Minion

Minion
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action - Attack
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Intrigue
Illustrator(s)	Christof Tisch
Card text
+1 Action Choose one: +; or discard your hand, +4 Cards, and each other player with at least 5 cards in hand discards their hand and draws 4 cards.

Minion is an Action–Attack card from Intrigue. It can be played either for + or to discard your hand and draw 4 cards; thus, it works well with non-terminal Action card payload.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• Players wishing to respond with e.g. Moat or Diplomat do so before you choose your option.
• A player who Moats this neither discards nor draws.

Other Rules clarifications

• You still draw 4 cards if you choose the discard option with no cards left in hand.
• Horse Traders normally doesn't actually block an attack, but in the case of Minion it can.

Strategy

Minion is an Action card that offers you two modes of play. The first one turns Minion into a stop card providing non-terminal payload. The second is a draw-to-X option, which will usually be the choice that gives you more value, especially as it comes with a mildly disruptive discard attack.

The power of Minion mostly lies in its draw-to-X aspect. With many copies of it, you could play all but one of them as payload, while using your last one in hand to draw a fresh hand; however, doing so decreases the amount of draw available to you, which may affect your ability to play all of your other non-Minion payload, and so you may opt to discard some Minions now to be used as draw later. A deck using Minion as the primary source of draw requires support from other cards, because Minion has several weaknesses:

1. Your ability to collide Minions and draw them in new four card hands is very sensitive to junk, including your starting cards or Victory cards during greening, as the more junk you have, the more likely you are to dud on four non-Minion cards. This can usually be solved either by having good deck control via good thinners (e.g. Raze) or by using sifters (e.g. Dungeon).
2. Minions are expensive at . It’s significantly easier to acquire them in bulk if you have applicable gainers (e.g., University or Vampire), or effects such as Ferry that allow you to more cheaply gain copies of the same card.
3. Even when you have many Minions, a card producing of payload isn’t very impressive, especially when you consider that some of your Minions have to be played for draw rather than payload. Thus, Minion is often much better in Kingdoms that have some other payload that works well with draw-to-X. As with other draw-to-X cards, this typically includes discard for benefit cards (e.g. Mill) or non-terminal stop cards (e.g. Festival), as the former is no problem when you can draw back up to four cards and the latter is effectively draw-neutral when you can reset your hand size. Likewise, Minion is more attractive in Kingdoms with gainers that reduce your hand size (e.g. Artisan).

If the Kingdom offers solutions to the problems above, building a draw-to-X deck using Minion becomes more appealing. Minion may also be more effective if other discard attacks such as Militia are relevant, because you can simply draw back up to four cards in hand on your turn. Minion is less likely to be relevant in conditions that don’t support draw-to-X decks well. This is likely to be the case if strong draw alternatives such as Wharf are available. Similarly, if the available payload consists mostly of Treasures, or if some Kingdom Treasure cards are especially useful to have (such as Counterfeit or Supplies), then the utility of Minion’s discard-and-draw mode is mostly negated, as you would just discard your good Treasures with it.

When playing with many Minions, it’s important to consider the implications of triggering a mid-turn shuffle. If you've already played most of your Minions and/or discarded many junk cards, it's likely that doing so would topdeck a large amount of junk, causing one or more dud turns in which it's difficult to find enough Minions to draw through your deck. You can avoid this by making sure to stop drawing at the end of your current shuffle, or by discarding some Minions rather than playing them as payload so that the shuffle you trigger will have Minions in it.

While Minion’s Attack is not the most impactful aspect of the card, due to the random nature of the discarded and drawn cards, the best case for the Attack is to turn a good starting hand for your opponents into a total dud, while more likely it will effectively force them to discard one card at random. Minion’s attack can play a significant role in countering decks that rely heavily on topdecking cards to avoid duds or to ensure consistency. Cards topdecked by effects such as Scheme get discarded by Minion; the strongest case of this is in countering certain combos such as the one with Capital and the now removed Mandarin. Other cases where this might matter include topdecked Alchemists or Treasuries and starting hands set up by effects such as Night Watchman or Scouting Party.

Minion is a prime target for Capitalism, since you can first play other Treasures in the Buy phase, then discard your hand to find more Treasures (including more Minions) to play. You can do this multiple times if you have more Minions to play and more cards to draw. This is an exception to the usual rule that Treasure payload works poorly with Minion.

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 or give historical perspective. Caveat emptor.

