Throne Room

Throne Room
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Base
Illustrator(s)	Harald Lieske
Card text
You may play an Action card from your hand twice.

Throne Room is an Action card from the Base set. It allows you to play another Action card from your hand twice, as if you had a Village and two copies of that Action card.

Cards similar to Throne Room are often called Throne Room variants.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• Playing an Action card from your hand is optional. If you do play one, you resolve it completely, then play it a second time.
• You cannot play other cards in-between (unless told to by the card, such as with Vassal or Throne Room itself).
• Playing Action cards with Throne Room is just like playing Action cards normally, except it does not use up Action plays for the turn. For example if you start a turn by playing Throne Room on Village, you would draw a card, get +2 Actions, draw another card, and get +2 Actions again, leaving you with 4 Actions.
• If you Throne Room a Throne Room, you may play an Action card twice, then may play another Action card twice; you do not play one Action card four times.

Other rules clarifications

• If you use Throne Room to play a card that removes itself from the play area, such as Horse from the Menagerie expansion, Throne Room will still play the card a second time. It will not return to the play area, due to the stop-moving rule; but the card's abilities still take effect as usual. This is a general rule that applies to all "Throne Room variants" that play the same card multiple times on a turn.
  • However, if the card is worded in such a way that some of its abilities are contingent on the card leaving the play area, such as Mining Village or Madman, those abilities do not get activated a second time; the card has already moved to wherever it's going, so it can't go there again the second time to reactivate the effect.
• If you use Throne Room to play a Duration card, the Throne Room also stays in play until you discard the Duration card. This enables you to track the fact that the Duration card was played multiple times. Even if only one play of the Duration card is keeping it in play, such as using Throne Room on Gear and only setting aside cards one of the times, Throne Room stays in play with it. If the Duration card leaves play without being discarded (e.g. because you played it with Way of the Horse on one of its plays), Throne Room is discarded the turn the Duration card leaves play, even if the Duration card has not finished doing things.
• Throne Room plays a card twice; it does not double the effects of a card. It is possible that the card played by Throne Room does different things each time it's played.

First edition

In the first edition of Dominion, using Throne Room's ability was mandatory if Throne Room was played. Donald X. Vaccarino revised the card because that offered no provision for keeping the player honest: if a player claimed that they had no Actions in hand, and that was why they weren't activating Throne Room's ability, there was no way for their opponents to verify that this was the case.

The first-edition card text could sometimes have adverse effects in a chain of stacked Throne Rooms and draw cards: if you Throne Room a Throne Room, by the time you play the second Throne Room a second time, you might have Actions in hand that you don't want to play. Under the first-edition card text, you would be forced to play one of them (twice) anyway; in the second edition, you don't have to if you don't want to.

Strategy

Throne Room is a flexible card that can be a source of +Actions, draw, or payload. Throne Room depends on having other Action cards in hand, so it's better when your deck has a high density of Action cards. Therefore, Throne Room is less good early in the game, in games where you can't get rid of your starting cards, and in games without Action payload.

Throne Room is an unusual source of +Actions. Using Throne Room to play an Action card twice nets you one more Action than you would have if you played two copies of that Action card. For example, playing two Laboratories leaves you with the same number of Actions you started with (netting +0 Actions). Throne Room playing Laboratory nets you +1 Action—if you started with 1 Action, you would end with 2. Playing two copies of a terminal Action such as Smithy costs 2 Actions; Throne Room playing a Smithy draws the same number of cards but costs only 1 Action.

Using Throne Room to play a Throne Room does not increase the number of Action cards you can double-play, but it does grant +1 net Action. For example, using Throne Room to play Throne Room to play two Laboratories grants +3 net Actions. Chaining Throne Rooms in this way is especially useful with terminal draw cards. You can start a turn by playing Throne Room playing Throne Room playing Smithy, at which point you draw 6 cards and then can duplicate one more Action card from your hand. If you can play a non-terminal Action, you can continue playing more Action cards after that. You can even continue the chain of alternating Throne Rooms and terminal Actions. Throne Room is a very efficient source of +Actions in decks with strong non-terminal cards like Laboratory. With mostly terminal Actions, Throne Room is more awkward. You generally need two Throne Rooms and a terminal draw card in your starting hand to be able to fully exploit your deck’s capabilities, and your deck is more fragile as a result. For that reason, Throne Room benefits from an alternative source of +Actions, especially one that carries over to the next turn, such as Villagers or Fishing Village.

