Herald

Herald
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Guilds
Illustrator(s)	Jessi J
Card text
+1 Card +1 Action Reveal the top card of your deck. If it's an Action, play it. Overpay: Per overpaid, put any card from your discard pile onto your deck.

Herald is an Action card from Guilds. It is a cantrip than can allow you to play Action cards directly from your deck without using up an Action. It also allows you to overpay for it to place cards from your discard pile onto your deck.

FAQ

Unofficial FAQ (2022)

• When you play this, first draw a card and get +1 Action, then reveal the top card of your deck.
• If it is an Action card, play it; this is not optional.
• Playing the Action card does not "use up" one of your Action plays for the turn.
• If Herald plays a Duration card (such as Caravan from Dominion: Seaside), the Herald is still discarded normally at end of turn.
• When you buy this, you may overpay for it; if you do, after gaining the Herald you put one card from your discard pile on top of your deck for each extra you pay over the cost. For example, if you buy Herald for , you will put two cards from your discard pile on top of your deck.
• This card lets you look through your discard pile; normally you cannot.
• You cannot look through your discard pile first to see how much you want to overpay, and once you overpay you must put the appropriate number of cards on top of your deck if possible.
• If you overpay enough to put more cards on your deck than there are cards in your discard pile, you just put all of your discard pile onto your deck.
• You may not look through your discard pile if you buy Herald without overpaying for it.

Other rules clarifications

In 2022, the rules for overpaying got errata so that effects now trigger after you gain the card you overpaid for.

• You gain the Herald before you look through your discard pile, meaning you can topdeck the Herald with its own ability.

Deprecated official FAQ (2017)

When you play this, first draw a card and get +1 Action, then reveal the top card of your deck. If it is an Action card, play it; this is not optional. Playing the Action card does not "use up" one of your Action plays for the turn. If Herald plays a Duration card (such as Caravan from Dominion: Seaside), the Herald is still discarded normally at end of turn. When you buy this, you put one card from your discard pile on top of your deck for each extra you pay over the cost. For example, if you buy Herald for , you will put two cards from your discard pile on top of your deck. This card lets you look through your discard pile; normally you cannot. You cannot look through your discard pile first to see how much you want to overpay, and once you overpay you must put the appropriate number of cards on top of your deck if possible. If you overpay enough to put more cards on your deck than there are cards in your discard pile, you just put all of your discard pile onto your deck. You may not look through your discard pile if you buy Herald without overpaying for it.

Deprecated rules clarifications (2013 2015 2017)

Herald's bottom is an on-buy effect, which triggers after buying but before gaining. When looking through the discard pile, the bought Herald is not there yet, so you cannot put it on your deck.

Strategy

At its best, Herald can function as a village and effective draw, equivalent to Lost City, but this is only the case if it reveals an Action card; otherwise, it is a somewhat expensive cantrip that does almost nothing. Herald’s strength in a given Kingdom is therefore dependent on how likely it is to reveal an Action card. While some effects such as Secret Passage and Apothecary can attempt to guarantee this by placing a card in position for Herald to find, it is far more likely that your odds are influenced by how well you can thin your starting cards and other junk, and whether your other engine components (i.e., draw, payload, sifting, etc) come from Action cards rather than Treasures or Night cards. With these enabling factors present, Herald is very strong for its price point, and building up your draw and terminal space by acquiring many Heralds (possibly with a Workshop variant such as Ironworks) can be very efficient. While the fundamental randomness of Herald may make it difficult to use as your only village or draw, since your terminal space and overdraw will not always be consistent, it functions very well alongside more reliable sources of such effects.

Because Herald’s effectiveness is tied to the Action card density of the rest of your deck, its role varies throughout the game. It is less effective in the opening and early game, before you have had a chance to add many Action cards and/or thin your starting cards. In the early midgame, where you have partial deck control and a better overall deck, Herald can be a low-risk, high-reward addition to your deck, where revealing an Action card can allow you to have an unusually good turn. Later, if your deck has exclusively Action cards, Herald can be extremely reliable. Herald does become less reliable during greening, as you typically need to add Victory cards, though this may be less of a concern if you can Exile those cards or score otherwise (e.g. with   tokens).

Aside from the possibility of not hitting an Action card at all, another risk with Herald is its compulsory nature, as it may force you to either play Action cards in a suboptimal order or to play an Action card that actively hurts your turn. Examples of the former might be forcing you to play a draw card before your Cartographer, or playing a trash-for-benefit card before you have drawn a good target for it. The latter can include cards with mandatory trashing effects (e.g. Remake) or discarding effects, notably Tactician. It is possible to somewhat mitigate these risks by deck tracking and noting the possible targets Herald might find within a given shuffle, or by not gaining problematic targets in the first place.

