Silk Road

Silk Road
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Victory
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Hinterlands
Illustrator(s)	Martin Hoffmann‏
Card text
Worth 1  for every 4 Victory cards you have (round down).

Silk Road is a Victory card from Hinterlands. It is worth more depending on how many total Victory cards are in your deck.

It was removed from the second edition of Hinterlands; its alt-VP mechanic was reused on the Promo card Marchland.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• Silk Roads count themselves.
• Round down; if you have 11 Victory cards, Silk Road is worth 2 .
• Use 8 copies of Silk Road for games with 2 players, 12 for games with 3 or more players.

Strategy

Before it was removed, Silk Road was a weak source of alt-VP that was often skippable but occasionally useful as supplemental   in the endgame or as part of a rush. Silk Road's primary shortcoming is that its value in   ramps up very slowly, as you need to gain many Victory cards to make it worth more than a Duchy. Additionally, the process of greening in bulk is very likely to impede your deck's ability to gain even more Victory cards. Victory cards are almost always stop cards that provide no payload, so having many of them is usually antithetical to having a functioning deck that can gain even more Victory cards.

Silk Road's viability as supplemental   depends on the number of Victory cards you gain during the game. With four Victory cards, Silk Road has the   of Estate but is more expensive; with eight, it is a valid intermediate between Estate and Duchy; with twelve, it has the   of a Duchy but is cheaper. Silk Road is therefore only worth gaining over one of the basic Victory cards if you expect to have eight or more Victory cards by the end of the game. This will not be the case for most decks, which would struggle with deck control, but is more likely to occur in some specific cases, which are occasionally enough to increase Silk Road's value beyond that of a supplement to your   that you might situationally consider in the endgame. These scenarios might include:

• a rush that aims to cause an early pileout by playing many gainers to obtain significant numbers of Silk Roads and potentially Estates. Groom is a particularly notable enabler, while other Workshop variants such as Ironworks may occasionally work if the Kingdom is otherwise weak.
• an engine that makes heavy use of Victory cards due to Shepherd, Crossroads, or Inheritance.
• the presence of multi-type Victory cards, especially Nobles or Mill, that also double as engine components.

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.

• WanderingWinder's 2012 article

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		Worth 1  for every 4 Victory cards in your deck (round down).	Hinterlands	October 2011
		Worth 1  for every 4 Victory cards you have (round down).	Hinterlands (2016 printing)	December 2016

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Czech	Hedvábná stezka
Dutch	Zijderoute
Finnish	Silkkitie
French	Route de la soie			Vaut 1  pour chaque 4 cartes Victoire que vous avez (arrondi inférieurement).
German	Seidenstraße			Wert 1  für je 4 Punktekarten im eigenen Kartensatz (abgerundet).	(2011; 2019)
Italian	Via della Seta
Japanese	シルクロード (pron. shirukurōdo)			あなたの勝利点カード4枚 (端数切り捨て)につき1 。
Russian	Шёлковый Путь (pron. shyolkovy put')
Spanish	Ruta de la Seda

Trivia

Official card art.

Theme

Land that's better if you have more land. That suggested a trade route. For a long time it was Orchard.

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

Secret History

In the early days of Hinterlands being its own set, it kind of had a Victory cards sub-theme. It had four Victory cards - they were just a cute vehicle for when-gain abilities. And it had a few things that interacted with Victory cards. So naturally it got the Victory card that counts Victory cards. It never changed.

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

Second Edition removal

Silk Road was another borderline card. The experts were sure they didn't have to see it any more. I couldn't just replace it with another Victory card though - they take two extra cards, and the update pack just had room for one extra card. Hinterlands is no longer the set with 3 Treasures, 3 Victory cards, 3 Reactions; now it's, 2 Treasures, 2 Victory cards, 6 Reactions.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Hinterlands 2E Preview 3

This is a classic basic Victory card, but well, it's not a very good implementation of it. Mostly you don't go for these, though you might get one on your last turn. I couldn't replace it with another Victory card due to the update pack size; a fixed version may still appear someday though. I tried some Silk Road variants, but I couldn't actually fit one. Maybe someday.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of Hinterlands 2E