Feast

Feast
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Base
Illustrator(s)	Matthias Catrein
Card text
Trash this card. Gain a card costing up to .

Feast is an Action card from the first edition of the Base set. When you play Feast, you trash it and gain a card costing up to , so it's a one-shot gainer.

It was removed from the second edition of Dominion.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• The gained card goes into your Discard pile.
• It has to be a card from the Supply.
• You cannot use from Treasures or previous Actions (like the Market) to increase the cost of the card that you gain.
• If you use Throne Room on Feast, you will gain two cards, even though you can only trash Feast once. Gaining the card isn't contingent on trashing Feast; they're just two things that the card tries to make you do.

Strategy

As a terminal card that is typically used to gain a card that you won’t see until your next shuffle, Feast has a very limited set of use cases. Most of the time Feast can be viewed as a consolation prize for failing to generate that won’t benefit you until after 2 shuffles.

The first use case is in the opening, where Feast can guarantee a card, provided it does not bottomdeck, i.e. fail to show up in either your turn 3 or your turn 4 hand. Assuming you have a 12-card deck at the end of turn 2 by also opening with a Silver, there is about a 95% percent chance of being able to buy or gain a card on one of these turns. A Silver/Silver opening, for comparison, has about a 91% chance to afford a card, so opening Feast/Silver is a slight improvement, and often you have the option of buying a or card (which might be Silver) on the same turn as you play your Feast, resulting in almost identical decks for both openings by the end of turn 4. Additionally, Silver/Silver has a 15% chance of being able to get 2 cards, while Feast/Silver has a 33% chance. Otherwise, the main appeal of opening Feast over Silver is that it can help you avoid adding Silvers to your deck while still getting an early card. This may be useful if there’s an appealing or card which doesn’t help you hit , such as Pixie. The main drawback of Feast over a second Silver is a reduced chance to hit higher price points such as or in the early game.

The other use case for Feast is with a card that can exploit its unconditional gaining: Feast still lets you gain a card even if you play it without trashing it, so cards such as Throne Room, Necromancer, and Command cards can take advantage of this to repeatedly gain cards.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		Trash this card. Gain a card costing up to .	Dominion 1st Edition	October 2008

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Chinese	晚宴 (pron. wǎnyàn, lit. banquet)
Czech	Hostina
Dutch	Feest			Vernietig deze kaart. Pak een kaart met een waarde van of minder.
Finnish	Pidot
French	Festin
German	Festmahl			Entsorge diese Karte. Nimm dir eine Karte, die bis zu kostet.	(2008) one or more other versions listed here
Greek	Γιορτή (pron. giorte)
Hungarian	Lakoma
Italian	Banchetto
Japanese	祝宴 (pron. shukuen)
Korean	연회 (pron. yeonhoe, lit. banquet)
Norwegian	Gilde
Polish	Uczta			Wyrzuć tę kartę na śmietnisko. Dodaj kartę kosztującą nie więcej niż .
Romanian	Ospăţ
Russian	Пир (pron. pir)
Spanish	Banquete

Trivia

Official card art.

Secret History

At one point the 1st expansion had a "one-shot" theme. I eventually realized that that was a bad theme because some players don't like those cards. They don't like how the card doesn't stay in their deck, or something. I'm not too clear on it but I know there are haters out there. So I split that theme up, with some of the cards going into limbo. One-shots are different enough that I think they're worth doing sometimes, and well some people like them fine. But I might not even do one per set. The main set got this one as it's the least offensive; you do get to hold onto the card you fetch with it.

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

Retrospective

Feast adds very little. The way to think of these things is, imagine the replacement cards. Let's say I just take out Woodcutter and Feast and put in Wishing Well and Coppersmith. Those are not top-of-the-line adored-by-all go-in-every-deck cards. But they still give you more to do than Woodcutter and Feast do.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, What Donald X. Might Do With a Dominion Time Machine

Second Edition Removal

Feast is fine but really dull. It just adds nothing to the game; you consider buying it, but whether you do or not, your deck ends up whatever it was going to be anyway. Feast just doesn't change anything. I always point out, if I open Silver/Silver and you open Silver/Feast, and on turn three I draw 3 Coppers and Silver and buy a , and on turn three you draw 3 Coppers and Feast, trash Feast for that and buy Silver, at that point our decks are the same. Okay so you can Workshop them and you can Throne Room them. The Workshop thing is fine but not enough to feel like I have to have the card. The Throne Room / Feast combo is the number one rules question in Dominion. Man let's just get rid of that.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of the Dominion 2nd Editions

Nothing directly replaces this, but it adds so little to games. I guess in a way Changeling is an improved Feast.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Product Idea - Dominion: Memories

• After Donald X. made this post, Way of the Butterfly was released, which could be considered a Feast replacement in that it can provide the core functionality of Feast to any Action card that costs and comes from the Supply.