Urchin

Urchin
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action - Attack
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Dark Ages
Illustrator(s)	Martin Hoffmann
Card text
+1 Card +1 Action Each other player discards down to 4 cards in hand. When you play another Attack card with this in play, you may first trash this, to gain a Mercenary.

Urchin is an Action-Attack card from Dark Ages. By itself, Urchin is a very weak handsize attack, but if you can collide it with another Attack, you get a Mercenary—a powerful Attack and trasher.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• When you play this, you draw a card and get +1 Action, then each other player discards down to 4 cards in hand.
• Players who already have 4 or fewer cards in hand do not do anything.
• While Urchin is in play, when you play another Attack card, before resolving it, you may trash the Urchin.
• If you do, you gain a Mercenary.
• The Mercenary comes from the Mercenary pile, which is not in the Supply.
• If there are no Mercenaries left you do not gain one.
• If you play the same Urchin twice in one turn, such as via Procession, that does not let you trash it for a Mercenary.
• If you play two different Urchins however, playing the second one will let you trash the first one.

Other Rules clarifications

• You do not gain a Mercenary if you trash Urchin some other way.
• If you play an Urchin, and then you play a Command variant such as Band of Misfits that plays an Attack from the Supply (such as another Urchin), you may still trash your Urchin for a Mercenary.
• You trash Urchin and gain a Mercenary before resolving any effects of the other Attack you played, and before deciding whether to use a Way on the Attack instead of resolving its own effects.
• It doesn't matter if the effects of the other Attack card, when they are resolved, will actually end up having any effect on your opponents. For instance, if you play a Black Cat on your own turn, you can still trash an Urchin from play.
  • Because you trash the Urchin before resolving the Attack, that means if you trash an Urchin by playing a Tormentor, you'll gain an Imp. And if you trash an Urchin by playing a Rogue, you can gain the Urchin from the trash.
• You can order Urchin's ability with other "when you play this, first" abilities (e.g. Pathfinding and Kiln). These still take place before the other players get to React to the Attack you played (with e.g. Beggar or Diplomat).
• If you play Urchin itself as a Way, you can still trash the Urchin when you play an Attack.

Strategy

Urchin is a cantrip handsize Attack whose most important function is to provide access to Mercenary. Since Mercenary is a powerful card offering strong trashing and a better handsize Attack than Urchin, it is often a reason to prioritize gaining Urchin, most frequently in the opening. Mercenary is a strong trasher that not only thins quickly, but also provides a decent amount of cycling, in addition to acting as a handsize attack and making it easy to hit important price points (typically ). However, because it can take several turns to acquire a Mercenary, it can sometimes be better to use another thinner instead. For example, although Goat can only trash one card per play, it can be played much earlier in the game.

If Mercenary is the best option to trash junk and get deck control, as is frequently the case, your priority is usually to gain one as soon as possible. Since this requires you to play Urchin and another Attack card on the same turn, it's usually best to open with both of these cards and deprioritize other purchases. In practice, the best choice is most often two Urchins, since other Attacks may be more expensive than you can afford in the opening and Urchin's cantrip nature increases the likelihood that you will find your other copy on the same turn. If your Urchins fail to collide on turn 3 or turn 4, you may opt to add a third copy, which further increases the chances of a collision after the second shuffle; however, missing out on the earlier collision is still likely to leave you a few turns behind an opponent who does manage to get Mercenary immediately. Because of how desirable this earlier collision is, it’s usually a good idea to look for effects that can facilitate it. You typically can't gain more cards along with your two Urchins on the first two turns, so the effects that are most likely to be useful are those that you can access from the start of the game. Most often, these will take the form of Ways (e.g. Way of the Mole), Events (e.g. Save), or Allies (e.g. Cave Dwellers) that provide some form of deck control. If you are able to gain a third card, sifters such as Dungeon are particularly effective.

Often it will be worth gaining Urchin independent of whether you want Mercenary. As a cheap cantrip, it costs relatively little to add it to your deck. As such, it may be a good target for Adventures tokens (e.g. from Pathfinding), or for bolstering your Soldier payload. Urchin can also effectively negate the drawbacks of drawing with Governor or Council Room.

Later in the game, when you are under Mercenary attack, you will often have to decide between discarding useful cards and keeping junk in hand so you can trash it with your own Mercenary, or keeping your best cards in the hope of achieving more with your turn. Given the high overall value of playing Mercenary, including the chance to counterattack your opponent, keeping cards you want to trash in hand is likely a good move. Sometimes, Mercenary continues to be relevant once you've trashed your starting cards. Most commonly this is due to continued junking attacks, but on rare occasions, the attack is valuable enough and your deck control is strong enough that it's worth gaining junk as fodder for the mandatory trashing effect. A special case is with Fortress, which provides unlimited fodder.

