Trashing attack

Swindler, a trashing attack card.

A Trashing attack is an attack card which trashes other players' cards, typically from the top of their deck. Most of these attack have certain constraints on what cards they are able to trash.

List of Cards

Hexes listed function as the relevant Attack when revealed by an Attack-Doom card.

Cards in italics have been removed.

Trash and replace with other cards

• Intrigue: Saboteur -- Find and trash a card costing or more. Replacement at least cheaper, victim's choice.
• Intrigue: Swindler -- Replacement of same cost, attacker's choice.
• Nocturne: Locusts -- Replacement cheaper and of same type, victim's choice unless a Copper or Estate was trashed (in this case replaced with Curse).
• Allies: Barbarian -- Replacement cheaper and of same type, victim's choice but only if trashed card cost or more (otherwise replaced with Curse).

Trash card in certain price range

• Between and
  • Dark Ages: Knights
  • Dark Ages: Rogue
  • Adventures: Giant
• Between and
  • Adventures: Warrior
  • Nocturne: War

Trash Treasures

• Base: Thief
• Base: Bandit
• Seaside: Pirate Ship
• Seaside: Corsair
• Hinterlands: Noble Brigand

Related

Exile attacks have some similarities to trashing attacks in that they remove cards from your opponent's deck, but unlike real trashing, the Exiled card can be gotten back, and still count for determining  .

• Menagerie: Cardinal and Gatekeeper

Maelstrom, from Plunder, forces opponents to trash a card from their hand; this may be beneficial if they have junk in their hand, but may act as an attack if they have nothing in hand that they want to trash.

Gallery

Exile Attacks

Removed cards

Trivia

Development comments

These cards have a complicated history due to major balance issues. The most obvious trashing attack, "Each other player trashes the top card of their deck." has major problems.

This is the hardest kind of attack to make. It has to be that there isn't too much variance in how it hits the other players - no making one player lose a Province while another loses a Copper. It has to be good enough to play - trashing Coppers and Estates is usually not what you're after. It can't generate a ridiculous game state too easily - some of the early cards in this category would by themselves lead to a game where everyone had just 5 cards and could not get ahead. And finally it has to be that the text actually fits on the card. With all of those other conditions to meet, it's tricky. Ultimately, there usually isn't much room to define these attacks by the extra stuff they do; they often end up defined by how they handle the problems above. And then some people don't like them. My stuff, my precious stuff! So I do these less often than the other attacks.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Dominion Seaside Preview

Prior to development of the main set, there were a bunch of cards in different expansions that were variations on "trash the top card of each other player's deck." Once it became apparent that that concept was flawed, all of those cards needed reworking, and some just died.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, BoardGameGeek, The Secret History of the Intrigue Cards, 2009