Sheepdog

Sheepdog
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action - Reaction
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Menagerie
Illustrator(s)	Claus Stephan
Card text
+2 Cards When you gain a card, you may play this from your hand.

Sheepdog is an Action-Reaction card from Menagerie. On its own it only provides weak terminal draw, but it is far more powerful with effects that can trigger its Reaction: playing itself without consuming an action when you gain a card.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• You can use this when gaining a card due to buying it, when gaining a card some other way such as due to Falconer, and even when gaining a card on another player's turn, such as due to Black Cat.
• Remember that when you buy a card, you can no longer play Treasures in that Buy phase.
• If you gain a Sheepdog to your hand - such as via Falconer - you can react to that gain and play the Sheepdog.
• See the Reactions section.

Other Rules clarifications

• If you gain a card with a "when you gain" clause, you can choose to resolve that before or after reacting with Sheepdog, for example, if you gain Hostelry, you can choose to discard Treasures for Horses before or after reacting with Sheepdog

Strategy

Sheepdog’s strength varies drastically depending on whether the Kingdom has gainers, and because many gainers and Sheepdog itself are terminal, villages. When you collide it with a gainer, Sheepdog is effectively non-terminal draw, as Reacting and playing it does not consume an Action. This often enables gain-and-play scenarios. Without a gainer in the Kingdom, Sheepdog is just a weak terminal draw card, and the only time you can React it is likely to be after buying and gaining a card, and you likely cannot play those cards drawn.

Sheepdog synergizes particularly well with several different types of gainers. Cards that can gain Sheepdog to your hand are especially notable, as you can then immediately react the gained Sheepdog to its own gain. This allows gainers such as Sculptor and Falconer to act as draw this turn, while also adding a good card in Sheepdog to your deck for future explosive turns. With village support, you can repeat this process, often gaining a large number of Sheepdogs all at once. Sheepdog also works well with gainers that are themselves non-terminal and can gain more copies of Sheepdog. Ironworks and University are good examples of such, and appreciate Sheepdog’s draw being stop cards themselves.

Because Sheepdog is reliant both on collision and on having other supporting cards in your deck, you’ll typically want to get deck control and gainers first, often thinning your starting cards and using your gainers to add Sheepdogs in the midgame.

Because you can React and play Sheepdog without using an Action, Sheepdog is particularly useful with certain Ways. With the non-terminal Ways, it can effectively act as a village. For example, if you play a terminal gainer and react a Sheepdog using Way of the Pig, you have used up net zero Actions, and can play another terminal afterwards. Sheepdog also works well with Way of the Squirrel, as you can react Sheepdogs to a card you buy during the Buy phase, producing a somewhat similar effect to a Den of Sin that you can play every turn.

Sheepdog can be somewhat useful, if unreliable, against junkers, as you’re reliant both on your opponents playing their junker and finding a Sheepdog in your starting hand. If you already plan to gain Sheepdogs because you already have villages and gainers this can be a nice additional effect, but if you do not, getting Sheepdogs to try and counteract a junker is usually unwise due to terminal space concerns.

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.

• slides from 2021 coaching session

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		+2 Cards When you gain a card, you may play this from your hand.	Menagerie	March 2020

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
German	Hirtenhund			+2 Karten Wenn du eine Karte nimmst, darfst du diese Karte aus deiner Hand spielen.	(2020)
Japanese	牧羊犬 (pron. bokuyōken)

Trivia

Official card art.

Preview

Sheepdog gives Dominion another blue dog. You can play it anytime you gain a card. It may not even be your turn. Playing it means you put it into play and get your +2 Cards; it will be discarded in that turn's Clean-up, even if it's not yours. Using the Reaction part doesn't use up an Action; it just leaps into play and draws you cards. If it draws you another Sheepdog, you can use that one right away too; you can keep playing Sheepdogs until you run out of them.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Menagerie Previews 1: 5 Cards

Secret History

For strumphf's 2022 advent calendar, Donald X. went in-depth on the development of Sheepdog.

This has two origins. One is a treasure from Empires that had +1 Buy and gave you + per Buy you had. I thought there was something there, and tried a new version, an action that gave you + per card you gained that turn. Some people liked it but man the math was too much to ask of people. No really, it was bad. I tried multiple versions trying to fix it up and make it fair, some of which could also count trashes. I tried versions that triggered at one point in the turn. I switched to reactions and card-drawing (no math there) and was making progress. Now it resembled an outtake from Renaissance, that gave you +1 Card +1 Action when gaining a card, and some versions of this did just that. I got a version that seemed promising but had a bad wording - it wasn't trivial to communicate that you could reveal a copy for each gain, but not multiple copies for one gain. I tried it as draw-to-6 - now I didn't need to limit you to one use because it was naturally limited. Again I thought maybe this would do the trick, but more testing suggested it wasn't there. I came up with a few directions and one of them was Sheepdog. It's sleek and pretty and a delight. Sometimes it takes a while to get there.

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