Engineer

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Engineer
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Empires
Illustrator(s)	Elisa Cella
Card text
Gain a card costing up to . You may trash this. If you do, gain a card costing up to .

Engineer is an Action card from Empires. It is a gainer that can trash itself for an extra gain, but has a Debt cost so it can't gain copies of itself.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• Engineer cannot gain copies of itself, or any other card with in the cost.
• When you play it, you gain a card, then may trash Engineer to gain a second card (which can be the same as the first or different).

Strategy

There is no strategy article for Engineer, yet. Feel free to add your thoughts below!

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		Gain a card costing up to . You may trash this. If you do, gain a card costing up to .	Empires	June 2016

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Dutch	Ingenieur
Finnish	Rakennusmestari (lit. contractor/construction foreman)
French	Ingénieur
German	Ingenieurin (Note: explicitly feminine)			Nimm eine Karte, die bis zu kostet. Du darfst diese Karte entsorgen. Wenn du das tust, nimm eine Karte, die bis zu kostet.	2. Edition (2021)
Japanese	技術者 (pron. gijutsusha)			コスト以下のカード1枚を獲得する。これを廃棄してもよい。廃棄した場合、追加でコスト以下のカード1枚を獲得する。
Polish	Inżynier			Dodaj kartę nie droższą niż . Możesz wyrzucić tego Inżyniera na śmietnisko. Jeśli to zrobisz, dodaj kartę nie droższą niż .
Russian	Инженер (pron. inzhyenyer)

Trivia

Official card art.

Secret History

For a while there was a different Workshop: Gain a card costing up to , get +1  per empty pile. It seemed reasonable and then I had one too many games that were dominated by it. I tried a lot of replacements, man, like ten other cards, mostly very briefly. Engineer stood out. However it had the issue of being able to trash it to gain something plus another Engineer, to run out the pile. Dame Josephine suggested having it cost , which fixed that problem while taking no space on the card.

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

Relevant outtakes

Ah yes, so many cards tried out for Engineer's slot. Here's an Expand with on-use that tried to dodge Remodel/ issues by doing something different if you had any . A + Remodel that had you draw 2 cards when you gained or trashed it; I still like the idea of a Remodel that does something when gained/trashed. A + Remodel that, when trashed, gave you a . Yowza. Another one of these, gaining you a copy of a card in play with some limits to try not to go nuts. Another one with different limits, man. Okay here are 3 that involve putting   on the pile. One is just a Workshop that accumulates   you can trash it to get; one counts down, it's reset to 5   when a copy is gained, and when played gains a card for the number of   on the pile and then gives you a   from the pile, that was fun to try; and a Workshop that adds or takes   based on how much the card you gained cost. Finally, the one that held the slot for the longest out of these, a Workshop that turns into Remodel if a pile is empty. That seemed okay and like I could live with it if I couldn't do better, but I like Engineer better.

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

Why was the VP version dominating?

Some players buy some, maybe eager to get copies of some cantrip everyone likes, like Caravan. The Caravans run out. Now the workshop is making +1  . That's attractive so people start getting more of the workshops. The people who already have them want a 2nd pile to run out and help empty the workshops. Now they make +2   per hit and there are ten of them in decks so players scramble for   while the workshops empty the Estates.

I had a couple early games that were stupid because of this card. Then for a while the card seemed fine. But we started to see the bad cases more and it was clear that one reason we hadn't been seeing them was because we hadn't realized how good the card was.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Interview with Donald X.

Why shouldn't Engineer empty itself?

It's not "it's awful that this pile runs out," it's "it's awful that you can choose to run out this pile incidentally." What you want is Caravans. But instead of gaining a Caravan, you trash the workshop and gain a Caravan and another workshop. You're running out the workshops as this random extra thing you're allowed to do on top of what you actually wanted, which was gaining Caravans.

Some players will just automatically do this; they can do it and that's enough for them. They exercise their power. And it sucks. It's anti-fun, so the card doesn't do that.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Interview with Donald X.