Smugglers

Smugglers
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Seaside
Illustrator(s)	RC Torres
Card text
Gain a copy of a card costing up to that the player to your right gained on their last turn.

Smugglers is an Action card from Seaside. It is a gainer which lets you gain a copy of a card the player to your right gained on their last turn, as long as that card cost or less. It is strongest when you know you'll want the same cards as your opponent.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• The card has to cost or less when you play Smugglers; it does not have to have cost or less when the player to your right gained it.
• This looks at the most recent turn of the player to your right, even if you have taken multiple turns in a row.
• The gained card does not have to have been bought by the other player, just gained; for example you can gain a copy of a card they gained with their own Smugglers.
• If they gained multiple cards costing or less, you choose between them; if they gained no such cards, you do not gain anything.
• This can only gain cards that are present in the Supply; for example you cannot gain a Spoils (from Dominion: Dark Ages).
• This is not an Attack, so Lighthouse and Moat do not stop it.

Other rules clarifications

• First you choose a card that the player to your right gained costing up to , and then you (try to) gain a copy of it from the Supply. This means you may be able to choose a card that is unavailable to be gained (e.g., a card whose Supply pile is empty, or a card from outside the Supply); and if you do, you gain nothing.
• It doesn't matter where the gained card came from. So if the player to your right gained a card from the trash with Lurker, you can gain a copy of that card (from the Supply).
• If your opponent gained a Ruins or a Knight, Smugglers will only let you gain a copy if the top card of the Ruins or Knights pile has the same name.
• Cards with or in their cost can never be gained with Smugglers.
• If you play this during the player to your right's turn (e.g. they play Barbarian, trash your Gold, and you gain a Gondola that lets you play Smugglers), this checks that player's last completed turn, not their current turn.

Strategy

Smugglers is a gainer for cards that cost up to , but can only target cards gained by your opponent during their previous turn. Its value therefore depends on the availability of alternative sources of extra gains and the likelihood of gaining a useful card, as well as your ability to reliably play Smugglers. If it is easy to play a large number of Smugglers, this can somewhat disincentivize the gaining of useful cards that would activate an opponent's Smugglers; in an extreme case, it can be preferable to gain nothing until you can afford a card out of the price range of Smugglers.

Smugglers is a terminal stop card, so it ideally needs the support of both draw and sufficient terminal space. Since it is also completely useless unless your opponent has gained a desirable and eligible card on their previous turn, it works best if they will regularly do so and if you have sufficient deck control to play Smugglers at the right time—preferably every turn, and ideally with overdraw that allows you to use it for gain-and-play. If your opponent only occasionally gains cards useful to you and you only occasionally play Smugglers, there is a strong risk that those turns will not coincide, heavily reducing the benefit you can get out of Smugglers. For this reason, while the potential payoff can be high, Smugglers is unreliable in the opening and early game, although certain effects like Save or Way of the Turtle may enable you to have Smugglers available at just the right time.

Smugglers may be skippable if there are other gainers available: notably, most Workshop variants are usually preferable for gaining cards that cost up to because they are independent of your opponent's choices and often offer some additional benefit. If such alternatives are lacking, Smugglers may be useful to gain cheap cards that you would otherwise use these alternatives for. Additionally, since Smugglers can also gain cards costing or , it is often especially relevant in contesting piles of key cards at these prices, like Hunting Party; Grand Market is a particularly notable example because the difficulty of gaining it goes beyond its price. In the endgame, the same considerations apply to gaining Duchies for extra  . In some cases it is important to weigh up the advantage of buying a Duchy for yourself against the risk of your opponent gaining multiple copies using Smugglers.

A few other aspects of the Kingdom can also modulate the value of Smugglers. Given that the gaining effect has an upper cost limit, Smugglers synergizes with cost reduction. Most notably, with costs reduced by it can gain a Province whenever your opponent gains one. On the other hand, Smugglers may be significantly devalued in the presence of key cards it is unable to gain, including those costing , like University, or , like City Quarter. Similar considerations apply with cards that are only available as a single copy, notably from the Black Market but also in the case of Castles and Knights, or that are not in the Supply (e.g. Ghost).

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		Gain a copy of a card costing up to that the player to your right gained on his last turn.	Seaside	October 2009
		Gain a copy of a card costing up to that the player to your right gained on their last turn.	Seaside (2017 printing)	July 2017

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Chinese	走私者 (pron. zǒusīzhě)
Czech	Pašeráci
Dutch	Smokkelaar (note: explicitly singular)			Pak één kaart die de speler rechts van je in zijn laatste beurt gepakt of gekocht heeft en die niet meer waard is dan .
Finnish	Salakuljettajat
French	Contrebandiers			Recevez un exemplaire d'une carte coûtant jusqu'à que le joueur à votre droite a reçue à son dernier tour.
German	Schmuggler			Nimm eine Karte, die maximal kostet und von der dein rechter Mitspieler in seinem letzten Zug eine Karte mit gleichem Namen genommen hat.	(Nachdruck 2018) one or more other versions listed here
	Schmuggler			Nimm von einer Karte, die dein rechter Mitspieler in seinem letzten Zug genommen hat und die bis zu kostet, eine gleiche.	(Nachdruck 2021)
	Schmuggler			Nimm eine Karte, die bis zu kostet und von der dein rechter Mitspieler in seinem letzten Zug eine gleiche Karte genommen hat.	2. Edition (2022)
Italian	Contrabbandieri
Japanese	密輸人 (pron. mitsuyu-nin)			右隣のプレイヤーの最後のターンにそのプレイヤーが獲得した、コスト以下のカード1枚を獲得する。
Korean	밀수업자 (pron. milsueobja)
Polish	Przemytnicy			Dodaj kopię karty o koszcie lub mniejszym, którą gracz po twojej prawej stronie dodał w swojej ostatniej turze.	(2016)
Russian	Контрабандисты (pron. kontrabandisty)			Получите копию карты стоимостью не более , которую игрок справа получил в его последний ход.
Spanish	Contrabandistas

Trivia

Official card art.

Secret History

This started life as "+. Cards the previous player bought cost less this turn," in the 4th expansion. It was okay, but the bonus just didn't come up often enough to be exciting. So I replaced it with this better way to care about what the previous player bought. I tried it as "up to " but it really needed to go to . The best thing about the card is when the previous player buys a card you don't really want, but you can't pass up the opportunity to take one, and it ends up warping your deck.

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

Further comments from Donald X.

My favorite Seaside card. It's like the fixed version of Possession. It tends to give you ridiculous value, ridiculous I say, but of course sometimes they didn't get what you wanted, and it's hard to smuggle Provinces (but I know a guy who can get a Duchy across the border for you). The classic situation was, someone buys Pirate Ship, and the next player stares and stares, and stares and stares, and finally plays Fishing Village and two Smugglers and buys a 3rd Pirate Ship dammit, is this what you wanted.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, $3 Cost Card Rankings Bottom Half