Cultist

Cultist
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action - Attack - Looter
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Dark Ages
Illustrator(s)	Jason Slavin
Card text
+2 Cards Each other player gains a Ruins. You may play a Cultist from your hand. When you trash this, +3 Cards.

Cultist is an Action-Attack-Looter from Dark Ages. It is similar to Witch, except that it distributes Ruins instead of Curses. Unlike Witch, multiple Cultists can chain into each other, and when a Cultist is trashed it lets you draw three cards.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• When you play this, you draw two cards, then each other player gains a Ruins.
• Go in turn order starting to your left; each player takes the top Ruins, revealing the next one each time.
• If the Ruins pile runs out, players stop gaining them at that point.
• After giving out Ruins, you may play another Cultist from your hand.
• It can be one you just drew from playing Cultist, or one you already had in your hand.
• Playing a Cultist this way does not use up any extra Actions you were allowed to play due to cards like Fortress - the original Cultist uses up one Action and that is it.
• When you trash a Cultist, you draw three cards.
• This happens whether or not it is your turn, and whether or not the card that causes Cultist to be trashed was yours.
• If you trash a Cultist while revealing cards, such as to a Knight attack, you do not draw the revealed cards that are about to be discarded.

Strategy

Cultist is a chainable terminal draw card whose junking attack is often strong. The card’s overall impact depends heavily on the strength of that attack, which is modulated by the available thinning and (sometimes critically) by other effects that interact with the distributed Ruins. If the Kingdom offers no Attack immunity and ways to thin Ruins are absent or weak, Cultist is often centralizing: obtaining multiple early copies and playing them frequently is generally a high priority, and the game is likely to become a slog. However, there are a few effects that either reduce the negative impact of Ruins or turn gaining them into an actively attractive prospect. The most important of these, and therefore the most likely to make the Cultist attack counterproductive, are those that provide ways to remove Action cards from your deck in exchange for a strong benefit, including Way of the Horse, Necromancer, and Advance. More marginally, the negative impact of Ruins on deck control is mitigated or counteracted by effects like Museum or Scrying Pool.

The fact that multiple Cultists can be chained allows you to play as many as you draw without needing a village. This means that Cultist cannot draw another copy dead and drawing multiple Cultists in the same hand is usually beneficial, rather than a detrimental terminal collision. However, Cultist can still draw other Action cards dead, and since it often creates sloggy games in which you don't have good deck control, the chance of being able to play a village before your Cultists may be relatively slim. Therefore, adding Action cards other than Cultist to your deck may be less beneficial than usual in a game where Cultist is important, further contributing to its centralizing nature. An additional implication of the chaining effect is that the Ruins pile is likely to empty quickly (for example, more quickly than the Curse pile does with Witch) and this process is likely to produce a significantly asymmetric split, since chaining multiple Cultists increases the likelihood of finding another one to chain. For all these reasons, gaining multiple Cultists early is generally very helpful, and when Cultist is relevant it's best to plan your opening buys accordingly: cost reduction, e.g. from Quarry or Ferry, is one possible way to achieve this.

Once the Ruins pile is empty, Cultist usually remains relevant as a draw card despite its downside of drawing other Action cards dead; the chaining effect makes it significantly stronger than Moat, and more akin to Laboratory if you can rely primarily on Treasures for payload. If you have won the Ruins split and can thin the remaining junk from your deck, you may be able to build towards deck control and stronger payload at this stage, particularly if there is a start-of-turn option for extra terminal space, such as with Barracks. However, the game continuing as a slog is a somewhat likely scenario, especially since Ruins constitute one empty pile, Cultists may also be empty or low, and you are unlikely to be able to build quickly towards affording Provinces. Therefore, a sloggy pileout is more likely than usual, perhaps involving Duchies. This can often be assisted by Cultist's on-trash effect, which can provide a final one-time injection of draw when you use it as fodder for a trash-for-benefit effect such as Transmogrify.

