cards and approach a reshuffle sooner, though, so the card draw is not completely counteracted.

Council Room is also a strong Big Money enabler in the Base set: this strategy involves opening with two Silvers, then only buying Treasure cards and 1–2 Council Rooms before greening. Although powerful for newcomers to Dominion, this does not reach the full potential of Council Room.

Notable Synergies

• Hand size attacks.
• Cheap spammable treasures, such as Fool’s Gold or Coin of the Realm, make the +Buy more useful in the early game.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		+4 Cards +1 Buy Each other player draws a card.	Dominion	October 2008
		+4 Cards +1 Buy Each other player draws a card.	Dominion (Second Edition)	October 2016

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Chinese	議事廳 (pron. yìshì tīng)
Czech	Zasedání rady (lit. board meetings)
Dutch	Raadszaal			+4 Kaarten +1 Aanschaf Iedere andere speler trekt 1 kaart.	Tweede editie (herdruk 2019/2020)
Finnish	Raatihuone (lit. town hall)
French	Chambre du conseil			+4 Cartes +1 Achat Tous vos adversaires piochent 1 carte.
German	Ratsversammlung			+4 Karten +1 Kauf Jeder Mitspieler zieht eine Karte.	2. Edition (2019)
Hungarian	Tanácsterem
Italian	Sala del Consiglio (lit. boardroom)
Japanese	議事堂 (pron. gijidō, lit. parliament building)			+4 カードを引く +1 購入 他のプレイヤーは全員、1枚カードを引く。
Korean	회의실 (pron. hweisil)
Norwegian	Rådssal
Polish	Sala obrad (lit. debate chamber)			+4 karty +1 zakup Każdy z pozostałych graczy dobiera kartę.	(2015)
Romanian	Sala de Consiliu
Russian	Зал Совета (pron. zal sovyeta)			+4 Карты +1 Покупка Каждый другой игрок тянет карту.
Spanish	Sala del Consejo			+4 Cartas +1 Compra Los demas jugadores roban una carta cada uno.	First Edition (2008) Errata: demas instead of demás
	Sala del Consejo			+4 Cartas +1 Compra Los demás jugadores roban una carta cada uno.	Second Edition (2016, 2021)

Trivia

Official card art.

Secret History

Originally the 4th expansion had a "non-attack player interaction" sub-theme. It was easily the best expansion, and it became clear that I should split that sucker up. The main set got this card.

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

Further development comments

For a bit there Council Room cost , because no-one would buy it at . It's not at all weak at .

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Interview with Donald X.

Retrospective

I don't like Council Room, I considered giving it the axe in 2E. I don't like those BM council room decks that make new players think building engines is for chumps...The friendly interaction is not the best, some players won't touch it because it gives someone else a card. Mainly what you get out of it is the joy of the Militia combo. Lost City somehow does much better here, people are hesitant but really want their Lost Cities.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Dominion Discord, 2018