Sea Hag

Sea Hag
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action - Attack
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Seaside
Illustrator(s)	Christof Tisch
Card text
Each other player discards the top card of their deck, then gains a Curse onto their deck.

Sea Hag is an Action-Attack card from Seaside. It is a curser which puts Curse cards on top of an opponent's deck.

It was removed from the second edition of Seaside and replaced with Sea Witch which is also a curser but ties into the set's Duration theme and offers benefits besides the attack.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• The Curses are given out in turn order, which can matter when the Curse pile is low.
• They go onto decks rather than into discard piles.

Other Rules clarifications

• Even when there are no Curses left, other players still discard the top card of their deck when Sea Hag is played.

Strategy

Before it was removed, Sea Hag was a junking attack of varying impact. Unlike other cursers, Sea Hag offers no benefit beyond the attack, and therefore its strength rests entirely on how important that attack is in a particular Kingdom. Cursing your opponents is generally a powerful effect (especially early in the game), so Sea Hag can be an essential card; however, it’s unlikely to be useful if the Kingdom offers reasonably strong trashing or a better junking attack, such as Witch. When the Kingdom encourages you towards Sea Hag, gaining one early is usually a good plan.

Sea Hag’s main downside is that it takes up terminal space while doing nothing to help you either control your own deck or increase its payload; this also means it eventually becomes useless after the Curses run out. Compared to cards like Witch, it’s also relatively slow to distribute Curses, although their impact occurs sooner than usual since they’re deposited onto the top of your opponents' decks. It's possible to cause serious damage in this way: early in the game, drawing the Curse instead of a Copper may hurt an opponent's purchasing power substantially, and later on there are situations in which it might be enough to prevent them from drawing their deck (e.g. if they have a weak or unreliable engine). However, occasionally the topdecking simply makes it easier for an opponent to deal with the Curse before it can contaminate their next shuffle, for instance if their trasher is Lookout, which benefits from the certainty that its target is on top of the deck. There are a few situations (e.g. with Chariot Race) in which the ability to manipulate the top card of an opponent's deck could be useful for other reasons.

Beyond its use in Kingdoms which lack Curse-trashing, Sea Hag might occasionally pay off in a situation in which you believe you're ahead of your opponents, and therefore you can afford the opportunity costs of Sea Hag more readily than they can deal with the incoming Curses; similar considerations may, rarely, lead you to gain a second Sea Hag in the midgame. The availability of a trash-for-benefit effect to eventually get rid of Sea Hag can also enhance its attractiveness.

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 2011 article

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		Each other player discards the top card of his deck, then gains a Curse card, putting it on top of his deck.	Seaside	October 2009
		Each other player discards the top card of their deck, then gains a Curse onto their deck.	Seaside (2017 printing)	July 2017

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Chinese	海巫 (pron. hǎi wū)
Czech	Mořská čarodějnice
Dutch	Zeeheks
Finnish	Merennoita
French	Sorcière de mer
German	Seehexe			Jeder Mitspieler muss die oberste Karte seines Nachziehstapels ablegen und sich dann einen Fluch nehmen, den er verdeckt auf seinen Nachziehstapel legt.	(2009)
	Seehexe			Jeder Mitspieler legt die oberste Karte seines Nachziehstapels ab und nimmt dann einen Fluch auf seinen Nachziehstapel.	(Nachdruck 2021)
Italian	Megera dei Mari
Japanese	海の妖婆 (pron. umi no yōba)			他のプレイヤーは全員、山札の一番上のカードを捨て札にし、呪い1枚を山札の上に獲得する。
Korean	바다 마녀 (pron. bada manyeo)
Polish	Morska wiedźma			Każdy z pozostałych graczy odrzuca wierzchnią kartę ze swojej talii, a następnie dodaje Klątwę, którą kładzie na wierzchu swojej talii.	(2016)
Russian	Морская Ведьма (pron. morskaya vyed'ma)			Каждый другой игрок сбрасывает верхнюю карту своей колоды, затем получает Проклятие на верх своей колоды.
Spanish	Bruja del Mar

Trivia

Official card art.

Secret History

Way back when there was a card like "trash the top card of each other player's deck; they each gain a Confusion card, putting it on their deck." Confusion was like Curse but without the -1 . Confusion left the main set due to not being different enough from Curse (and also because it required 30 more cards to handle it). So all of the Confusion-giving cards vanished or were changed. It may not even be correct to say that that card inspired this one. Anyway eventually I tried Curse-to-deck-top elsewhere, then moved it here as I wanted another attack and it fit the next turn theme. The discarding is just there so that multiple Sea Hags don't leave you with a stack of Curses on top of your deck.

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

Second Edition Removal

People were telling me how little they liked Sea Hag from the moment it came out. Some people just didn't like that all it does it attacks. And it wasn't very good, and games where you did want it were miserable.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Seaside 2E Previews 2