Cultist's on-trash effect is separately the source of a powerful interaction with Lurker. Using Lurker to trash Cultist directly from the Supply generates very strong non-terminal draw, which makes Lurker a highly attractive card in the early game. It is worth noting that this does have the consequence of putting Cultists in the trash and, depending on the Kingdom, it may be more beneficial at points to gain those Cultists and begin junking your opponent. Because this draw is ultimately non-renewable and in short supply if contested, and Lurker usually cannot be used to score, you’ll usually want to build by adding thinners to achieve longer-lasting deck control and more general purpose payload. Since Lurker itself is very cheap and also provides strong pile control, the game is likely to end via a pileout.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		+2 Cards Each other player gains a Ruins. You may play a Cultist from your hand. When you trash this, +3 Cards.	Dark Ages	August 2012
		+2 Cards Each other player gains a Ruins. You may play a Cultist from your hand. When you trash this, +3 Cards.	Dark Ages (2017 printing)	September 2017

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Czech	Vyznavač (lit. worshipper)			+2 karty Všichni ostatní hráči si vezmou ruinu. Můžeš zahrát Vyznavače z ruky. Pokud tuto kartu zahodíš na smetiště, +3 karty.	(2016)
Dutch	Cultist			+2 Kaarten Iedere andere speler pakt een Ruïne. Jij mag een Cultist uit je hand spelen. Als je deze kaart vernietigt: +3 Kaarten.	(2013)
Finnish	Okkultisti (lit. occultist)
French	Cultiste
German	Kultist			+2 Karten Jeder Mitspieler nimmt eine Ruine. Du darfst einen Kultisten aus deiner Hand ausspielen. Wenn du diese Karte entsorgst: +3 Karten.	(2019)
Japanese	狂信者 (pron. kyōshinsha, lit. fanatic)			+2 カードを引く 他のプレイヤーは全員、廃墟カード1枚を獲得する。あなたは手札の狂信者1枚を使用してもよい。 これを廃棄すろとき、+3 カードを引く。
Korean	광신도 (pron. gwangsindo, lit. zealot)
Russian	Культист (pron. kul'tist)
Spanish	Sectario (lit. sectarian)			+2 Cartas Cada jugador (menos tú) gana una carta de Ruinas. Puedes jugar un Sectario de tu mano. Cuando elimines esta carta, +3 Cartas.	(2014)

Trivia

Official card art.

Preview

Cultist also does something when you trash it. Those of you who were waiting for a Dominion expansion that let you sacrifice Cultists, finally, here it is. And hey you get three cards when you do it. When you play Cultist, you give people a Ruins, that sounds bad, and you draw two cards, and hey you can play another Cultist. These guys stick together. In fact if your deck’s only actions are Cultists, you can just string them together, like a line of hurtful Laboratories.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Dark Ages Preview #2: Feodum, Cultist, Ruined Market

Secret History

Attacks need to produce resources of some sort; I know from Saboteur and Sea Hag that people don't like it when they don't (yes the Knights don't all, but most do). And well I have gone through all of the simple options. So Cultist had a tricky problem to solve: it had to have resources I'd already given out, and not be too powerful, but not look too weak. Initially it gave +2 Cards and said "each other player gains a Ruins. If he can't, he gains a Curse." It could potentially give out 20 bad cards to each opponent. It was like that for a while, but in the end I decided that getting Curses and Ruins at the same time was something to save for when it came up out of the randomizer, rather than something to build into one nightmare card.

I tried "Cultists cost less this turn," trying to play into the flavor, but that just never did anything. I gave it a sweet when-trashed ability, but some games you can't trash it; it still needed more than +2 Cards. Finally I thought of letting you play another Cultist.

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

Retrospective

I haven't put in the games to get sick of Cultist. I think I have to buy Cultist but that I don't need to go for chaining them. However I recognize that a lot of people are unhappy with it, and like the suggestion someone made, that you either chain or Ruin, not both.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Cards I would ban / errata

Imp is good times, play with lots of cards to make your Imps work, Cultist is bad times, play with just Cultists to make your Cultists work. I would still do another Ruin-ing attack, but it wouldn't try to look like Cultist.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Dominion Discord, 2019