Den of Sin

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Den of Sin
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Night - Duration
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Nocturne
Illustrator(s)	Mark Poole
Card text
At the start of your next turn, +2 Cards. This is gained to your hand (instead of your discard pile).

Den of Sin is a Night-Duration card from Nocturne. It provides a larger handsize on your next turn, and is gained to hand for immediate use.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• Since Night is after the Buy phase, normally you can play this the turn you buy it.

Other rules clarifications

• If you gain this onto your deck (with e.g. Armory), you didn't gain it to your discard pile, so Den of Sin's ability doesn't trigger and it stays on your deck.

Strategy

Nocturne has a habit of turning classic Actions from the Base set into Night-Duration cards. Village becomes Ghost Town, Workshop becomes Cobbler, Cellar becomes Night Watchman, Moat becomes Guardian, Throne Room becomes Ghost, and Laboratory becomes Den of Sin. What differentiates these Night-Duration cards from the base Actions enough to justify their inclusion in the expansion?

The key is that you are sacrificing power on your current turn to gain a bonus on your next turn. Excluding interactions with other cards, having Laboratory in your hand of 5 cards will result in a hand of 6 cards. Meanwhile, having a Den of Sin in your hand leaves you with only 4 other cards to play on your current turn, but gives you 7 cards at the start of your next turn. This is a continuation of the guiding principle of Action-Duration cards such as Tactician introduced in Seaside: "It is often better to have one great turn and one bad turn instead of two mediocre turns."

The real power of these Night-Duration cards lies in that seemingly innocent text at the bottom of the card. Most Night-Duration cards are gained to your hand. That can lead to some interesting shenanigans, especially early in the game.

This makes Den of Sin one of the best buys on a lucky / opening. On your 1st turn, you can use your 5 Coppers to buy a Den of Sin, gaining it to your hand and playing it. At the beginning of your 2nd turn, you need to draw from an empty deck, so the 5 discarded Coppers become your deck, effectively turning your / opening into a /, with a guaranteed + purchasing power on your 3rd turn!

Unfortunately, after that first on-gain play, Night-Duration cards like Den of Sin lose some of their power:

• As with all Duration cards, it is easy for Den of Sin to miss a shuffle, meaning that you won't see it as often as a vanilla Laboratory.
• The Den of Sin you play on your last turn of the game gives you no benefit because there was no next turn. Keep this in mind if you have the opportunity to Remodel Den of Sin into a Duchy.
• Den of Sin also lacks Laboratory's self-synergy. In the best-case scenario Laboratory draws another Laboratory, which draws another Laboratory, and so on, until the entire deck is drawn, repeating this process each turn. But if Den of Sin could perfectly draw a Den of Sin each turn, the result is a 6-card hand each turn. This makes late-game Den of Sin a less reliable Hireling requiring multiple buys instead of a single buy.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		At the start of your next turn, +2 Cards. This is gained to your hand (instead of your discard pile).	Nocturne	November 2017

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Dutch	Huis der zonden
French	Antre du péché			Au début de votre prochain tour : +2 Cartes. Cette carte est reçue en main (et non dans la défausse).
German	Sündenpfuhl (lit. gomorrah)			Zu Beginn deines nächsten Zuges: +2 Karten. Diese Karte wird auf die Hand genommen (anstatt auf den Ablagestapel).	(2017)
Japanese	悪人のアジト (pron. akunin no ajito)			あなたの次のターンの開始時に、 +2 カードを引く。 このカードは、捨て札置き場ではなく、手札に獲得する。
Russian	Логово Греха (pron. logovo gryekha)

Trivia

Official card art.

Secret History

For strumphf's 2022 advent calendar, Donald X. went in-depth on the development of Den of Sin.

I tried a few forms of scaling next-turn card-drawing Night cards. One that was in the set for a while was a Coppersmith variant, as I liked to think of it - name a card, per copy of it you have in play you set aside a card from your deck, next turn you get the cards. Early on you pick Copper mostly. Eventually you might pick the card itself, or something else. Sometimes we liked this and sometimes we didn't. It would seem fair and then seem crazy. As crazy started seeming to be the winner, the card got less attractive. I made a few versions of it but did not hit on a great version. Then I scrapped it for this. It feels like the other card is part of the story though. The fix was to always give you +2 Cards, not a scaling number. And it goes to your hand, which one of the versions of the other one tried.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of Dominion: Nocturne

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