Obtaining a Mercenary tends to leave you with a single Urchin in your deck, which can continue to be useful as a mild handsize Attack. If it is very important to thin as soon as possible or there is a large amount of junk to trash, it may even be worth converting this into a second Mercenary.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		+1 Card +1 Action Each other player discards down to 4 cards in hand. When you play another Attack card with this in play, you may trash this. If you do, gain a Mercenary from the Mercenary pile.	Dark Ages	August 2012
		+1 Card +1 Action Each other player discards down to 4 cards in hand. When you play another Attack card with this in play, you may first trash this, to gain a Mercenary from the Mercenary pile.	Dark Ages (2017 printing)	September 2017
		+1 Card +1 Action Each other player discards down to 4 cards in hand. When you play another Attack card with this in play, you may first trash this, to gain a Mercenary.	Dark Ages (2020 printing)	2020

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Czech	Darebák (lit. rascal)			+1 karta +1 akce Všichni ostatní hráči odloží z ruky tolik karet, aby jím zústaly 4. Jestliže zahraješ další kartu útoku, zatímco je Darebák ve hře, můžeš ho zahodit na smetiště. Pokud tak učiníš, vezmi si Žoldnéře z baličku karet Žoldnéřů.
Dutch	Straatjongen (lit. street boy)			+1 Kaart +1 Actie Iedere andere speler legt handkaarten af totdat hij er 4 overheeft. Als deze kaart in het spel is en je speelt een andere aanvalskaart, dan mag je de Straatjongen vernietigen. Doe je dat, pak dan een Huurling van de huurlingenstapel.	(2012)
Finnish	Katulapsi (lit. street child)
French	Orphelin (lit. orphan)
German	Gassenjunge			+1 Karte +1 Aktion Jeder Mitspieler muss Karten ablegen, bis er nur noch 4 Karten auf der Hand hat. Wenn diese Karte im Spiel ist und du eine andere Angriffskarte auslegst, darfst du diesen Gassenjungen entsorgen. Wenn du das machst: Nimm dir einen Söldner.	translation errors: "eine andere weitere Angriffskarte"; omitted "from the Mercenary pile." (2012)
	Gassenjunge			+1 Karte +1 Aktion Jeder Mitspieler legt Handkarten ab, bis er nur noch 4 hat. Wenn diese Karte im Spiel ist und du eine weitere Angriffskarte ausspielst, darfst du zuerst diese Karte entsorgen, um einen Söldner vom Söldner-Stapel zu nehmen.	(2019)
	Gassenjunge			+1 Karte +1 Aktion Jeder Mitspieler legt Handkarten ab, bis er nur noch 4 hat. Wenn diese Karte im Spiel ist, wenn du eine weitere Angriffskarte ausspielst, darfst du zuerst diese Karte entsorgen, um einen Söldner zu nehmen.
Japanese	浮浪児 (pron. furō-ji, lit. waif)			+1 カードを引く +1 アクション 他のプレイヤーは全員、 手札が4枚になるように捨て札にする。 これが場にある間、他のアタックカードを使用するとき、先にこれを廃棄してもよい。廃棄した場合、(傭兵の山から)傭兵1枚を獲得する。
Korean	양아치 (pron. yang-achi)
Russian	Беспризорник (pron. byesprizornik)
Spanish	Pillastre			+1 Carta +1 Acción Cada jugador (menos tú) se descarta hasta quedarse con 4 cartas en la mano. Si juegas otra carta de Ataque mientras esta carta todavía está en juego, puedes eliminar esta carta. Si lo haces, gana un Mercenario del montón de Mercenarios.	(2014)

Trivia

Official card art.

Theme

As a kid he's an urchin, he grows up to be a mercenary. He gets taught the ropes by another attack card. Even if it's just another urchin he learns a thing or two. Previously he grew up to be a bandit. That made more sense. It didn't work out because sometimes you would want to fight Bandit by buying some and you couldn't, you had to upgrade Urchins. So I switched it to Mercenary, which was called Mercenary because you pay it to attack.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Interview with Donald X.

Secret History

I wanted an attack that learned how to be a better attack. The initial attack had to be weak, and it had to have +1 card +1 action, making it need to be even weaker. "Discard down to 4" was an obvious candidate and worked out immediately. It can hurt, but is often inoffensive.

Originally it turned into an earlier version of Rogue, as told in that story. When that didn't work out I tried Mercenary. It's a bigger discard-based attack, so you can feel like your Urchin got better at that kind of thing. Otherwise it was a card I'd tried as a regular kingdom card in the set but which had been too good. It's still pretty snazzy if your Urchins hit right away. It's a Steward that does all three things!

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

Retrospective

I'm not fond of Urchin. I don't think it's just about changing the cost. It's a whole package. But, focusing on the cost, if Mercenary were something else and Urchin had to have that trigger, it would be great if it didn't cost , so that there was more variety to openings.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Interview with Donald X.

Should Urchin say "exchange?"

In 2022, Hermit got errata where it exchanges itself for the Madman.

It's something I can consider again the next time the set is reprinted. Dark Ages has a trashing theme; it matters if cards go to the trash. That's something to preserve if there isn't a good reason to change it. It's nice to exchange, especially once the word is in the set; it's more what was meant in the first place (the Urchin turns into a Mercenary, he doesn't die), and works cleanly. Once you know what it is. Ultimately it's a question as to which is better.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Interview with Donald X.