When to play your Heralds relative to your other draw depends on how likely you are to draw your deck. If you are not likely to draw your deck, playing Heralds after your other draw maximizes your search space for important Action cards; for example, playing a cantrip before a Herald allows you to effectively look one card farther into your shuffle. On the other hand, if you are likely to draw your deck and wait too long to play your Heralds, you may not have enough Action cards left in your draw pile and discard for your Heralds to play, meaning you effectively lose out on some of the terminal space they would have otherwise provided.

Herald's overpay effect is a relatively minor aspect of the card. Topdecking a card or two from your discard pile after buying Herald can be helpful situationally to improve the reliability of your deck next turn, but it's unlikely to be worth sacrificing a more expensive purchase that you would otherwise prefer in order to do this. Additionally, the ability is most appealing when you have desirable cards in your discard pile (although Herald can always topdeck itself), which may not occur as a result of shuffle luck. Later in the game, however, you can guarantee a strong card is available to topdeck by buying it before buying a Herald; this may allow you to build while ensuring a good turn.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		+1 Card +1 Action Reveal the top card of your deck. If it is an Action, play it. When you buy this, you may overpay for it. For each you overpaid, look through your discard pile and put a card from it on top of your deck.	Guilds	June 2013
		+1 Card +1 Action Reveal the top card of your deck. If it's an Action, play it. When you buy this, you may overpay for it. For each you overpaid, look through your discard pile and put a card from it onto your deck.	Guilds & Cornucopia (2017 printing)	March 2018
		+1 Card +1 Action Reveal the top card of your deck. If it's an Action, play it. Overpay: Per overpaid, put any card from your discard pile onto your deck.		June 29, 2022

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Dutch	Heraut
Finnish	Airut
French	Héraut
German	Herold			+1 Karte +1 Aktion Decke die oberste Karte vom Nachziehstapel auf. Falls es sich um eine Aktion handelt, spielst du sie. Wenn du diese Karte kaufst, darfst du mehr dafür zahlen. Pro , das du zusätzlich zahlst, darfst du den Ablagestapel durchsehen und eine beliebige Karte davon oben auf den Nachziehstapel legen.	(2013)
	Herold			+1 Karte +1 Aktion Decke die oberste Karte deines Nachziehstapels auf. Ist es eine Aktionskarte, spiele sie aus. Wenn du diese Karte kaufst, darfst überzahlen. Pro , das du überzahlst, sieh deinen Ablagestapel durch und lege eine Karte daraus auf deinen Nachziehstapel.	(2019)
	Herold			+1 Karte +1 Aktion Decke die oberste Karte deines Nachziehstapels auf. Ist es eine Aktionskarte, spiele sie. Überzahlen: Pro überzahltem , sieh deinen Ablagestapel durch und lege 1 Karte daraus auf deinen Nachziehstapel.
Japanese	伝令官 (pron. denrei-kan)			+1 カードを引く +1 アクション 山札の一番上のカードを公開する。それがアクションカードの場合、場に出して使用する。 これを購入するとき、追加でコストを支払ってもよい。追加で払ったコストにつき1度、捨て札置き場の中を見て、その中の1枚を山札の上に置く。
Korean	전령 (pron. jeonlyeong, lit. messenger)
Polish	Herold				Although Polish version is not released, this name is referred to in Polish Dominion 2E rulebook.
Russian	Глашатай (pron. glashatay)

Trivia

Official card art.

Preview

How about that medieval Poland? At last we come to the final day of previews. Herald is another overpay card. I could only fit so many themes into 13 cards.

Herald varies from "+1 card +1 action" to essentially "+2 cards +2 actions," depending on your action density. Aim high, that's my advice. When you buy Herald, you get to stack the deck for your next hand. No peeking into your discard pile first to see if you want to buy Herald or not; sorry, them's the rules. But if you overpay by , you'll get to look through your discard pile three times; that's value for money. And you can use the overpay to put Heralds on top of your deck, and then when you play those Heralds sometimes they will announce more Heralds. It's Heralds all the way down.

Guilds has 8 more cards, and before long you will have seen them all. It will probably be available at Origins and will come out later this month in any case. It will probably show up on Goko about when it shows up in stores; I have been playtesting it. And then once people can buy it I will post a Secret History.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Guilds Previews

Secret History

The top is an old card, a less-crazy relative of Scrying Pool that I tried out long ago. The bottom was just something else I could do with overpay that would feel different. I tried it first on Duchess's top, then moved it to this card.

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

Relevant outtakes

There is a card with a long history that had its last stand trying to get into this set. Once, the main set had a card, look at your top four, put one in your hand, discard the rest. I dropped it from the main set for being too boring. It resurfaced in Prosperity with +1 Action, and well it was crazy powerful. It cost and I thought it might work out kind of like Throne Room, but it was way better. It really wanted to cost , so I tried several versions of it with different tweaks before giving up on it. Then I brought it back in other sets a few times and tried to get a good one. The version in Guilds was +1 action, could only get actions, but played the action it got. Anyway I did Herald instead, hooray.

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