Squire

Squire
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Dark Ages
Illustrator(s)	Harald Lieske
Card text
+ Choose one: +2 Actions; or +2 Buys; or gain a Silver. When you trash this, gain an Attack card.

Squire is an Action card from Dark Ages. It can act as a village (i.e., providing +2 Actions), a Silver gainer, or a source of +Buy. In addition, when trashed it can gain you any Attack.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• When you play this, you get +, and your choice of either +2 Actions, +2 Buys, or gaining a Silver.
• If Squire is trashed somehow, you gain an Attack card.
• You can gain any Attack card available in the Supply, but if no Attack card is available, you do not gain one.

Other rules clarifications

• You cannot gain Mercenary by trashing a Squire, since Mercenary is not in the supply.

Strategy

Squire is cheap and offers a diverse set of abilities, which can make it a good support card in many different situations. However, although it can work as a village, payload, or restricted gainer, Squire doesn’t particularly excel at any of these roles, and oftentimes more dedicated cards will compare favorably to it. Unlike many stronger villages, for instance, Squire is a stop card; and it generates less than many other terminal payload cards that give +Buy. As a result, Squire usually has the greatest relevance when it can perform a function that is otherwise missing from the Kingdom, but it can also be used as a flexible and low–opportunity cost supplementary source of such effects in whatever way best suits your goals each turn.

Using Squire as your primary village is somewhat unreliable, both because it cannot help you find your terminals and because it increases your overall need for draw. You’ll typically only want to use Squire in this way if the available terminals are fairly strong (e.g. Bridge or Torturer), or with draw-to-X (for example Way of the Owl), which somewhat counteracts the drawbacks of a stop card village. In these use cases, you’ll want to add Squires to your deck like many other villages, i.e. right before you would experience terminal collision. When it's acting as a supplementary village, Squire’s flexibility can be useful, as you can opt to use it for another purpose if you do not need the excess terminal space. In these cases, you’ll often opt to add a Squire or two to your deck when the opportunity cost is low.

Squire offers a mix of payload effects, some of which it provides more effectively than others. In this regard, it is mainly important as a source of +Buy, providing many gains if you have sufficient terminal space and draw, and is significantly less efficient at generating or ramping up your overall payload by terminally gaining Silvers. As such, it is best added to your deck in the midgame, when you can generate sufficient to make use of the extra Buys. While large numbers of Buys often have diminishing returns, the cheap price of Squire itself makes it a useful card for pile control, which in turn can lead to a three-pile ending. Having many Buys is also very helpful with cost reduction.

As a gainer, Squire requires a somewhat narrow set of conditions to be effective. While its Silver gaining option can be relevant as a way to ramp up your payload or to provide targets for trash for benefit effects, many other gainers such as Mint or Treasure Trove can serve this purpose more effectively by providing other benefits or gaining more useful cards. The on-trash Attack gaining effect is similarly situational, since setting it up requires three components: Squire, a strong Attack that is otherwise difficult to gain, and a way to trash Squire. Even if all three components are available, you also still need the deck control to collide Squire with your trasher, and a way to resupply your Squires if you want to do this repeatedly. Examples of strong and hard-to-gain Attacks for which it is worth pursuing all of this include Goons and those that cost (i.e. Familiar and Scrying Pool)—trashing a Squire will often enable you to add these cards to your deck more quickly than you otherwise could. It may also be easier than usual to use Squire to gain Attacks with certain trashing effects which avoid some of these setup problems; for example, Donate doesn’t require collision, Watchtower allows you to immediately trash and upgrade the Squire, and Lurker requires neither collision nor an influx of Squires as it can simply trash them from the Supply.

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 2013 article

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		+ Choose one: +2 Actions; or +2 Buys; or gain a Silver. When you trash this, gain an Attack card.	Dark Ages	August 2012
		+ Choose one: +2 Actions; or +2 Buys; or gain a Silver. When you trash this, gain an Attack card.	Dark Ages (2017 printing)	September 2017

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Czech	Panoš			+ Vyber si jeden pokyn: +2 akce; +2 nákupy; vezmi si Stříbrňák. Pokud tuto kartu zahodíš na smetiště, vezmi si kartu útoku.
Dutch	Schildknaap
Finnish	Aseenkantaja
French	Écuyer
German	Knappe			+ Wähle eins: +2 Aktionen oder +2 Käufe oder nimm ein Silber. Wenn du diese Karte entsorgst, nimm eine Angriffskarte.	(2019)
Japanese	従者 (pron. jūsha, lit. valet)			+ 次のうち1つを選ぶ:「+2 アクション」:「+2 購入」:「銀貨1枚を獲得する」 これを廃棄すろとき、アタックカード1枚を獲得する。
Korean	종자 (pron. jongja)
Polish	Pachołek				Although Polish version is not released, this card is referred to in the Polish version of Empires rulebook
Russian	Оруженосец (pron. oruzhyenosyets)
Spanish	Escudero

Trivia

Official card art.

Preview

Squire is the complement to Steward that you always knew I'd make. Okay maybe you didn't figure that one out. You get a choice of three things that Steward doesn't get you, plus in the bargain. It's a pretty nifty , just for that. And if he gets trashed, then you get an attack, any attack on the table. You can Remodel a Squire into a Remodel and a Familiar. A major theme of Dark Ages is upgrading, whatever that means. Actually I think I can explain it: it's, turning cards into other cards. Some cards turn other cards into other other cards, like Graverobber does, but some cards turn themselves into other cards, and Squire is one of those.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Dark Ages Preview #3: Squire, Hermit, Madman

Secret History

The first version of this, from way back when, was the not-so-similar-looking '+1 card +1 action, you may play an attack or buy a Silver.' It was a village that only played attacks, or a +buy that only worked on Silver. When it turned out that I wouldn't be doing more cards that let you buy cards in the action phase, due to Black Market being confusing, I dropped buying Silvers (at that point 'buy a Treasure') and added, 'when trashed, gain an attack.' Now the card was just a blank cycler in games with no attacks. For a while I thought that was okay, but people sure complained about it. I made it, 'when trashed, gain an attack or silver,' but of course some games there's no way to trash it either. I liked the bottom, so the solution was to give it a spiffy top that you would always be happy with. And there it is, a counterpart to Steward. It took "gain a Silver" from Beggar and well that worked out too.

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

Is the on-trash bonus a problem with expensive attacks?

Donald X. was asked if designing expensive attacks would be prohibited by them being easily gained with Squire, and if he would regret Squire. Donald X. remarks:

I don't regret that although you're correct that it's a thing. I would either be accepting that some games would have that combo (which does require a third piece - the way to trash Squire - unless the big attack is also a way to trash Squire and even then that probably delays you a lot), or would be tweaking the new card to get rid of it. That doesn't sound so bad though. I couldn't make an attack where all was being paid for the attack; people would hate it. And if it's a big positive effect plus a minor attack, probably I can happily take off the attack part.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Interview with Donald X.