Trader

Trader
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action - Reaction
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Hinterlands
Illustrator(s)	Lorraine Schleter
Card text
Trash a card from your hand. Gain a Silver per it costs. When you gain a card, you may reveal this from your hand, to exchange the card for a Silver.

Trader is an Action-Reaction card from Hinterlands. It allows you to replace any card you would gain with Silver, and trash cards from your hand to gain more Silver.

Trader received a functional update in 2020, making its reaction a when-gain ability rather than a when-would-gain ability, which is simpler.

FAQ

Official FAQ (2022)

• When you play this, trash a card from your hand, and if you did, gain a number of Silvers equal to the cost of that card in .
  • The Silvers come from the Supply and are put into your discard pile.
  • You only gain Silvers if you trashed a card.
  • If you trash a card costing , such as Copper, you will gain zero Silvers.
  • You can trash Silver if you want; you will gain three Silvers for it normally.
  • If costs are different, such as due to playing Highway, then Trader will give you a different number of Silvers, based on the current costs. For example if you play Highway and then Trader, trashing an Estate, you will only gain one Silver.
  • If you trash a card with or in its cost, you do not get anything for the or , just for the that the card cost.
• Trader is also a Reaction.
  • When you gain a card, whether due to buying it or gaining it some other way, you may reveal Trader from your hand to exchange the gained card for a Silver.
  • You return the gained card to its pile (whether in the Supply or not), and take a Silver and put it into your discard pile.
  • You still "gained" the card you gained (and not the Silver), for effects that care about gaining a card; for example you could gain Border Village, use Trader to exchange it for a Silver, then gain a Duchy using Border Village's ability, and use Trader to exchange that for a Silver too.
  • You can only exchange if both cards are available to be exchanged; you have to be able to return the gained card to its pile (only possible if it came from a pile), and you have to be able to take the Silver.

Other rules clarifications

• If you gain a Mill with Ironworks and then exchange it for a Silver, you get +1 Action and +1 Card.
• If you gain a Trader to your hand (with e.g. Falconer), you can exchange the Trader for a Silver.
• You can use Trader to exchange a Silver for a Silver. Since exchanging is not gaining, this means the exchanged Silver can avoid getting exiled by a Gatekeeper.

Deprecated official FAQ (2016)

When you play this, trash a card from your hand, and if you did, gain a number of Silvers equal to the cost of that card in . The Silvers come from the Supply and are put into your discard pile. You only gain Silvers if you trashed a card. If you trash a card costing , such as Copper, you will gain zero Silvers. You can trash Silver if you want; you will gain three Silvers for it normally. If costs are different, such as due to playing Highway, then Trader will give you a different number of Silvers, based on the current costs. For example if you play Highway and then Trader, trashing an Estate, you will only gain one Silver. If you trash a card with in its cost, from Dominion: Alchemy, you do not get anything for the , just for the that the card cost. Trader is also a Reaction. When you gain a card, whether due to buying it or gaining it some other way, you may reveal Trader from your hand to instead gain a Silver from the Supply. If you do this, you gain a Silver, not the card you would have gained; if something would have happened due to gaining the other card, it does not happen, because you did not gain it. For example if you buy Ill-Gotten Gains but use Trader to gain Silver instead, no-one will gain a Curse. However if something happens when you buy a card, that will still happen if you replace gaining the card with gaining Silver. For example you can buy Farmland, trash a card from your hand and gain one costing more, then use Trader to gain Silver rather than Farmland. If the card you were going to gain was not going to your discard pile, the Silver still goes to your discard pile; if the card you were going to gain did not come from the Supply, the Silver still comes from the Supply. If there are no Silvers left in the Supply, you can still reveal Trader when you gain a card and gain nothing instead of the card you would have gained. If you are told to gain a card that has no copies left, you cannot use Trader to instead gain a Silver.

Deprecated rules clarifications (2012 2016)

If you use Ironworks to try to gain a card, but reveal Trader to gain a Silver instead, the Ironworks does not give you any bonus(es) for the card you didn't actually gain. The same logic applies to a number of cards: see the Blue dog rule. Under Soothsayer's attack, a player who uses Trader to gain a Silver instead did not gain a Curse and so does not draw a card.

