Goons

Goons
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action - Attack
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Prosperity
Illustrator(s)	Tu Pei-Shu
Card text
+1 Buy + Each other player discards down to 3 cards in hand. While you have this in play, when you buy a card, +1 .

Goons is an Action–Attack card from Prosperity. It is a terminal silver, since it gives + but no +Action. It is similar to Monument in that it gives you   tokens—one token if you buy only one card this turn, but one more for each additional buy; it gives +Buy to help with that, as well. In addition, Goons is also a discard attack like Militia.

It was removed from the second edition of Prosperity and replaced with Collection which maintains the iconic effect of granting   tokens for bought cards but became a Treasure which does not feature an attack.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• You get +1  per card you buy, but do not get +1  for gaining a card some other way.
• Multiple copies of Goons are cumulative; if you have two Goons in play and buy a Silver, you'll get +2 .
• However if you King's Court a Goons, despite having played the card 3 times, there is still only one copy of it in play, so buying Silver would only get you +1 .

Other Rules clarifications

• Buying Events does not give you  .

Strategy

Before it was removed, Goons was a terminal silver and one of the best payload cards in Dominion: it offers a strong attack, +Buy, and a source of alt-VP that is often centralising, being theoretically limited only by the number of cards you can buy over the course of the game. If the Kingdom allows you to build a deck that will be capable of consistently playing multiple Goons per turn, this is highly likely to be the optimal strategy. Doing so will enable you to accumulate many  , since buying useful cards scores with Goons, avoiding the usual negative effects of greening. Gaining Victory cards is unlikely to be necessary at all, except perhaps at the very end of the game. Even if it isn’t possible to play multiple Goons, it’s still likely to be a strong terminal Action for your deck.

Goons is a terminal stop card, and your opponents are likely to be using it to attack your hand size, so a deck that aims to play a large number of Goons consistently needs a powerful engine to support this. Thus, the best case scenario for Goons is one that has good trashing, strong draw, and plentiful villages. However, even if the engine will be slow to come together, it will usually still be worth building to multiple Goons plays per turn. When building a Goons-focused engine, it's common to gain one Goons as soon as you can: at this stage, the   it provides is largely incidental, but the and +Buy are useful, and the primary benefit is the attack, which will slow down your opponents’ efforts. Aside from your first Goons, deck control is the key aim; you can subsequently keep adding more Goons as you acquire the ability to draw and play them consistently.

In the midgame, further improvements to your deck's reliability and payload take priority over maximising scoring. However, once you have a very reliable deck with some overdraw, you might increase the number of cards you purchase per turn (e.g. by buying several cheap cantrips over fewer, more valuable cards); you could even spend some spare Buys on Coppers or other junk to accumulate more  , if you can trash them easily on your next turn (or better still, immediately with Watchtower). Late in the game, especially on your final shuffle, scoring extra points in this way is likely to become crucial. An eventual three-pile ending, favouring whoever has managed to get the most Goons into play consistently, is probable; a player who aims to acquire all the Provinces quickly instead will have a deck that deteriorates rather than improving as the game continues, will have much less control over when it ends, and is likely to be outscored.

With a weaker, less reliable engine, a lack of village support, or a money strategy, consistently playing multiple Goons per turn may be difficult or impossible. Attacking and scoring with this card is still likely to be important throughout the game; an early Goons may still be useful, and you may want more than one of them even if you aren’t aiming to draw your deck and play them all each turn. However, the weaker the engine, the more likely it is that Goons   will be secondary in importance to those provided by Victory cards. Additionally, if a rush is possible, an opponent adopting such a strategy is likely to be less severely slowed by the Goons attack, and building a Goons-focused deck may take too long to be able to outscore the rush before the game ends.

External strategy articles

Note: Article(s) below are by individual authors and may not represent the community's current views on cards, but may provide more in-depth information. Caveat emptor.

• theory's 2011 article

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		+1 Buy + Each other player discards down to 3 cards in hand. While this is in play, when you buy a card, +1 .	Prosperity	October 2010
		+1 Buy + Each other player discards down to 3 cards in hand. While this is in play, when you buy a card, +1 .	Prosperity (2016 printing)	February 2017
		+1 Buy + Each other player discards down to 3 cards in hand. While you have this in play, when you buy a card, +1 .	Prosperity (2020 printing)	October 2020

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Chinese	暴徒			+1 購買 + 其它玩家將手牌棄到剩三張。 當此卡在出牌區，每購買一張卡片+1 。
Czech	Hrdlořez (lit. thugs)
Dutch	Domkoppen (lit. fools)
Finnish	Roistot (lit. villains)
French	Fiers-à-bras (lit. braggarts)			+1 Achat + Tous vos adversaires défaussent jusqu'à avoir 3 cartes en main. Tant que vous avez cette carte en jeu, si vous achetez une carte, +1 .
German	Halsabschneider (lit. cutthroat)			+1 Kauf + Jeder Mitspieler muss solange Karten ablegen, bis er nur noch 3 Karten auf der Hand hat. Wenn diese Karte im Spiel ist und du eine Karte kaufst: +1 .	(2010)
German	Halsabschneider (lit. cutthroat)			+1 Kauf + Jeder Mitspieler legt Karten ab, bis er nur noch 3 auf seiner Hand hat. Wenn du diese Karte im Spiel hast, wenn du eine Karte kaufst, +1 .	(Nachdruck 2021)
Italian	Scagnozzi (lit. henchmen)
Japanese	ならず者 (pron. narazumono, lit. ruffian)			+1 購入 + 他のプレイヤーは全員、手札が3枚になるように捨て札にする。 これが場にある間、カード1枚を購入するとき、+1 。
Polish	Naciągacze (lit. tricksters)			+1 zakup + Każdy z pozostałych graczy odrzuca karty, aż będzie miał ich 3 na ręce. Kiedy ta karta znajduje się w grze, +1  za każdym razem, gdy kupujesz kartę.	(2016)
Russian	Головорезы (pron. golovoryezy)
Spanish	Matones

Trivia

Official card art.

