Sacrifice
Sacrifice | |
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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.
Contents |
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
Digital | Text | Release | Date | |
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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
Trivia
Secret History