Strategy (Post-Update)

Trader is a weak trash for benefit card. While it can theoretically serve in three different roles, it does all of them poorly and is therefore often skippable:

1. It is largely unsuitable as a primary source of thinning: not only is it a terminal that can only trash a single card at a time, playing it only provides a thinning effect if that card has a cost of . Otherwise, you gain at least one Silver, maintaining or increasing the number of stop cards in your deck rather than decreasing it.
2. Trader’s Reaction, which lets you exchange a card you would have gained for a Silver, is occasionally useful as somewhat weak defence against junking attacks: although the effect is still to add a stop card to your deck, the Silver is likely to be preferable to a Curse or other junk. However, the difference between a Silver and even a Curse is usually not enough to justify gaining a Trader for, and the fact that you need the Trader in your starting hand makes this unreliable.
3. Trader’s Reaction and on-play ability make it a Silver gainer. While this archetype can be useful when playing a money strategy to try and raise your money density, Trader itself is a stop card that generates no , thus dragging that average down. Trader’s on-play ability further requires you to collide it with fodder costing more than , which you may not have the deck control or excess gains to guarantee. Trader’s Reaction is similarly difficult to use effectively, as you need some source of additional gains (e.g., your opponent’s Cultist, or additional +Buys with which to buy Coppers to React to) along with the luck or draw to find Trader at the right time.

Trader can be useful if it is the only available option for one of the roles above, and the payoff for doing so is relatively large:

1. Very infrequently, if thinning junk enables you to play with a powerful engine, Trader may be worth gaining. For example, Shepherd might be the only source of draw in a Kingdom with very strong payload options (e.g., Grand Market).
2. If the junking is exceptionally strong and you’re gaining multiple junk cards per turn, or you have some way to increase the likelihood of having Trader in your starting hand (e.g., via Save), Trader might be a good defence against junking.
3. Trader can function well enough in situations where Silvers are exceptionally desirable, usually as a source of alt-VP, as you can use it to trash expensive cards in order to gain large numbers of these. Its major synergy here is with Feodum: Trader can trash Feodum itself to gain a total of seven Silvers, increasing the   value of each of your other copies by at least 2 , and can also turn other cards, including copies of Silver itself, into many more Silvers. Similarly, trashing expensive cards with Trader in the endgame can greatly increase the   you can score with Conquest, and may sometimes be worthwhile when you’re scoring with Triumph or Gardens. Gaining large amounts of Silver may also be beneficial in certain Kingdoms with Guildhall.

Strategy Article (Pre-Update)

