Event

Expedition, an Event.

Events are on-buy effects not attached to cards; players can buy Events during their Buy phase to trigger whatever the effect of the Event is, as an alternative to (or in addition to) buying cards from the Supply. Events were introduced in Adventures, and revisited in Empires, Menagerie and Plunder

Events are not Kingdom cards; including one or more Events in a game does not count toward the 10 Kingdom card piles the Supply includes. In fact, Events are not considered "cards" at all; any text referring to a "card" (such as instructions to "name a card", or cost reducers changing the cost of cards) does not apply to Events. However, for reference, the Event effects and costs are printed on cards in a landscape orientation with silver frames.

There are 69 Events, including 1 promo, any number of which may be used in a game of Dominion, though Donald X. recommends not using more than two total Events, Landmarks, Projects, Ways and Traits. When choosing a random Kingdom, the Events may be shuffled into the randomizer deck; any Events that are dealt once 10 Kingdom cards have also been dealt will be included in the game.

List of Events

• : Triumph
• : Annex, Donate
• : Advance, Alms, Borrow, Delay, Desperation, Quest
• : Bury, Save
• : Avoid, Deliver, Delve, Gamble, Peril, Pursue, Ride, Rush, Scouting Party, Tax, Toil, Travelling Fair
• : Banquet, Bonfire, Enhance, Expedition, Ferry, Foray, Launch, March, Mirror, Plan, Prepare, Scrounge, Transport
• : Banish, Bargain, Invest, Journey, Maelstrom, Mission, Pilgrimage, Ritual, Salt the Earth, Seize the Day,
• : Wedding
• : Ball, Commerce, Demand, Raid, Seaway, Stampede, Summon, Trade, Windfall
• : Conquest, Looting, Lost Arts, Training
• : Inheritance, Reap
• : Enclave, Pathfinding
• : Alliance, Invasion, Populate, Prosper
• : Dominate

Official Rules

• Events are not Kingdom cards.
• In a player’s Buy phase, when a player can buy a card, they can buy an Event instead.
• Buying an Event means paying the cost indicated on the Event and then doing the effect of the Event.
• The Event just stays on the table, the player does not take it; there is no way for players to gain one or end up with one in their decks.
• Buying an Event uses up a Buy; normally a player can either buy a card, or buy an Event.
• A player with two Buys, such as after playing Ranger, could buy two cards, or buy two Events, or buy a card and an Event (in either order).
• The same Event can be bought multiple times in a turn if the player has the Buys and available to do it.
• Some Events give +Buys and so let the player buy further cards/Events afterwards.
• Players cannot play further Treasures that turn after buying an Event.
• Buying an Event is not buying a card and so does not trigger cards like [Swamp Hag^†, Charm^†, Haggler^† nor Haggler].
• Costs of Events are not affected by cards like Bridge.

Preparation

• Events, Landmarks, and Projects can be shuffled into the randomizer deck (despite having a different back).
• They are not part of the 10 Kingdom cards used in a game; when an Event, Landmark, or Project is turned over, put it on the table but keep turning over cards until you get 10 Kingdom cards. For normal play we recommend using no more than two total of Events, Landmarks, and Projects. Skip any further Event, Landmark, and Project cards turned over.
• Also skip Events, Landmarks, and Projects when using a randomizer card to determine whether or not to use Platinum/Colony (from Prosperity), or Shelters (from Dark Ages) in a game.
• Events, Landmarks, and Projects cannot be Young Witch's bane (from Cornucopia).
• Another approach some people may prefer is to shuffle Events, Landmarks, and Projects separately into their own randomizer deck, and always play with one or two of them.

Card gallery

Trivia

In other languages

• Dutch: Gebeurtenis
• German: Ereignis
• Japanese: イベント (pron. ibento)
• Polish: Zdarzenie
• Russian: Событие (pron. sobytiye)

Preview

Adventures has 30 Kingdom cards. It also has 20 Events. It's high time we looked at some of those. Man, they're sideways.

