Sacrifice

Sacrifice
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Empires
Illustrator(s)	Joshua Stewart
Card text
Trash a card from your hand. If it's an... Action card, +2 Cards, +2 Actions Treasure card, + Victory card, +2

Sacrifice is an Action card from Empires. It is a trasher that gives a variable bonus depending on the type of the card it trashed.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• If you trash a card with multiple types, you get all relevant bonuses; for example if you trash Crown, you get +2 Cards, +2 Actions, and +.
• If you trash a card with no relevant types (such as Curse), you get nothing.

Other rules clarifications

• Sacrificing an Estate under the influence of Inheritance will give +2 Cards, +2 Actions, and +2 .

Strategy

Sacrifice is a trash for benefit card with a benefit dependent on the card types of the target. It is somewhat slow to get rid of your starting junk cards as it is a terminal stop card when used for that purpose (with the exception of Necropolis in Shelters games), and provides no benefit for trashing Curses, so a faster trasher such as Steward is usually preferable initially. However, Sacrifice is often worthwhile if there are no other thinning options and can be a reasonable choice in the opening.

Sacrifice’s three different modes vary in strength.

• When trashing a Treasure, Sacrifice generates . Thus, playing a Sacrifice and trashing a Copper offers the same that drawing and playing two Coppers would; this compares unfavorably to e.g. Moneylender, which can help you afford expensive cards in the early game at the same time as thinning.
• When trashing a Victory card, Sacrifice gives you 2 . You’ll most frequently be trashing Estates in this way, and while this does rid you of a stop card, the small net increase in   is usually not important. The primary exception to this is in extremely gain limited Kingdoms, where other ways of adding extra   have an extremely high opportunity cost.
• When trashing an Action card, Sacrifice gives you +2 Cards and +2 Actions, but because you have to trash a card, this is somewhat equivalent to playing a one-shot Village, as you are left with an extra Action and an unchanged net hand size. This means that not only is Sacrifice a difficult village to use sustainably, but you’re also reliant on colliding it with Action cards you are willing to trash. Ruins are the main example of a junk Action card you’d be willing to use for this purpose, and so Sacrifice’s presence in a Kingdom makes Looters significantly less attractive as a way to attack, particularly if there’s no other source of a village effect. Sacrifice can also be useful with other Action cards that provide a beneficial on-trash effect. Rats and Fortress each add a card back to your hand size when trashed, so combining either of these with Sacrifice is equivalent to playing a Lost City and can form the basis for a drawing engine. Even in other cases that don’t provide draw, Sacrifice is a good way to trash Action cards if you want to do so anyway, e.g. when using Squire to gain an Attack card such as Scrying Pool. Later in the game, you may consider trashing other Action cards using Sacrifice in order to keep drawing more cards and/or increase your terminal space if doing so will prevent a dud; this consideration may be especially relevant if your deck control has deteriorated due to greening.

Sacrifice offers more benefit when trashing multi-type cards (e.g. Island); gaining these cards for the sole purpose of trashing them is usually inefficient, but Sacrificing them can sometimes be useful opportunistically, especially in the endgame.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		Trash a card from your hand.       If it's an…   Action card, +2 Cards, +2 Actions Treasure card,    + Victory card,    +2	Empires	June 2016

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Dutch	Offer
Finnish	Uhraus
French	Sacrifice			Écartez une carte de votre main.    Si c'est une carte… Action, +2 Cartes, +2 Actions  Trésor,    + Victoire,    +2
German	Opfer			Entsorge eine Handkarte. Ist es eine…   Aktionskarte: +2 Karten und        +2 Aktionen Geldkarte:  + Punktekarte: +2 -Marker	(2016)
German	Opfer			Entsorge eine deiner Handkarten. Ist es eine… Aktionskarte: +2 Karten und +2 Aktionen Geldkarte: + Punktekarte: +2	2. Edition (2021)
Japanese	生贄 (pron. ikenie)			手札1枚を廃棄する。 そのカードが… アクションカードの場合、+2 カードを引く、+2 アクション 財宝カードの場合、+ 勝利点カードの場合、+2  (複数該当する場合、順に実行する)。
Polish	Ofiara Note: refers to the victim of sacrifice, rather than the act itself			Wyrzuć na śmietnisko kartę z ręki.      Jeśli jest to… karta Akcji: +2 karty, +2 akcje karta Skarbu: + karta Zwycięstwa: +2	(2017)
Russian	Жертвоприношение (pron. zhyertvoprinoshyeniye)

Trivia

Official card art.

Secret History

The first version was identical except you only got +2 Actions when trashing an Action, and it cost . For a while it seemed good but you sure weren't too interested in trashing Actions to it. It's nice to have that option sometimes be meaningful.

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