Goons is one of two Attack cards costing more than , the other being Raider.

Card Art

This art was turned in for Pawn.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, 'Art Trivia'

Preview

Since any card you buy gives you +1  , you will want more ways to buy cards. Worker's Village is handy, since it doesn't use up an action, and can let you play multiple Goons. Multiple Goons is the dream - with two Goons in play, each card you buy gets you +2  , and you've got at least +2 Buys. Since you only have so much money, you will end up buying Coppers. You can trash them immediately with Watchtower to keep your deck sleek and effective (this also lets you buy Curses, which everyone loves to do). You can also make use of the Coppers, such as with Counting House or Gardens. A couple cards in Prosperity let the other players do useful things with their cards - Bishop lets them trash a card, Vault lets them discard two cards to draw a card. It's harder to do those useful things if you've discarded down to 3 first. This isn't so much a combo you put in your own deck - since you need a Village to get both cards played in the same turn - but it's a fine thing to go for when someone else buys the other piece. Then everyone can complain about the seating order. What can I say, some people like complaining, and Goons is there for them.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Dominion: Prosperity Review

Secret History

The art originally submitted for Pawn was not what we wanted for Pawn. We saved it for a future card. It looked like an attack; it had two guys bugging a third guy, so maybe a "choose two." I went with "+. Choose two: +1 Action; each other player discards down to 3 cards in hand; take a 1   token; gain a Silver. (The choices must be different.)" This card was popular. It had issues though, as pointed out by Wei-Hwa Huang and Bill Barksdale. It was political - someone would play it ahead of you, and then you could pick the discard option or not based on how well that one player was doing (since no-one else would be discarding). With +1 Action making it easy on your deck, it got bought up by everyone, so that you were having to discard constantly. I tried several other versions with different options in different combinations. I tried another card that I thought would work for a while but was just too strong, and finally ended up in a weaker form in another set (that set is Cornucopia and that card is Followers). Finally the Goons you know stuck. Again it squeezes in another use for those VP tokens.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, 'The Other Secret History of the Prosperity cards'

Retrospective

For sure Goons is a very cool card that unfortunately has Militia on it. The same thing with no Militia would be better. It got the Militia because there was unused art for Pawn - I meant a low-level underling, not uh two guys pushing another guy around - and well it suggested an attack.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, 'What cards would you remove if later sets had an actual 2E overhaul?'

Goons should work fine. I would make it when-gain not when-buy, because, a similar philosophical change, when-buy is confusing and when-gain is just better. And of course I wouldn't have it attack and it would change shape whatever way as I tried to make it more reasonable.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Dominion Discord, 2020

Second Edition Removal

Ah, Goons. You've made me so many   tokens. It's good times. Except for the Militia part. And then you get Goons first and Militia them so they can't afford Goons. And then Militia every turn. It just sucks the fun out of the other part, which is so good.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Prosperity 2E Previews 3

Initially I thought this would stay; a classic card that's been lots of fun, even though it's so sad that it has Militia stapled to it. When I went up to 9 cards, I saw my chance to replace it with a new Goons sans Militia.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of Prosperity 2E

Further thoughts

My perspective on this is going to be much different from that of a player. But I feel like sharing!

I made an expansion, Prosperity. I took cards out and put in other cards; I changed cards. Nothing was sacred; I was just trying to have a good expansion. I finished it. It had 20 cards.

The game got a publisher. I tried the expansions in 16-card versions. So there was that version of Prosperity, with more changes, additions, subtractions.

We settled on 300-card expansions, meaning 25 kingdom cards here. I polished up that version of Prosperity - adding cards, dropping cards, changing cards. Every time! I finished the set and it was all ready to go to the printers.

But wait! Hans im Gluck wanted small expansions, and I foolishly agreed to rush out Alchemy as a small expansion, ahead of Prosperity. Prosperity was put on hold for 6 months. And during that time I worked on it more. I dropped cards, added cards, changed cards.

Finally Prosperity was published.

Years later I decided I could polish it some more and made the 2E version - dropping cards, adding cards, changing cards.

Let's consider the case of Goons in particular. The first version of the expansion had no Goons. The 16-card version had no Goons. There were attacks though. I don't feel like Goons replaced some particular card, but it went into an attack slot.

Then we had leftover art for Pawn that I had to use, and the art to me said "Goons," so I made cards to be called Goons. I tried different things, and settled on the published card.

Then I had the chance to make Prosperity 2E. I replaced Goons, on the grounds that, the cool  -gaining was being weighed down by the Militia every turn. I tried multiple versions of the replacement, which ended up as Collection.

Now there are people sad to see Goons go. To them, there was Goons, and now there isn't - even though they still have their copies of Goons, no-one has taken them away, we're just putting out a better product now (and they still exist online too, and if your complaint is that you're playing in the league and so won't see them, man, that's all up to you and the league, the cards are there). But for me, the 1E Goons isn't "definitive Goons" in any sense. It's Goons number 5, or more, however many versions I tried. A bad decision to agree to rush Alchemy got it to exist at all, otherwise it would have been Goons number 4. It's one of the cards with a mistake I didn't catch in time to print something better, back when.

You get better as you go along, which is key to revisiting these things. Prosperity 2E is just so clearly better than Prosperity. And for me that's the whole point; we could have made more money just putting out a new expansion with the new Seaside 2E and Prosperity 2E cards, and continuing to sell all the removed cards. I wanted my game to be better and I mean no regrets.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, What do you think of cards being removed from the game?