An Event is something you can buy in your Buy phase that isn't a card. You pay your , you use up a Buy, and something happens. They don't take up Kingdom card slots; you shuffle them into your randomizer deck, but when you deal out cards, keep going until you have 10 Kingdom cards. I recommend stopping at two Events, but it's up to you.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Adventures Previews #4 - Expedition, Trade, Mission

Empires brings back Events. They were fun but I did everything I could think of to do with them in Adventures. But well, this set had new stuff; maybe that new stuff would allow for more Events? In fact of thirteen new Events, nine involve either   tokens or Debt or both.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Empires Previews #5: Events

Menagerie also has 20 Events. They're just like the ones in Adventures and Empires, only new. In your Buy phase, you can use a Buy and pay the cost to generate the effect. Some of the Events involve Horses or Exile, but many don't, including these three.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Menagerie Previews 4: Ways and Events

Secret History

The mat worked great, the tokens were exciting, the new duration cards compelling. One day, real-life playtester Kevin White said, man the tokens took a while to get. You buy the one-shot, eventually shuffle it in and draw it, then play it and finally you have the token. Couldn't they be faster? Now they could have just been when-gain one-shots, a concept I tried out previously in Hinterlands. But if you trash a card when you gain it, well, why have the card? It's not doing anything except limiting how many times you can do this. You could just buy the token directly. That immediately sounded awesome. And then, if you can buy tokens directly, why not pay for other things? And thus the set got Events. And I needed new kingdom cards to replace the ones that turned into Events, and I needed more Events so there would be lots of Events. There are twenty Events. Some people no doubt have already complained that the set has six blanks. Couldn't that have been six more Events? Man. You got twenty. I didn't have a pile of great ones I cut to put in the blanks. You have to stop working on the expansions at some point and let them get released.

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

I used every good Event idea that I had in Adventures. Still, why not try to make more?   tokens helped a lot, and I ended up with 13 new Events

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

I also planned to add Events to the set. The set was going to have to be 400 cards, to include 30 Horses and some landscapes and not have fewer Kingdom cards than usual. So, it had space. It took me a while to get around to trying some Events, but when I did that all worked out, there were new things to do, not all of them involving Exile and Horses.

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

Donald X.'s comments on other design issues

There's no specific draw to doing [once per turn], is the main thing; I'd rather let you keep paying for the Events to keep doing them. I'd only use either if it seemed the only way to do something, which for a few of those it did. "Once per game" is especially exotic and just didn't come up for Empires. "Once per turn" did have an issue in Adventures - some Events had both "once per turn" and "+1 Buy" and I notated this poorly, so that it confused people. You can just notate it correctly though as the later printings do.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Interview with Donald X.

I tried to get attacks into the Events; I didn't so much for Projects or Landmarks because that isn't so true to what they are. Landmarks are about   and are already interactive. Projects give you an ability and well sure it could be an attack, but that isn't where they were aimed. Events though sounded like a good fit for attacking.

One issue is that some optional attacks are political. There's an Event that Militias, in a 4-player game. I could buy it. The player to my right just bought it, so I'd only be attacking Kevin. Well, is he winning? Another issue is, it's not so fun to be attacked every turn. It happens naturally eventually if you have enough players or you can draw your deck, but I don't want to push that, I want to delay it. Raid dodges these issues by having the upside be conditional, and by being bad. It's not like I want bad attacking Events though.

I tried some other attack Events, including a Locusts attack in Adventures. They didn't work, and hey I didn't need them to. It was fine not to have any, and I managed Raid anyway. Attacks are hard, and Events didn't solve any problems they have.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Interview with Donald X.

Yes some one-shots and when-gain-style one-shots could be Events instead. And a few other cards, like Harem. I don't think Events would eliminate either one-shots or when-gain cards, but there would be fewer of them. It's tricky because, when you convert the card to an Event, you lose some specific fun that you notice that you're losing. I enjoyed using TFB cards on the thing that became Banquet, for example. But this is always up against "but the Event just takes one slot in the set, and the kingdom card takes eleven."

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