Teacher

Teacher
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action - Reserve
Kingdom card?	No
Set	Adventures
Illustrator(s)	Harald Lieske
Card text
Put this on your Tavern mat. At the start of your turn, you may call this, to move your +1 Card, +1 Action, +1 Buy, or + token to an Action Supply pile you have no tokens on. (When you play a card from that pile, you first get that bonus.) (This is not in the Supply.)

Teacher is an Action–Reserve card from Adventures. It can move any vanilla bonus token to any Action Supply pile that does not already have one of your tokens on it. It is not in the Supply, but can be exchanged for using a Disciple. There are only 5 copies of Teacher in the Teacher pile.

Although not a Traveller itself, it is the conclusion of a Traveller line: Peasant - Soldier - Fugitive - Disciple - Teacher.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• When you play this, put it on your Tavern mat. It stays on your mat until you call it, at the start of one of your turns.
• If multiple things can happen at the start of your turn, you can do them in any order.
• When you call Teacher, it moves from the mat into play, and you choose your +1 Action, +1 Card, +1 Buy, or + token, and move it to an Action Supply pile that you have no tokens on.
• The token on the pile means that every time you play a card from that pile, you will get the corresponding bonus - if you put your +1 Action token on a pile, you will get an extra +1 Action when playing a card from that pile. See the Tokens section.
• This cannot put a token on a pile you have tokens on, including the tokens Teacher places as well as your – cost token and Trashing token.
• This can put a token on a pile that other players have tokens on.
• Other things can put tokens on a pile you put a token on with Teacher; it is just Teacher itself that cannot put a token on a pile you have a token on.
• It is okay if the pile has a token that does not belong to you or anyone, such as an Embargo token (from Seaside) or coin token for Trade Route (from Prosperity).
• It is okay if you have an Estate token on a card set aside from that pile.

Strategy

To better understand the Kingdoms and contexts in which Soldier appears, it may be useful to refer to the overall strategy section for this Traveller line.

Because the bonus tokens it provides are very powerful, Teacher has extremely strong potential to enable building an engine or to significantly enhance an already-functioning deck. In particular, the +Card token can be critical in a Kingdom that otherwise offers no draw, while the +Action token can be used to create powerful non-terminal draw or greatly increase the number of terminal cards that you can play. Despite this potential, there are two primary issues with Teacher:

1. It is slow to improve your deck, since it can be played at most every other turn and provides no benefit until your next turn. These downsides are heavily exacerbated by the fact that you have to sacrifice a high-tempo Disciple in order to obtain a Teacher.
2. It is terminal, and replaces a village in Disciple. For this reason, adding a Teacher to your deck can significantly reduce your terminal space in the short term.

If there is no other way to draw, placing Teacher tokens to enable draw is likely to be a high priority. Otherwise, whether and when to exchange a Disciple for a Teacher and how to use the tokens can sometimes be a more situational decision that depends on how close the game is to ending, the extent to which you can benefit from the tokens, and whether your deck has the draw and terminal space to play Teacher quickly even after losing a Disciple.

It’s often the case that your first goal with Teacher is to create efficient non-terminal draw. This means either adding the +Action token to a terminal draw card such as Smithy or adding the +Card token to a cantrip or non-terminal draw card. The second method is often preferable, because cantrips are often cheap and easier to use in the earlier stages of the game before you can use the tokens.

If you have no problems drawing your deck or get to use your Teacher a second time, you often want to use it to provide better payload. In decks with strong terminal payload such as Bridge, this often means adding the +Action token to enable playing more payload. In other contexts, this can mean adding the +Buy token or + token. In general, you should aim to place these tokens on the cards you have the most copies of, as this maximizes the improvement to your deck. Occasionally, however, it will be stronger to place your tokens on a less prevalent card if doing so will improve your reliability. For example, placing the +Action token on a cantrip you have many copies of may maximize the number of terminals you can play if you draw your deck, but placing the +Action token directly on a payload card will ensure that you are able to play them whenever you draw them, even if you fail to draw and play every copy of the cantrip.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Notes	Release	Date
		Put this on your Tavern mat. At the start of your turn, you may call this, to move your +1 Card, +1 Action, +1 Buy, or + token to an Action Supply pile you have no tokens on (when you play a card from that pile, you first get that bonus). (This is not in the Supply.)		Adventures	April 2015
		Put this on your Tavern mat. At the start of your turn, you may call this, to move your +1 Card, +1 Action, +1 Buy, or + token to an Action Supply pile you have no tokens on. (When you play a card from that pile, you first get that bonus.) (This is not in the Supply.)	Digital version has a cost of rather than .	Adventures (2017 printing)	August 2017

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Dutch	Leermeester
Finnish	Opettaja
French	Maître (lit. master)
German	Lehrer			Lege diese Karte auf dein Wirtshaustableau. Zu Beginn deines Zuges darfst du diese Karte von deinem Tableau aufrufen. Wenn du das tust, darfst du deinen +1 Karte-, +1 Aktion-, +1 Kauf- oder +-Marker auf einen Aktions-Vorratsstapel legen, auf dem keiner deiner Marker liegt. (Wenn du eine Karte von diesem Stapel ausspielst, erhältst du zuerst den Bonus des Markers.) (Diese Karte gehört nicht zum Vorrat.)	(2015)
German	Lehrer			Lege diese Karte auf dein Wirtshaustableau. Zu Beginn deines Zuges darfst du diese Karte aufrufen, um deinen +1 Karte-, +1 Aktion-, +1 Kauf- oder +-Marker auf einen Aktions-Vorratsstapel zu legen, auf dem keiner deiner Marker liegt (wenn du eine Karte von jenem Stapel spielst, erhältst du zuerst den Bonus). (Diese Karte gehört nicht zum Vorrat.)	(Nachdruck 2021)
Japanese	教師 (pron. kyōshi)			これをあなたの酒場マットの上に置く。 あなたのターンの開始時に、これを呼び出してもよい。呼び出した場合、あなたの +1 カード、+1 アクション、+1 購入、+ トークンのいずれかを、あなたのトークンが全く乗っていないアクションカードのサプライの山に移動する。(あなたがその山に由来するカードを使用するとき、あなたは最初にその特典を得る。) (このカードはサプライに置かない。)
Russian	Учитель (pron. uchityel')

Trivia

Official card art.

Secret History

Teacher wasn't a Reserve card originally. It got that to slow it down a little. Once you start giving out +1 tokens, your deck explodes.

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

Why Reserve instead of Duration?

It wasn't always a Reserve card; it became one to slow it down. Yes there are ways it could be a Duration card (you can have an anti-Throne clause), but that wasn't a consideration, I didn't need to do something wonky to manage it as a Duration card when the expansion had Reserve cards.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Why is teacher a reserve?