Counting House

Counting House
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Prosperity
Illustrator(s)	Matthias Catrein
Card text
Look through your discard pile, reveal any number of Coppers from it, and put them into your hand.

Counting House is an Action card from Prosperity. It allows you to pull all Coppers from your discard pile and place them in your hand. It is generally considered a very weak card as it is highly dependent on how many coppers you have and how many of your cards are in your discard pile.

It was removed from the second edition of Prosperity and replaced with Magnate which generally synergizes with having many Treasures, not just Coppers.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• This card lets you look through your discard pile, something you normally are not allowed to do.
• You only get to look through your discard pile when you play this.
• You do not have to show the other players your entire discard pile, just the Coppers you take out.
• After you take out the Coppers, you can leave your discard pile in any order.

Strategy

Before it was removed, Counting House featured in a few combos, but otherwise was very rarely playable. The core problem with Counting House is that it can only make a large impact in decks that have many Coppers, but these decks tend to be weak and unreliable. It also has a large opportunity cost since it is terminal and costs , and it does nothing when your discard pile is empty, either at the top of a shuffle or after you’ve drawn your deck.

Counting House’s primary use case is in the Counting House/Travelling Fair and (to a lesser extent) Counting House/Night Watchman combo decks. These combos use effects that can reliably ensure a Counting House is in hand and Coppers are in the discard pile every turn, and the Travelling Fair combo in particular is extremely powerful.

Other use cases are very rare:

1. It can be utilized as a draw card in an engine with many sifters or discard-for-benefit cards (e.g. Artificer) that can put Copper into the discard pile, leaving the Coppers to be drawn by Counting House.
2. It can be gained to hand or to the top of deck tactically in the late game if you know there are Coppers in the discard pile that will enable you to buy out the last Provinces.
3. It can be used in the late game of a Copper-junking slog featuring cards such as the removed Mountebank.
4. It can occasionally be used in weak Kingdoms featuring Banquet or other effects that gain Coppers.

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.

• axlemn's 2012 article

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		Look through your discard pile, reveal any number of Copper cards from it, and put them into your hand.	Prosperity	October 2010
		Look through your discard pile, reveal any number of Coppers from it, and put them into your hand.	Prosperity (2016 printing)	February 2017

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Chinese	會計部			觀看你的棄牌堆，將棄牌堆任意數量的銅幣加入手牌。
Czech	Zastavárna (lit. pawnshop)
Dutch	Boekhouding (lit. accounting)			Bekijk je aflegstapel, toon daaruit zoveel koperkaarten als je wilt en neem deze in je hand.
Finnish	Tilitoimisto (lit. accounting office)
French	Bureau de comptabilité
German	Leihhaus (lit. pawnshop)			Sieh deinen Ablagestapel durch, decke beliebig viele Kupfer daraus auf und nimm sie auf deine Hand.	(Nachdruck 2021)
Italian	Contabilità (lit. accounting)
Japanese	会計所 (pron. kaikei-sho, lit. accounting office)			捨て札置き場のカードをすべて見て、その中の好きな枚数の銅貨を公開し、手札に加える。
Polish	Rachuba (lit. counting, note: archaic)			Przejrzyj swój stos kart odrzuconych i odkryj z niego dowolną liczbę Miedziaków. Następnie weź je na rękę.	(2016)
Russian	Счётная Палата (pron. schotnaya palata, note: name for the Russian federal financial institution)
Spanish	Casa de cuentas

Trivia

Donald X. and his playtesters nicknamed this card "Counting Horse".

The name is a reference to the nursery rhyme, Sing a Song of Sixpence.

Official card art.

Card Art

The art shows the   shield on the wall.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, 'Art Trivia'

Secret History

My wife came up with this card. Her version got you back all of the Silver, which was crazy. Women! The Coppers version worked out, and just left getting a good wording.

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

Retrospective

Counting House is narrow but a set can have a narrow card, some people love winning with narrow cards in the games where they are good enough. I just beat FTL's turn-two Mountebank with it so there you go.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, What Donald X. Might Do With a Dominion Time Machine

Second edition removal

It used to be I felt like I could make an occasional intentionally weak card, that could be fun to win with in the rare games where it was useful. I later realized that I would make those cards without trying, and so shouldn't try to make them. These days my rugs try to be perfect. Counting House was very weak, except for a few combos that made it powerful.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Prosperity 2E Preview 1

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