Debt

Some Debt tokens.

Some cardboard Debt tokens from some European versions.

Victory and Debt tokens punchboard, as found in some European versions.

Debt (represented by the symbol ) is an alternate cost for some cards and Events in Empires. It allows the buyer to take tokens instead of paying the full cost of the card. Players who have tokens may not buy cards, Events, or Projects. tokens can only be removed from a player by paying per token at any point after playing Treasures or spending Coffers tokens during the player's Buy phase, unless otherwise specified (e.g. Capital allows paying off tokens during the Clean-up phase). A player cannot play any more Treasures or spend any more Coin tokens once they have begun to pay off . may not be paid off when Black Market allows you to buy a card from the Black Market deck.

A cost in is orthogonal to a cost in a ; cards with in their cost do not cost less or more than cards with a cost. and are similarly not comparable.

Empires comes with 40 tokens, but the mechanic is not intended to be component-limited.

List of Debt cards and Events

Engineer
Triumph
Annex, City Quarter, Donate, Overlord, Royal Blacksmith
Wedding
Fortune

• Capital does not incur debt when it is bought, but when it is cleaned up from play—in effect, allowing you to buy other things for instead of that turn.
• Tax adds to any Supply pile when bought, and has a Setup rule where all Supply piles start with . When Tax is in the game, when you buy a card, you take the on its pile.
• Mountain Pass is a Landmark where players bid for 8 , taking the they bid if they win.

Official Rules

• Empires has Debt tokens. These are indicated with the symbol, usually with a number on it, e.g. .
• Having Debt tokens prevents a player from buying cards or Events; Debt tokens do nothing else (for example they have no effect at the end of the game).
• Buying a card or Event with in its cost gives the player that many Debt tokens.
• A player removes Debt tokens in the player's Buy phase by paying per Debt token to remove it; this is done after playing Treasures, but can be done both before and after buying cards.
• Removing Debt does not use up a Buy.
• For example, Natalie has and buys City Quarter, which costs . She takes , then immediately pays off with her . She still has . On her next turn, in her Buy phase, she has . She cannot buy any cards; all she can do is pay off , leaving her with . On her next turn, in her Buy phase, she has . She pays off the and has left to spend. She buys an Engineer, taking and immediately paying to get rid of it.
• amounts are something different from .
• An amount of and is only larger than another if both the and amounts are larger, or one is larger and one the same.
• Amounts that do not specify have , and amounts that do not specify have (including all previous Dominion card costs).
• Math involving amounts does not affect amounts.
• Examples:
  • is not "up to ." is not more than and is not more than ; both have something the other lacks.
  • Bridge (from Dominion: Intrigue) lowers the cost of cards by . This lowers Fortune from to , but has no effect on Engineer's cost of .
  • Patrician checks to see if a card costs " or more." Fortune costs , so it costs " or more." Overlord costs ; that is not " or more."
  • Knights (from Dominion: Dark Ages) trash cards costing from to . That never includes cards with in the cost.
  • Trader (from Dominion: Hinterlands) trashes a card and gives a Silver per it cost. Trader trashing Fortune would give 8 Silvers for the , and no additional Silvers for the .
• Players cannot just take Debt tokens for no reason.
• Players cannot overpay with Debt (for Dominion: Guilds cards).
• Debt tokens are not counter-limited; players should use a replacement if they run out.
• Possession (from Dominion: Alchemy) now has errata that causes it to also give the Possessing player all Debt tokens the Possessed player would get.

Gallery

Cost debt

Other uses of debt

Trivia

In other languages

• Finnish: Velka
• German: Schulden
• Polish: Dług

Preview

Okay so Debt. That reddish hexagon means you don't pay for City Quarter or Royal Blacksmith up front. Instead you take some tokens that say how much you owe. While you have the tokens, you can't buy cards or Events. Those are the only things you can't do; you can still play cards, including the one that got you into Debt if you draw that one; you can still trash cards and get attacked and win the game and so on. You can pay off Debt tokens in your Buy phase, before and/or after buying cards, at per token. So, you have , you buy City Quarter, you get , you pay off of it immediately, you have left. In your next Buy phase, if you had , you could pay off the rest of your and then have left to spend. Get it? It's pretty simple. The one tricky thing is how these things work when cards compare costs. There it works like : apples and oranges. A reddish hexagon with an 8 isn't more or less than . There's a rulebook, okay? It covers all the tricky things. And uh why a hexagon, why that color? The physical tokens are reddish hexagons.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Empires Previews #1: Debt

Secret History

I had Debt from the start (and it had been in the ideas file for years). The first version though was a word on cards, "Debt," that meant you didn't need the to buy the card, but went into Debt. The Debt tokens worked the same way as they do now. One day I thought of using a symbol, and the cards changed to things like "When you gain this during your turn, take [red coin with a 10 on it]." They were like that for a while, before finally I put the symbol into the cost. With Debt a significant concern was that you could just buy the card turn one, and if that was good it seemed like the game could be too scripted. So the big Debt cards always tried to not be good turn one, although it took a while to really get there. Originally the cards could all be bought with , and in the end some have costs too.

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

Why are there no Debt attacks?

It was obvious that you could try to give out with an attack. You want it to be like Swamp Hag, because otherwise, you could lock players out, and if you tone it down enough that you aren't doing that, it looks like Bridge Troll giving out the - token, which we already have; the big difference is it's cumulative with Bridge Troll, which isn't great. And well I did do Tax. It's kind of a dud though I enjoy the set-up, the set-up is what kept it alive.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Previews #4: Werewolf, Skulk, Cursed Village

Why aren't there more cards that refer to debt?

A card that referred to would most games be referring to nothing, except to the degree that the card itself also provided debt. I mean you deal out 10 random cards and mostly don't get one with . Whereas Apothecary knows Potion is in the game, because it put it there. Apprentice, the clause there was a mistake; it was the only card in the set that didn't involve , so I put on that clause, which doubles as answering the rules question that comes up there. But mostly it just makes the card more complex. There were Remodels that involved debt; they didn't work out. See the Secret History.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Interview with Donald X.

Applications to past cards

If I had tried debt earlier, or made 10 expansions before any were published, I could have given some other things . Debt is tricky so probably very few cards would make the leap. It would be more about "let's have a few more cards" than "this card would be better with ." Nothing stands out as an obvious good fit.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Interview with Donald X.

Yes this is better-to-use than the - token, though Ball would be and , not . I don't imagine would find a lot of other use; those cards were tricky. However the Engineer trick could come in handy elsewhere (since it costs , it can't gain itself).

—Donald X. Vaccarino, How would old cards be made differently with new mechanics?