Disciple

Disciple
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action - Traveller
Kingdom card?	No
Set	Adventures
Illustrator(s)	Harald Lieske
Card text
You may play an Action card from your hand twice. Gain a copy of it. When you discard this from play, you may exchange it for a Teacher. (This is not in the Supply.)

Disciple is an Action-Traveller card from Adventures. It is a Throne Room variant and a gainer. It is not in the Supply, but can be exchanged for using a Fugitive. Disciple itself, once discarded from play, can be exchanged for a Teacher. There are only 5 copies of Disciple in the Disciple pile.

Disciple is the fourth step in its line of Travellers: Peasant - Soldier - Fugitive - Disciple - Teacher.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• Playing an Action card from your hand is optional.
• If you do play one, you play it twice, then gain a copy of it if possible; gaining the copy is not optional once you have played it.
• The copy comes from the Supply and is put into your discard pile; if the Action is a non-Supply card, such as Fugitive, you can play it twice, but do not gain a copy of it.
• This does not use up any extra Actions you were allowed to play due to cards like Port - Disciple itself uses up one Action and that is it.
• You cannot play any other cards in between resolving the Discipled Action card multiple times, unless that Action card specifically tells you to (such as Disciple itself does).
• If you Disciple a card that gives you +1 Action, such as Artificer, you will end up with 2 Actions to use afterwards, rather than the one you would have left if you just played two Artificers.
• If you use Disciple on a Duration card, Disciple will stay in play until the Duration card is discarded.

Strategy

To better understand the Kingdoms and contexts in which Soldier appears, it may be useful to refer to the overall strategy section for this Traveller line.

Disciple is an exceptionally strong card, acting as both a Throne Room variant and an Action card gainer. Its power lies in the fact that not only are these each very strong effects in their own right, but targeting the same card with both of them also functions as a major boost to your deck’s capabilities. For example, if you’re struggling to draw your deck, using Disciple on a draw card will substantially improve your chance of doing so both this turn and on future turns. Getting access to Disciple (preferably to multiple copies) is often the primary reason to buy and advance Peasants.

Disciple’s Action card gaining is a critical aspect of the Peasant line in a number of ways. It can greatly improve your deck's long-term performance by adding more strong engine pieces or payload; as its gaining is unrestricted by price, these may be expensive Action cards, including those costing (like Scrying Pool) or (like City Quarter). Importantly, it is among the game’s strongest sources of gain-and-play, allowing the output of your deck to increase rapidly when you use it to gain strong payload cards and often creating significant pile pressure. This feature often means that by the time you have a couple of Disciples, the game is likely to be close to ending. Therefore, as well as considering the strongest Disciple targets for your own turn, it’s important to pay close attention to your opponent’s potential gains to ensure that your own Disciple gaining doesn’t leave them with an opportunity to pile out.

Like other Throne Room effects, Disciple is flexible in its ability to provide terminal space, draw, and payload, provided that you can collide it with a suitable target. If you have sufficiently strong deck control, this is usually easy to achieve and highly impactful, but sometimes you may have to evaluate double-playing a suboptimal card to continue your turn against gaining a copy of your strongest card. For example, if the only Actions in your starting hand are a Caravan and a Disciple, you may want to Disciple the Caravan, even though doing so may cause you to lose out on playing that Disciple next turn (due to Throning a Duration).

If the end of the game isn’t imminent and you anticipate that advancing a Disciple to Teacher will pay off (or if you have a Teacher already), it may be valuable to target your Disciple gains specifically to add extra copies of Action cards that you plan to enhance with bonus tokens.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Notes	Release	Date
		You may play an Action card from your hand twice. Gain a copy of it. When you discard this from play, you may exchange it for a Teacher. (This is not in the Supply.)		Adventures	April 2015
		You may play an Action card from your hand twice. Gain a copy of it. When you discard this from play, you may exchange it for a Teacher. (This is not in the Supply.)	Digital version has a cost of rather than .	Adventures (2017 printing)	August 2017

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Dutch	Leerknecht
Finnish	Oppilas (lit. pupil)
French	Disciple
German	Schüler			Du darfst eine Aktionskarte zweimal ausspielen. Nimm dir eine Karte mit gleichem Namen. Ist diese Karte im Spiel, darfst du sie gegen einen Lehrer eintauschen, anstatt sie abzulegen. (Diese Karte gehört nicht zum Vorrat.)	(2015) translation error: omitted "from your hand"
	Schüler			Du darfst eine Aktionskarte aus deiner Hand zweimal spielen. Nimm von jener Karte eine gleiche. Wenn du diese Karte aus dem Spiel ablegst, darfst du sie in einen Lehrer eintauschen. (Diese Karte gehört nicht zum Vorrat.)	(Nachdruck 2021)
Japanese	門下生 (pron. monkasei)			手札のアクションカード1枚を2度使用してもよい。それと同じカード1枚獲得する。 これを場から捨て札にするとき、これを教師と交換してもよい。 (このカードはサプライに置かない。)
Russian	Ученик (pron. uchenik)

Trivia

Official card art.

Secret History

Disciple for a while was another old old card that wouldn't fit a particular cost without a bonus or penalty or something, "+1 Action, look at top 4, take one discard the rest." But later I had Raze and was messing with possible ways to make it harder to get to Teacher, and didn't have the room for that ability on Disciple and didn't want it as much anymore. So I tried something else, then put on the Throne Room plus gain, an old concept I'd never gotten around to trying. That was great, so when I got the space for the old ability back I didn't switch back.

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

Relevant outtakes

I tried a Throne Room that replays a card in play. It's dead unless there's a card giving +1 Action or better. That seemed insurmountable. Then I tried it again briefly in the Disciple slot.

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