Village Green

Village Green
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action - Duration - Reaction
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Menagerie
Illustrator(s)	Franz Vohwinkel
Card text
Either now or at the start of your next turn, +1 Card and +2 Actions. When you discard this other than during Clean-up, you may reveal it to play it.

Village Green is an Action-Duration-Reaction card from Menagerie. It is a village you can have now, or save until next turn. You can also play it whenever you discard it. If you discard it during another player's turn, you can save the village effect until your next turn.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• When playing Village Green, choose whether to take +1 Card and +2 Actions immediately, or at the start of your next turn.
• If you choose "immediately," Village Green will be discarded in the same turn's Clean-up; if you choose "next turn," Village Green will be discarded that turn.
• If you play a Village Green multiple times, such as with Mastermind, you choose each time whether to take +1 Card and +2 Actions immediately or next turn, and the Village Green only stays in play until next turn if at least one of the plays was for next turn (in which case the Mastermind also stays in play).
• Village Green also lets you play it when you discard it, other than in Clean-up.
• You can only discard Village Green if something causes you to or lets you, and discarding it only lets you play it once (each time you discard it). This works whether it is your turn or another player's, and whether you discard it from your hand, or deck (such as with Cardinal), or from being set aside, or from Exile. This ability does not function if Village Green is put into your discard pile without being discarded, such as when bought, or due to Scavenger (from Dark Ages). The key thing to look for is a card telling you to "discard" cards.
• If you play Village Green when it is not your turn, and choose to take the +1 Card and +2 Actions immediately, the +2 Actions will not be useful.
• See the Reactions section.

Other rules clarifications

• If you play Vassal and discard Village Green, you can react with Village Green to play it. Doing this causes Vassal to lose track, and it will fail to play Village Green. [1]
• When discarding multiple Village Greens, if playing one of them triggers a reshuffle, then you can't reveal (and thus play) any of the other Village Greens, because they get lost into your deck (due to the Stop-Moving rule), and Reactions are revealed one at a time.
• If you need to discard down to a certain number of cards (due to Militia), and you want to discard Village Greens, you discard them all at once before you resolve their reactions.

Strategy

Village Green is among the most versatile villages in the game. Its powerful Reaction, combined with the option to receive the effect now or next turn, allows the card to play a variety of roles: given the right Kingdom, it can counter Attacks or act as draw in addition to providing +Actions in the same way as any village.

Without effects to activate its Reaction, Village Green is a usually just a Village. The main difference is the Duration option, which enables you to instead set up your next turn to begin with two extra Actions and an extra card in your hand; the downside of this is that you can’t play the card again on your next turn (as with most Duration plays), and that your Village Green gives you no benefit for this turn. However, the impact of a Durationed Village Green for reliability can be quite high, especially when you’re dependent primarily on terminal draw, as it solves the usual problem of having to start your turn with a village in hand. Typically you’ll use this effect when you value that reliability over continuing your current turn, e.g. when you are unlikely to draw a good card with your last Village Green, but know you have many terminals remaining in your deck.

Village Green really shines when you can activate its Reaction instead of simply playing it from your hard. Any effect that can discard Action cards from your hand or deck can achieve this, and there are cases in which the outcome is rather powerful. Most importantly, when used with sifting, Village Green provides draw and two village effects, as it converts one card discarded into one card drawn and uses up no Actions to be played but provides +2. For example, playing a Forum usually has no effect on your hand size, but if at least one of the cards you discard is a Village Green, you can React to play it, drawing an additional card (and getting net +2 Actions); the outcome is equivalent to playing a Laboratory and two Villages with added sifting. With terminal sifters, such as Storeroom or Witch's Hut, the fact that the Reaction also provides +Actions is particularly beneficial, as you can start your turn by playing the terminal to find a Village Green and discard it, and continue playing Actions afterwards.