• theory's 2010 article

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		+1 Action Choose one: +; or discard your hand, +4 Cards, and each other player with at least 5 cards in hand discards his hand and draws 4 cards.	Intrigue 1st Edition	July 2009
		+1 Action Choose one: +; or discard your hand, +4 Cards, and each other player with at least 5 cards in hand discards their hand and draws 4 cards.	Intrigue 2nd Edition	October 2016

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Chinese	爪牙 (pron. zhǎoyá, lit. lackey)
Czech	Služebník (lit. servant)
Dutch	Dienaar (lit. servant)			+1 Actie Kies één van de volgende opties: +; of leg alle kaarten uit je hand af, +4 Kaarten en iedere andere speler met ten minste 5 kaarten in zijn hand moet al zijn handkaarten afleggen en 4 nieuwe kaarten pakken.	Eerste editie (2009)
Finnish	Kätyri (lit. henchman)
French	Larbin (lit. stooge)
German	Lakai (lit. lackey)			+1 Aktion Wähle eins: + oder lege alle deine Handkarten ab, +4 Karten und jeder Mitspieler, der mindestens 5 Karten auf seiner Hand hat, legt alle seine Handkarten ab und zieht 4 Karten.	2. Edition (2021) one or more other versions listed here
Hungarian	Udvaronc (lit. gentleman-at-arms)
Italian	Tirapiedi
Japanese	寵臣 (pron. chōshin, lit. favored retainer)			+1 アクション 次のうち1つを選ぶ:「+」:「あなたと手札が5枚以上の他のプレイヤーは全員、手札をすべて捨て札にし、4枚カードを引く」。
Korean	하수인 (pron. hasu-in)
Norwegian	Lensmann (lit. sheriff)
Polish	Sługus			+1 akcja Wybierz jedną opcję +; lub odrzucasz wszystkie karty z ręki, otrzymujesz +4 karty i każdy z pozostałych graczy z co najmniej 5 kartami na ręce musi odrzucić wszystkie karty i pociągnąć 4 karty.	(2016)
Russian	Приспешник (pron. prispyeshnik, lit. henchman)			+1 Действие Выберите одно из двух: либо +; либо сбросьте вашу руку, +4 Карты, каждый другой игрок с хотя бы пятью картами в руке сбрасывает руку и тянет 4 карты.
Spanish	Esbirro

Trivia

Official card art.

The portrait in the card art has a passing resemblance to the Duke, which was done by the same artist.

Card Art

It was a scroll originally. We complained that he looked like an evil secretary, and the artist changed it to a dagger.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, JSH's True Art Rankings

Secret History

The original version of this was a "choose one" card with three messy abilities. It was too messy and also too narrow, and so left. Later on I was looking for an attack to replace another attack that hadn't worked out, and thought of this. Originally the "discard, draw 4" ability only worked on yourself, but it seemed like it would make a cute attack if it hit everybody. The problem was that it was still too narrow - you would not always have a combo that made that exciting enough. The solution, proposed by Chris West, was to have the card be a combo with itself. You can play a couple copies for +, and then play one to get a fresh hand. For simplicity there is no 3rd ability.

During development I had some games where it was clear that this card was too annoying. The "discard, draw 4" ability had no "5 or more cards" clause. So you would sometimes draw your whole deck... and also make everyone else draw their whole deck. So you'd make everyone else shuffle on each of your turns. As an attack it gets no worse if it just hits everyone else once, and it's way less annoying. We tested both and went with the less annoying version.

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

Why does Minion combo so well with itself?

Minion is a combo with another Minion, because otherwise the "discard your hand draw 4" ability would be bad way too often, and that ability can't be thrown in for free on something already worth having. You can argue that it should have been the Counting House of the set; that isn't the way I went.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Interview with Donald X.

Retrospective

Some people hate Minion, but it wasn't in line for cutting from Intrigue. Irl you can just not look at your hand until it's your turn or it gets Minion'd away; that's the big thing, just, make a plan, now it's gone.

A big thing at the time was, cards just didn't get as much work done on them. They didn't get as much playtesting; the playtesting wasn't as good; if a card seemed to be working out I didn't mess with it, I didn't think "but maybe it could be better" or anything. Lots of questions about early cards end up "well it started out like that and seemed fine, the end."

So anyway, today, I probably would not do the Minion attack, because it's not remotely essential to the game and some people hate it. I like to say, I can't do things anyone loves if I refuse to do things that some people hate, but I mean, Minion is extra hated. The way things work today is, there's just no insistence on preserving whatever element of a card, or fixing it even. I might drop Minion, or just not have it attack, or have it do some other attack. There's no particular draw towards the -1 card token, though sure, there's that, if the set was Adventures.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Dominion Discord, 2018