Vanilla

Market, a vanilla card.

Vanilla cards are cards that have no effect other than some combination of +Cards, +Actions, +Buy, and +. These are the simplest card effects to understand and execute; for this reason the bulk of the game's vanilla Kingdom cards are in the base Dominion set, whose overall theme is simplicity of effect. They are often a useful baseline of comparison for the effects of similar cards.

Many cards have vanilla bonuses in addition to their other, seemingly more interesting or unique, effects in order to make them more powerful and interesting to play. For instance, a card saying simply "Each other player gains a Curse" would be weak compared to other cursers, so Witch has a "vanilla" +2 cards bonus in order to make it stronger.

Cards that are the simplest examples of what is seen as a larger family of cards are sometimes referred to specifically as "vanilla". For instance, Village is sometimes referred to as "vanilla Village" to distinguish it from the family of other villages, even though Worker's Village and Bazaar, both in the "village" category, are both vanilla cards themselves.

List of vanilla cards

Cards in italics have been removed.

• Dominion: Festival, Laboratory, Market, Smithy, Village, Woodcutter
• Seaside: Bazaar
• Prosperity: Worker's Village
• Dark Ages: Abandoned Mine, Necropolis, Ruined Library, Ruined Market, Ruined Village
• Nocturne: Pouch

Semi-vanilla cards

Certain cards could be considered vanilla under slightly broader criteria:

• Great Hall and Harem (from Intrigue), Monument (from Prosperity), and Plunder (from Empires) are vanilla if victory points are considered a vanilla property along with +Cards, +Actions, and so on.
• Candlestick Maker, from Guilds, is vanilla if Coffers are considered a vanilla property.
• Underling from Allies is vanilla if Favors are considered vanilla.
• Fishing Village, Caravan, Merchant Ship, and Wharf (from Seaside), Hireling (from Adventures), Ghost Town (from Nocturne), and Barge (from Menagerie) are Duration cards that have only vanilla effects, but some or all of them take place on future turns.
• Pawn and Conspirator(from Intrigue), City (from Prosperity), and Town and Emissary (from Allies) have only vanilla effects, but which vanilla effects they have is dependent on the circumstances in which they are played, or the player's choice.
• Grand Market and Peddler (from Prosperity), Nomad Camp, Cache and Border Village (from Hinterlands), Fortress and Hunting Grounds (from Dark Ages), Masterpiece (from Guilds), Port and Lost City (from Adventures), Emporium, Rocks and Villa (from Empires), Blessed Village and Haunted Mirror (from Nocturne), Silk Merchant (from Renaissance), and Hostelry, Fisherman, Destrier, and Animal Fair (from Menagerie) have special properties when you buy, gain, or trash them, or at the beginning of the game, but only vanilla effects while they are actually in your deck.
• Moat (from Dominion), Market Square (from Dark Ages), Faithful Hound (from Nocturne), Sheepdog (from Menagerie) are all Reactions that have only vanilla effects until revealed under the condition of their Reaction.
• Way of the Monkey, Way of the Mule, Way of the Otter, Way of the Ox, Way of the Pig, and Way of the Sheep are considered vanilla if Ways are considered vanilla.
• Nobles (from Intrigue) is vanilla if victory points are considered vanilla and if player's choice is considered vanilla.
• Baker (from Guilds) is vanilla if Coffers are considered vanilla and if at the start of game effects are considered vanilla
• Ducat (from Renaissance) is vanilla if Coffers are considered vanilla and if when gain effects are considered vanilla.
• Village Green (from Menagerie) is vanilla if Duration cards with only vanilla effects are considered vanilla and if it is not revealed under the condition of its Reaction

Thoughts on design

Donald X. Vaccarino has this to say on the subject of designing vanilla cards and their relationships to similar cards:

Okay the vanilla card problem is this: vanilla cards limit what other cards you can make, without having two similar cards such that one is too obviously better than the other.

For example, Dominion has Village: "+1 Card +2 Actions." It costs . Village means I can never make a card that's Village-with-a-bonus, without charging or more for it. I make Village-with-a-bonus sometimes - Mining Village in Intrigue is one. And when I do it has to cost .... I can do Village-with-a-bonus cards at forever. As long as each bonus is different, the cards don't end up too close. Sure they're both Villages, but is the one bonus always better than the other?

..The solution to the vanilla card problem is not to do vanilla cards. If your basic version of a concept includes a bonus, you can vary the bonus and keep the cost the same. Only when you do the bonus-less version are you stuck with increasing the cost. But you can't just not do vanilla cards. You need them for how simple they are. So in the end you pick and choose. For example Dominion does not have a card that just says "+1 Card +1 Action +." If I made that card, it would limit what other cards I could make. So instead I just do variations on it.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Complexity in Rules on Cards

Trivia

Possibility of future vanilla cards

"+1 Action +1 Buy +" started out in the Herbalist slot, as Herbalist; you can see it in the outtakes article (http://dominionstrategy.com/2013/06/24/dominion-outtakes/). Note that it did not survive; it seemed fine to me, but some people found it too boring. It's hard to evaluate these things because the playtesters have played a lot more Dominion than a normal person. There isn't much you can do with a vanilla card that wouldn't just seem too redundant with existing things, but maybe there's something. Figuring this out isn't great; if there's something left and I end up making another expansion, I'd just as soon the amazing vanilla card is a surprise.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Interview with Donald X.

If you count things like Candlestick Maker then maybe there could be another one; it would take me making another set with something that could use the +1 notation, and then having a reasonable vanilla-if-that-counts card to do, but those things are possible. If you count discarding and trashing somehow, sure, maybe there's another thing there that somehow hasn't happened. If you count Ruinses and Necropolis then maybe.

A pure original +'s vanilla kingdom card, probably not happening. The one chance it would have is "secretly the cost is a mechanic but we somehow aren't counting that," like (which did have vanilla cards for a bit). The problem is picking a set of things that aren't just redundant with or strictly better/worse than existing cards. The smaller numbers are covered; the bigger numbers are normally too expensive.

If "worth  " counts then Empires had "double Harem" for a bit. As the bottom card of a split pile, another invisible complication.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Interview with Donald X.