A notable draw-creating synergy is with Way of the Mole: if you discard a Village Green from your hand by playing another card with this Way, you can react to play the Village Green with Way of the Mole too. Both of the Moles then draw three cards, leaving you with a hand of six rather than the usual three that you get from Way of the Mole. It's possible to draw an even larger hand if you can repeatedly discard and react with pairs of Village Greens, but this is difficult to set up.

Furthermore, Village Green’s Reaction makes it a strong or moderate counter to various kinds of Attack. Discarding it to a handsize attack such as that of Militia (taking the Duration option, as +Actions has no benefit on your opponent’s turn) makes the effect much less damaging and sometimes actively beneficial. Attacks that discard cards from your deck (e.g. Rabble or Sea Hag) can become much weaker in the presence of Village Green, too, although the strength of the counter to these is more variable (for example, a Knight will simply trash your Village Green unless it also reveals a second card in the right cost range). Village Green also reduces the impact of effects in which an opponent can compel you to discard a specific card, e.g. with Scrying Pool or Advisor: Village Green is usually a good card that you’d prefer to draw, but your opponent can’t take the opportunity to prevent you from doing so, because if they force you to discard it, you can simply use the Reaction to get even more benefit than you would have otherwise.

Village Green can also be played by reacting when discarding it from Exile. The strategic value of this is typically marginal as it’s difficult to set up, but there’s the occasional situation in which it can be useful. For example, if you want to play a Workshop variant to gain Village Green, Exiling one with Displace before doing so lets you gain an additional card costing up to with less than the usual reduction to your hand size, since you can discard and react with the Exiled Village Green when gaining the new copy.

As with most villages, Village Green is rarely a good opening buy; it’s better to add it once you have at least a couple of terminals in your deck and can benefit from the extra terminal space. Later in the game, it’s often desirable to gain several more copies, especially if you’re using it for draw or to counter Attacks.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		Either now or at the start of your next turn, +1 Card and +2 Actions. When you discard this other than during Clean-up, you may play it.	Menagerie	March 2020
		Either now or at the start of your next turn, +1 Card and +2 Actions. When you discard this other than during Clean-up, you may reveal it to play it.		March 2020

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
German	Dorfanger			Entweder jetzt oder zu Beginn deines nächsten Zuges: +1 Karte und +2 Aktionen. Wenn du diese Karte außerhalb der Aufräumphase ablegst, darfst du sie aufdecken, um sie zu spielen.	(2020)
Japanese	村有緑地 (pron. sonyūryokuchi)

Trivia

Official card art.

Preview

Village Green is the Barge village, and also the Tunnel village. If you discard it when it's not your turn, take the "next" option, that's my advice; +Actions do not do much good when it's not your turn. As with Tunnel it doesn't have to be in your hand, it can be flipped over by a Fortune Teller or whatever. It even works when discarded from the Exile mat.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Menagerie Bonus Previews

Secret History

With a Reaction theme having appeared, I thought, how about a Tunnel. I came up with the now-or-later concept and was instantly enamored with it. It was a good fit for the Tunnel too. I needed a village so I made this a village and well there it is. At first it only worked in an Action phase, but people misplayed that, so now it matches Tunnel.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of Dominion: Menagerie

Relevant outtakes

For a while I liked the idea of a village with 20 cards in its pile, with no special connection to the pile being 20 cards. You know, it wouldn't gain copies of itself or anything, there would just be 20 of them. The idea was, for multiplayer, you put in this card and you are set for villages. So many multiplayer games, if there aren't two village piles, you have to build a deck that doesn't need very many villages. But uh surely the multiplayer players know about this already? They must be putting in those villages or living without them already, that's what I think. And it ate up a slot that stopped seeming so available, I could have a pretty 30 kingdom cards 20 events 20 ways. I came up with a lot of villages trying to be the good 20-card village; many were bad, some have potential but were no good for a 20-card pile, and some got tried out. In the end I did Village Green for this slot.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of Dominion: Menagerie

Retrospective

Village Green is more powerful than it had to be, which isn't always a consideration. It's also more confusing than it had to be, which is a bummer.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Dominion Discord, 2021