Originally posted by DrFlux in the forum Trader is a strange card. Typically trashers are most useful in engine decks, where getting rid of Estates and Coppers will lead to drawing your combo pieces together. However, Trader is somewhere between mediocre and awful in these cases, as it only trashes one card, and the Silvers you gain can be nearly as unwanted. Trader should NOT be thought of as a trasher, but as a way to flood your deck with Silver. Who wants tons of Silver? Money decks and only money decks. The obvious place to use Trader is in Cursing games, as it is a clear case of a reaction that can actively punish your opponent for their cruel ways. It is important to realize that if you are attempting to beat Cursers with trader, that flooding your deck with Silver can be as important as the reaction ability. This leads to the second use of Trader, which is in slow Alt-VP games, particularly Feodum, Duke, or Gardens. Feodum/Trader is an obvious synergy - buy two or three Traders on early turns, and then try to trash Estates, Silvers, Traders and maybe a Gold or even a Province to flood your deck with Silvers while buying ultra-powered Feodums. Its important to note that Terminal collision is not a big problem, as you can trash Trader to Trader. Since all you need is two Silvers or a Silver and two Coppers to buy Feodum, you should be golden. Trashing a Feodum with Trader gives 7(!) Silvers, which is something to keep in mind. Duke/Trader plays similarly, and about as well as Duke/Horse Traders. You may want to buy and then trash an early Gold or even a Province to flood your deck with Silvers, so that all that Victory chaff doesn't matter. It's a little harder to reach than , but only by a copper. The final case where Trader can shine is with cards that give on-buy benefit, such as Farmland, Noble Brigand, etc. Its important to note that unlike more flexible "trash for benefit" options like Remodel, you have to actually WANT lots of Silver for this to be worthwhile. It is difficult to provide stats on Trader, as the simulators do not model it well AT ALL, as it is difficult to play correctly. Sometimes you want to trash Silver or Gold early to build up more Silver, but when to skip this in order to buy something expensive is case dependent. For this reason it is difficult to rank how different strategies rate against Trader. Trader-only strategies beat Sea Hag and Familiar consistently, as both of those cards are slow and provide little other benefit than cursing. With the strongest cursers -- Witch and Mountebank, the games are a close slog, and I suspect Trader-Silver leading into eventually 2 cursers may be optimal. Interestingly, Trader's silver gaining ability dilutes the density of the Traders themselves, making sneaking curses in easier than one might expect. Try to track your opponents Traders - if its turn five and they haven't played it, you may want to skip playing your Mountebank if you can afford it. This is even more true with Ill-Gotten Gains/Trader boards, where you will typically want to buy something other than IGG if your opponent may have a Trader. IGG/Trader is very good for similar reasons as Duke/Trader. Here is a good example of a game featuring all three, and me trying to dance around my opponents Trader http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120302-160726-afbde46f.html. In general, Trader loves Duchies, and you can start buying them earlier than usual because of all that silver. Conversely, Trader hates Colonies, as it dilutes the density of those Golds and Platinums that you need to buy your Colonies. The final use of Trader is in Big Money without any curses or interesting green cards. In this case it works like a much weaker Jack of All Trades, trashing your Estates and giving you silver, but not providing you the full 5 cards that Jack gives you to work with. For this reason, it is rarely the strongest BM option. Trader-Silver into a draw card like Smithy is passable but swingy, as you really need to draw Estates with your trader for it to be a worthwhile purchase. This brings us to my biggest discovery during writing this article. Opening Trader+Courtyard is awesome. Much better than Courtyard alone. Courtyard allows you to match up your Trader with your Estates much more consistently, and its nice to be able to buy an extra Courtyard if you have left after Trader-ing. Playing solitaire, it can consistently get 4 Provinces in 12-13 turns, with a lot of staying power due to all the Silver in the deck. Courtyard-Jack works in a similar way and produces similar results, but you already knew Jack was good. Other little combos with Trader include things that give you more Copper, or more buys. Margrave+Trader is passable, as you can use your extra buy to get a Silver in the case of terminal collision. It gets 4 provinces in about 15 turns, with a lot of variance, mostly due to Trader hooking up with Estates or not. Cache can be good if you are lucky enough to get Trader+. Finally, Wishing Well can help you get Trader+Estate, and can be very likely to pick up extra Silver later. Most of these last tricks are probably not enough to make you want to go Trader by themselves, but you should keep your eye out for them if other conditions are good for Trader. As a final note, rare occasions do occur where you have an engine and are drawing your deck consistently, but you need more money. You risk killing your combo in the long term, but you can use Trader to provide yourself with a lot of money quickly, either with multiple buys or trashing. Synergies/Combos Courtyard Cursing Games (especially slow ones like Familiar) Ill-Gotten Gains Alternate Victory Cards (especially Feodum, Duke and Gardens) Cards with on-gain benefits you might not need anymore (Border Village, Inn) Cache, Beggar, Wishing Well, Margrave, and extra buys in general Antisynergies Engine Games Games where you need a "key" card like Tournament Stronger Big Money Options Colony games

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		Trash a card from your hand. Gain a number of Silvers equal to its cost in coins. When you would gain a card, you may reveal this from your hand. If you do, instead, gain a Silver.	Hinterlands	October 2011
		Trash a card from your hand. Gain a Silver per it costs. When you would gain a card, you may reveal this from your hand, to instead gain a Silver.	Hinterlands (2016 printing)	December 2016
		Trash a card from your hand. Gain a Silver per it costs. When you gain a card, you may reveal this from your hand, to exchange the card for a Silver.	Hinterlands (2020 printing) Hinterlands (Second Edition)	October 2020