Throne Room can duplicate the on-play effect of any Action card, so it varies in strength based on the Action cards in the kingdom. Using Throne Room on cheaper Action cards such as Merchant or Village is okay, but Throne Room is even stronger when you can use it to double-play cards such as Artisan and Laboratory that are both more expensive to gain and more impactful on play. Some cards have effects that don’t stack, e.g. draw-to-X cards such as Library) and certain Attacks (e.g. Militia), so using Throne Room on them has little to no value. Strong Duration cards such as Wharf can be good targets for Throne Room, but be aware that the Throne Room will stay in play with the Duration card, meaning that you can’t play the Throne Room on the next turn.

Throne Room offers a lot of flexibility, both during a single turn and throughout the game. Within a single turn, you can use early Throne Rooms to help you draw your deck, and later ones to amplify your Action payload. As the game progresses, you can adjust the number of Throne Rooms you use on drawing cards to adapt to the number of stop cards in your deck. Throne Rooms also allow you to pivot strategies more easily as the game proceeds. For instance, playing multiple Witches early in the game allows you to attack your opponents more quickly, but Witch becomes much less useful after the Curse pile empties. Using Throne Room, you can duplicate the Attack of a single Witch early on, and then choose to play Throne Room with other cards later, allowing you to avoid having to gain multiple Witches. In games with an important Action card whose pile might empty, Throne Room can allow you to play additional copies, enabling you to prioritize other objectives over ensuring you get enough copies of that card.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		Choose an Action card in your hand. Play it twice.	Dominion 1st Edition	October 2008
		You may play an Action card from your hand twice.	Dominion 2nd Edition	October 2016

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Chinese	王座 (pron. wángzuò, lit. throne)
Czech	Trůnní sál
Dutch	Troonzaal			Kies een actiekaart uit je hand. Speel deze tweemaal.
Finnish	Valtaistuinsali
French	Salle du Trône
German	Thronsaal			Wähle eine Aktionskarte aus deiner Hand. Spiele diese Aktionskarte zweimal aus.	(2008)
	Thronsaal			Du darfst eine Aktionskarte aus deiner Hand zweimal ausspielen.	2. Edition (2019)
Greek	Αίθουσα του θρόνου (pron. aithousa tou thronou)
Hungarian	Trónterem
Italian	Sala del Trono
Japanese	玉座の間 (pron. gyokuza no ma)			手札のアクションカード1枚を2度使用してもよい。
Korean	알현실 (pron. alhyeonsil)
Norwegian	Tronsal
Polish	Sala tronowa			Wybierz kartę akcji z ręki. Zagraj ją dwukrotnie.
Romanian	Sala tronului
Russian	Тронный Зал (pron. tronnyy zal)			Вы можете сыграть карту Действия из вашей руки дважды.
Spanish	Salón del Trono

Trivia

Official card art.

Secret History

For most of its life this card cost . My feeling was that you didn't want to buy two on turns 1 and 2, and probably didn't want to buy one on either of those turns (except with the Feast combo). Later in the game it doesn't matter as much whether it costs or . So why not ? In general, if a card can be cheaper, I make it cheaper. I want the cards as cheap as possible without breaking the game, rather than as expensive as possible without going unplayed. So, I knew Throne Room was good, but it seemed like was okay.

Well late in development there was a game where no-one fought me for the Throne Rooms and I had a turn where I chained 6 of them. "I play Throne Room. First I Throne Room a Throne Room; for that one first I Throne Room a Smithy, then a Throne Room; for that one first I Throne Room a Throne Room..." I had a big cloud of actions on the table (we use a binary tree in these ridiculous situations). It's not just powerful; it's messy. I thought, hmm, maybe this could stand being 4 after all. It makes it just a bit harder to get a million of them; you don't go, "Market, buy two Throne Rooms" nearly as often. There was some worry that now there weren't enough 's, but we decided we could live with just having four. There's Silver at , so it's fine to sometimes deal out a random 10 and not get a .

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

Retrospective

Throne Room should of course say "you may."

—Donald X. Vaccarino, What Donald X. Might Do With a Dominion Time Machine