Scavenger

Scavenger
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Dark Ages
Illustrator(s)	Franz Vohwinkel
Card text
+ You may put your deck into your discard pile. Look through your discard pile and put one card from it onto your deck.

Scavenger is an Action card from Dark Ages. It is a terminal silver and deck discarder, like Chancellor, but it also lets you fish out the best card from your discard pile and make it your new deck.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• Putting your deck into your discard pile is optional, but putting a card from your discard pile on top of your deck is not; you do it unless there are no cards in your discard pile.
• Putting your deck into your discard pile will not trigger Tunnel (from Hinterlands).

Strategy

Scavenger is a weak terminal silver with a deck-discarding effect that is situationally useful. Like many terminal silvers, Scavenger is often a mediocre use of terminal space. In money strategies, Scavenger is most impactful in weak Kingdoms where you are unable to get full deck control and instead can use Scavenger to bypass bad shuffles and find your best cards reliably. In engines, Scavenger can be useful in Kingdoms that do not have cheap, open-able deck control but do offer excess terminal space and powerful deck control later (e.g. a trasher such as Sentry), in which case Scavenger can quickly cycle through your early shuffles and topdeck powerful cards. Deciding when to discard your deck is best informed by keeping track of where your good cards are and how much junk is left in any given shuffle.

Scavenger’s effect is most relevant in the opening. If you play it on turn 3 it can help you afford a strong card such as Recruiter, discards your deck so that you cycle to that new card faster, and allows you to possibly play that on turn 4. Similarly, if you bought a good card on turn 3 and play your Scavenger on turn 4, you can discard your deck and topdeck that good card.

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.

• sffc's 2012 article
• An interesting Scavenger + Secret Passage engine

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		+ You may put your deck into your discard pile. Look through your discard pile and put one card from it on top of your deck.	Dark Ages 1st Edition	August 2012
		+ You may put your deck into your discard pile. Look through your discard pile and put one card from it onto your deck.	Dark Ages 2nd Edition	September 2017

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Czech	Metař (lit. street cleaner)			+ Můžeš položit svůj dobírací balíček na odkládací balíček. Prohlédni si odkládací balíček a polož z něj jednu kartu na dobírací balíček.
Dutch	Scharrelaar
Finnish	Haaskalintu (lit. vulture)
French	Pilleur (lit. looter)
German	Lumpensammler (lit. rag collector)			+ Du darfst deinen Nachziehstapel auf deinen Ablagestapel legen. Sieh deinen Ablagestapel durch und lege eine Karte daraus auf deinen Nachziehstapel.	(2019) one or more other versions listed here
Japanese	ゴミあさり (pron. gomi asari)			+ 山札を捨て札置き場に置いてもよい。捨て札置き場のカードをすべて見て、その中の1枚を山札の上に置く。
Korean	쓰레기 뒤지는 사람 (pron. sseulegi dwijineun salam, lit. scouring garbage man)
Polish	Śmieciarz				Although Polish version is not released, this name is referred to in Polish Dominion 2E rulebook.
Russian	Мусорщик (pron. musorshshik)
Spanish	Carroñero

Trivia

Official card art.

Secret History

At one point I thought I might push doing stuff with the discard pile as a subtheme. I didn't really, although a few cards care about it. Scavenger lets you pick a card from your discard pile to draw. To make sure there is something, it lets you put your deck there first. Originally you had to put your deck into your discard pile; Wei-Hwa Huang argued for making it optional, to get rid of certain cases where you were sad to do it. And as a result you can set up multiple cards with it, if you play multiple Scavengers and only flip the first time.

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

Relevant outtakes

There was a flipped version of Margrave - +2 Cards, each other player discards down to 2, then draws a card. Oh man. So painful. A version that was around for a while cost and gave you 2 Silvers if it was trashed. Another version cost but came with a Spoils. After that attack died, I tried, they discard down to 3, you look through your discard pile and either get a card from it into your hand or draw 2 cards. It needed the +2 Cards option in case your discard pile was empty. Well I decided Scavenger was okay, but you don't need to see too many of these getting back Platinums.

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