Recruiter

Recruiter
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Renaissance
Illustrator(s)	Julien Delval
Card text
+2 Cards Trash a card from your hand. +1 Villager per it costs.

Recruiter is an Action card from Renaissance. It is a trash-for-benefit card that provides Villagers based on the trashed card's cost.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• First you draw 2 cards, then you trash a card from your hand.
• Trashing is not optional.
• For each the trashed card costs, you get +1 Villager; for example if you trash a Silver, you get +3 Villagers.
• You do not get anything for or amounts, just for .

Strategy

Recruiter is an extremely strong trash-for-benefit card that acts as a flexible source of terminal space in the form of Villagers. Because it draws two cards before trashing, it provides good cycling and a large search space for your preferred trashing target, as well as maintaining your net hand size, and can help you get deck control very quickly. Combined with the flexibility and strength of Villagers, these features make it an exceptionally powerful card, particularly in the early game, and you should usually prioritize gaining it as early as possible. A / opening split will allow you to open with Recruiter, but several effects such as Ferry, Transport, or Overlord can guarantee opening or playing Recruiter even with an unfavorable split. In the absence of these conditions, it will likely be best to tailor your opening buys around the objective of hitting on your first reshuffle.

In the early game, Estates are usually the best targets for Recruiter trashing: not only are they likely to be your worst cards, but Recruiting them also generates Villagers. Although you often won't need much terminal space at this point, the Villagers can be beneficial as insurance against early terminal collisions, and mean that Recruiter won't draw anything dead. Additionally, these early Villagers eliminate your short-term need for villages, which can allow you to shortcut some of the normal building process and quickly add strong terminals. Saving Villagers also provides highly beneficial flexibility later, reducing your risk of duds and sometimes enabling you to play cards in a more optimized order.

A second Recruiter (and occasionally even more copies) can be worthwhile in a few cases. First, Recruiter's Estate trashing is often best paired with a good Copper trasher (e.g. Spice Merchant), but if none are available and you need to use Recruiter to thin your Coppers or other junk (such as incoming Curses) as well, you may want an extra copy to help with this. Later, your additional copy may itself make a good Recruiter target for a midgame injection of extra Villagers; other cards that become less useful as the game goes on, such as Silver, are similarly likely to be Recruited in the midgame. Second, if Villagers from Recruiter are your primary or only source of +Actions, you may need a couple of Recruiters to supply your terminal space needs. To fulfill this purpose sustainably, Recruiter additionally needs to be paired with gainers to ensure that you have a supply of suitable targets; Gold gainers are particularly useful due to Gold’s high price. Under these circumstances, Recruiter can provide very large amounts of highly flexible terminal space. Good alternative targets for Recruiter are those that typically make for good trash-for-benefit targets: this may be because they can typically be obtained more cheaply than the price you can Recruit them for (such as Peddler), they have on-trash benefits and an effect that ensures you won't run out of copies (Fortress, Rats), or you gained them primarily for their on-gain effect (e.g. Flag Bearer). Conversely, Recruiter has a mild anti-synergy with cost reduction: to maximize the number of Villagers you generate, it's preferable to play Recruiter before any cost-reducing cards wherever possible.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		+2 Cards Trash a card from your hand. +1 Villager per it costs.	Renaissance	November 2018

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Chinese	招募員 (pron. zhāomù yuán)
Dutch	Ronselaar			+2 Kaarten Vernietig een kaart uit je hand.+1 Dorpsbewoner per dat de vernietigde kaart kost.	de vernietigde kaart
French	Recruteur			+2 Cartes Écartez une carte de votre main. +1 Villageois par de son coût.
German	Anwerber			+2 Karten Entsorge eine deiner Handkarten. +1 Dorfbewohner pro , das sie kostet.	(2019)
Japanese	徴募官 (pron. chōbokan)			+2 カードを引く 手札1枚を廃棄する。そのコストにつき+1 村人トークン。
Polish	Oficer werbunkowy				Although Polish version is not released, this name is referred to in Polish Dominion 2E rulebook.
Russian	Вербовщик (pron. vyerbovshshik)
Spanish	Reclutador			+2 Cartas Elimina una carta de tu mano.+1 Aldeano por cada que cueste.	Typo: missing a space.

Trivia

Official card art.

Preview

Recruiter can let you really go nuts getting Villagers. Don't go too nuts; you don't need a giant pile of Villagers sitting there.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Renaissance Previews #2: Acting Troupe, Sculptor, Recruiter

Secret History

I tried trashing a card for +Coffers, and for a mix of +Coffers and +Villagers. It turned out to be too good of a strategy by itself - just madly convert your cards into tokens. But +Villagers by itself wouldn't have that problem, so I made that card and it was great. A kind of inverse Apprentice. Then at the last minute it got an Artifact, in order to not have the Artifact on Mountain Village. Then at the very last minute I moved the Artifact to Border Guard. We'd been happy with Recruiter, and this way I avoided having another card with multiple mechanics.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of Dominion: Renaissance