Hostelry
| Hostelry | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Info | |
| Cost |
 |
| Type(s) | Action |
| Kingdom card? | Yes |
| Set |
Menagerie |
| Illustrator(s) | Elisa Cella |
| Card text | |
|
+1 Card +2 Actions When you gain this, you may discard any number of Treasures, revealed, to gain that many Horses. | |
Hostelry is an Action card from Menagerie. It is a village that lets you discard Treasures for Horses when you gain it.
FAQ
Official FAQ
- When you gain this, you may discard any number of Treasure cards from your hand, to gain that many Horses from their pile.
- Reveal the discarded Treasure cards.
- You do not have to discard anything, and cannot discard anything but Treasures.
Strategy
Hostelry is a village with a strong on-gain effect. While a Horse can only be played once, it helps to cycle through your deck, finding your key cards and increasing your 
for the turn to spend on key cards. Hostelry’s on-gain effect can be looked at as net draw-neutral, as you are trading one card in your hand now for a Horse, which will later increase your hand size by one. This is a worthwhile tradeoff in most Kingdoms. Hostelry can be especially strong with gainers such as Groom. After the on-gain effect, it functions as a vanilla Village.
In Kingdoms with villages, there is typically a viable engine, and Hostelry supports this both in its role as a village, and by providing extra Horses. It is uncommon to hit an exact combination of and buys to purchase the best components for an engine. In this case, you can happily add a village to your deck to increase your terminal space, as well as gaining a few Horses with your extra Coppers. These will provide extra draw and/or reliability for your next shuffle and help collide key cards, such as a Smithy and your Hostelry. Even if there are cards that could be bought with those extra Treasures, often the reliability provided by the Horses is beneficial enough to prefer discarding to a Hostelry gain.
Hostelry synergizes strongly with gainers, especially in the early game. In the first few turns, it is often difficult to hit high enough price points to make full use of Hostelry's effect because you would need to hit $4 while also keeping Coppers in hand to discard. Gainers offer a solution to this dilemma. By opening with Workshop or one of its variants like Groom, you can gain Hostelry directly and then discard all remaining Coppers in hand for Horses. The most powerful instance of this interaction is with Alms which can be used to gain large amounts of Horses with Hostelry as early as turn 1.
Another common pattern is to draw your deck using Horses, buy several engine components, including a Hostelry, and discard several Coppers for more Horses. In this way, you are ensuring some reliability each turn, at least until the Hostelry pile has emptied. By that point it’s likely that you have likely built a strong engine on the back of this reliability, and the game may be close to ending.
Versions
English versions
| Digital | Text | Release | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
 |
+1 Card +2 Actions When you gain this, you may discard any number of Treasures, revealed, to gain that many Horses. |
Menagerie | March 2020 |
Other language versions
| Language | Name | Digital | Text | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dutch | Pension | +1 Kaart +2 Actie Als je deze kaart pakt, mag je zoveel geldkaarten als je wilt getoond afleggen om hetzelfde aantal Paarden te pakken. |
(2020) | ||
| German | Herberge |  |
 |
+1 Karte +2 Aktionen Wenn du diese Karte nimmst, darfst du beliebig viele Geldkarten aufgedeckt ablegen, um genauso viele Pferde zu nehmen. |
(2020) |
| Japanese | 旅籠 (pron. hatago) |
Trivia
Secret History
Why not overpay?