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Czech	Kramář (lit. shopkeeper)
Dutch	Handelaar
Finnish	Kaupustelija (lit. hawker)
French	Troqueuse (Note: explicitly feminine)
German	Fahrender Händler (lit. traveling trader)			Entsorge eine Karte aus deiner Hand. Nimm dir so viele Silber, wie die -Kosten der entsorgten Karte. Wenn du eine Karte nehmen würdest, darfst du den Händler aus deiner Hand aufdecken. Wenn du das machst: Nimm dir statt der anderen Karte ein Silber.	(2011)
	Fahrender Händler (lit. traveling trader)			Entsorge eine deiner Handkarten. Nimm pro , das jene Karte kostet, ein Silber. Wenn du eine Karte nehmen würdest, darfst du diese Karte aus deiner Hand aufdecken, um stattdessen ein Silber zu nehmen.	(2019)
	Fahrende Händlerin (lit. traveling trader)			Entsorge eine deiner Handkarten. Nimm pro , das jene Karte kostet, ein Silber. Wenn du eine Karte nimmst, darfst du diese Karte aus deiner Hand aufdecken, um jene Karte in ein Silber einzutauschen.	2. Edition (2022)
Italian	Commerciante
Japanese	交易人 (pron. kōekinin)			手札1枚を廃棄する。そのコストにつき銀貨1枚を獲得する。 カード1枚を獲得しようとするとき、手札からこれを公開してもよい。公開した場合、その獲得を中止し、代わりに銀貨1枚を獲得する。
Polish	Handlarz			Wyrzuć na Śmietnisko kartę z ręki. Dodaj kartę Srebrników za każde jej kosztu. Ilekroć dodajesz kartę, możesz odkryć Handlarza z ręki, aby wymienić dodawaną kartę na kartę Srebrników.	(2024)
Russian	Торговец (pron. torgovyets)
Spanish	Comerciante				The Spanish version has 'When you gain a card...' instead of 'When you would gain a card...'

Trivia

Official card art.

Theme

You sell stuff for Silver, pretty straightforward.

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

Preview

Trader turns something into a pile of Silvers. A Copper or Curse just goes away, but an Estate gets you two Silvers, and a Border Village gets you six. Silver itself can be exchanged for three Silvers; this Trader is a shrewd bargainer.

Trader also lets you respond to gaining a card, giving you a Silver instead. So you can take a Silver instead of that Curse a Witch was going to give you (leaving the Curse on the pile, unlike how Watchtower works), or even just use an extra buy on a Copper but take a Silver instead. It doesn't matter how many Traders you reveal how many times, you still just get one Silver instead of the original card.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Boardgamegeek, Hinterlands Previews #1

Secret History

This is two cards welded together. The bottom part was originally its own card, in the original 4th expansion. It went through many versions that tried to be good enough. It had +2 Cards on top; it was a Treasure worth ; it was a pure Reaction with a when-gain trigger (similar to Secret Chamber's reaction). In the end it could not carry a card by itself and so I stuck it on another card that it fit well with. That other card, the top part, I made specifically to replace Apprentice. When it turned out Alchemy would be a small set, I wanted something slam-dunk awesome for it that cost and had some useful interaction with Potion, and chose Apprentice, which was in this set. Obviously Apprentice does all sorts of cool things with Hinterlands cards. So when I took it out, I wanted to replace it with something else in the Salvager family that I hadn't done yet. Gain a pile of Silvers, there you go.

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

Original wording development

That ability - mostly with different other halves - tried on different wordings. One issue with the non-would wordings was that, at the time, I didn't say "to" and so it ends up with two if-you-do's. "When you gain a card, you may reveal this from your hand. If you do, trash that card. If you do, gain a Silver." But I mean, there's no interesting story here. I tried to get a good wording for the ability, that made interactions clear. I ended up with what you see in Hinterlands. It was a mistake but I didn't realize that in time.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Interview with Donald X.

Update

Feel free to consider power level, but I am super not worried there.

The reason is to get rid of "would gain" which is super crazy confusing. Alchemy is not being reprinted currently and I mean it's not at all relevant. If I can't fix Possession, oh well, one awful mess instead of two.

Yes I would have to explain "exchange" in the Hinterlands rulebook; that would take a small fraction of the space Trader takes now.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Considering Trader errata.