Star Chart

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Star Chart
Info
Cost
Type	Project
Set	Renaissance
Illustrator(s)	Grant Hansen
Project text
When shuffling, you may pick one of the cards to go on top.

Star Chart is a Project from Renaissance. It lets you choose which card ends up on top of your deck each time you shuffle.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• Each time you shuffle, you can look through the cards and pick one to go on top.
• Shuffle the other cards.
• You can also look at any cards about to be drawn, that aren't being shuffled, while deciding.

Other rules clarifications

• If you shuffle your entire deck (with e.g. Famine), you can look through your deck and pick a card to put on top.
• The card you choose with this goes on top of the shuffled cards, not on top of your deck.

Strategy

Original article by Polk5440

Projects are one of the new mechanics introduced in Renaissance. They are abilities everyone can have simply by buying them once. Star Chart’s is “When you shuffle, you may pick one of the cards to go on top.” That seems simple enough; and it is! It is also deceptively strong. Star Chart is easily one of the best of the twenty Projects in the expansion.

Being able to pick a card to go on top of your deck every shuffle just makes your deck work better. How much better? Well, it’s tough to quantify. But, you know that dodgy acquaintance of yours? The one who “shuffles” but magically always has great luck getting his key card in hand? Well, now you, too, can shadily shuffle, but legally.

Star Chart’s topdecking effect always gets used once a shuffle. Without condition. For just . This is a huge value proposition over many other cards in Dominion that provide conditional topdecking services. Harbinger misses if you don’t have any cards in your discard pile. Pearl Diver misses if you don’t have any cards in your deck. Watchtower doesn’t topdeck unless you have it in hand. Royal Seal doesn’t topdeck unless you have it in play. Nomad Camp only topdecks itself once. The list goes on. Star Chart just works every shuffle, no matter what.

The topdecking effect is freely transferable and not tied down to a particular card like many events and tokens. This is a big advantage over something like Stash. Stash also can be topdecked once a shuffle, but Stash is usually bad, especially in a single copy. It’s just a Silver! Star Chart lets you topdeck a different card every shuffle depending on your needs. And if you really need to topdeck a Silver, you can, without paying for that Silver in the first place.

After playing with Star Chart for a while, I began asking myself, “When wouldn’t I want Star Chart?” The answer I’ve come to is “probably never.” There may be some cases where there isn’t time to waste a buy on Star Chart — perhaps some Donate games — but I haven’t come across one myself, yet. The more pertinent question is usually not whether to buy Star Chart, but when.

Sometimes certain opening buys like Chapel, Page, or Peasant missing the shuffle is game losing. Star Chart is there to help you out and prevent it. For example, opening Chapel and a cantrip like Poacher over Chapel and Silver helps mitigate the probability Chapel misses the shuffle while still giving some economy, but Star Chart eliminates the probability of a miss. Chapel-Star Chart lets you guarantee you will trash four cards in the first shuffle, and then you can use the second hand in the shuffle to start building your economy.

It’s not always correct to open Star Chart, though. Star Chart itself doesn’t give you anything, so if there isn’t something already in your deck that you really want topdecked, it’s best to work up to it. For example, suppose there is a killer you really want, but you open -. Yes, Silver-Star Chart lets you topdeck the Silver, but that doesn’t actually increase your chances of getting a hand in the next two hands. Silver-Silver actually gives better odds. There might be something better than Silver-Silver to get your deck going in any particular kingdom, but the point is that you don’t need Star Chart immediately unless you have something in your deck that you just can’t afford to have miss the shuffle. Then later you can pick up Star Chart on a spare or spare buy, but not too late because you still will want Star Chart eventually.

Because of its simplicity, Star Chart is one of those cards in Dominion that, when it was first previewed, appeared pretty innocuous to me. However, it turns out to be incredibly strong.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		When you shuffle, you may pick one of the cards to go on top.	Renaissance	November 2018
		When shuffling, you may pick one of the cards to go on top.	Renaissance (2021 printing)	2021

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text
Chinese	星空圖 (pron. xīngkōng tú)
French	Carte céleste			Quand vous mélangez, vous pouvez choisir quelle carte vous mettez en haut.
German	Sternenkarte			Wenn du mischst, darfst du eine der zu mischenden Karten auswählen, um sie nach dem Mischen nach oben zu legen.
Japanese	星図 (pron. seizu)			山札をシャッフルするとき、その中の1枚を山札の一番上に置いてもよい。
Russian	Атлас Звёздного Неба (pron. atlas zvyozdnovo nyeba)
Spanish	Carta Estelar			Cuando barajas, puedes puedes elegir una de las cartas y ponerla encima.

Trivia

Official card art.

Preview

Star Chart lets you pick your top card every time you shuffle. It seems like that could come in handy. Yes you get to look at the cards, you don't have to pick from the backs.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Renaissance Previews #5: Fair, Silos, Citadel, Star Chart, Sewers, Innovation

Secret History

We tried several versions of a card that gained you a card each time you shuffled. It had problems every which way. This was a better fit for "thing to do when you shuffle."

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

Relevant outtakes

- When you buy a card for <= , gain an extra copy. So many Projects tried to do Workshop, often just being too fast to empty piles.

- When you buy an Action you don't have a copy of in play, gain an extra copy. Another one.

- Every turn, Workshop. As if.

- When you gain a card costing +, gain one for <= . One issue is that many of these can even work twice in a turn.

- When shuffle, may first gain card costing <= . So this cut down on how often you got to do it, and seemed cool, but there were huge issues.

- After shuffle, may gain card onto deck costing <= . Another one. See some versions made us wait for a player to shuffle, which sucks hard.

- Once per turn, when shuffle, first gain card for <= . But the other versions had hopeless card interactions, where you'd e.g. empty a pile instantly.

- Before you shuffle, may set aside Supply card for <= , and gain it afterwards. A last gasp for both Workshops and shuffle-Workshops.

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

Rules Change

The 2E shuffling change has survived intact. However Star Chart family effects now specially let you look at the to-be-drawn cards. This is simply because people really wanted to look at them. It's unlikely it will make it into the Dominion rulebook, because it would be this thing that only matters for a tiny number of cards that can instead have that rule themselves.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, TGG Discord, 2021