Discard

To discard a card is to move it into your discard pile. This is done every turn during your Clean-up phase, but can also be done at other times as part of the effect of a card. Cards that you play that cause you to discard from your hand are often sifters, or give you some benefit in exchange for discarding, while cards that cause other players to discard from their hand are handsize attacks. If you have a card on your Exile mat, you may discard it whenever you gain another copy of the same card.

There are several cards that do something when discarded from your play area (generally during Clean-up), and five cards—Tunnel, Faithful Hound, Village Green, Trail and Weaver—that have special effects when discarded at any other time. There are also several cards that can instruct you to look through your discard pile, though this is generally not allowed under other circumstances.

Discarding is not to be confused with gaining a card (whether by buying it or otherwise) and putting it in your discard pile: this does not count as "discarding" the card. Further, Chancellor variants such as Scavenger—informally referred to as deck discarders—, Possession, and Order of Masons also have effects that can move cards to a discard pile without officially "discarding" them.

Official Rules

"Discard a card" - Move a card from your hand to your discard pile.

• Sometimes a card will tell you to discard a card from another location, but by default discarded cards come from hands.
• You place the discarded card on top of your discard pile, face up.
• If you discard multiple cards at once, you do not need to allow others to see all of them, just the one you put on top.
   
• You can count the number of cards in your deck at any time (without looking at the card fronts), but cannot look through or count your discard pile or another player's deck or discard pile.
• When interacting with a discard pile (e.g. with Harbinger), it is not necessary to keep it in the same order. The only thing that ever matters about that order is that the top card is public.

Secret History

You can't look through your discard pile because some people would slow down the game by repeatedly pawing through it, considering stuff. Originally you could count it. Valerie didn't like that you had to count it face down, and that we'd have to tell you that. So you can't count it either.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, [1]

See Also

• When Discarded rules regarding Reaction cards

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