Warlord

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Warlord
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action - Duration - Attack - Clash
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Allies
Illustrator(s)	Harald Lieske
Card text
+1 Action At the start of your next turn, +2 Cards. Until then, other players can't play an Action from their hand that they have 2 or more copies of in play.

Warlord is an Action-Duration-Attack-Clash card from Allies. It penalizes opponents for depending on multiple copies of the same Action card by preventing them from playing a third copy of any given Action (from their hand) once they've already got two in play.

It is part of a split pile that it shares with the other Clashes: Battle Plan, Archer, and Territory.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• This doesn't stop players from playing cards that aren't in their hands; for example, Golem (from Alchemy) can still play its two cards, which are set aside, no matter how many copies of them are in play.
• With Warlord affecting you, Throne Room can't play a card from your hand that you have two copies of in play; but Throne can play a card you have one copy of in play, and then can replay that card, even though now you have two copies of it in play.
• This only affects Action cards; it doesn't affect Copper, for example.

Other rules clarifications

• Normally, if you gain an Action and immediately play it (e.g. you gained a Berserker, or you spent Favors for City-state), that will dodge Warlord. However, if you gained the card directly to your hand (with e.g. Swap), then Warlord can prevent that play.
• Warlord can prevent you from playing a card from your hand, even if you didn't play any copies of it this turn. For example, if you called 2 Guides at the start of your turn, then you can't play any Guides from your hand.
• Actions that have been played as a Way will still count towards Warlord's restriction.
• If you have two copies of a Shadow card in play, Warlord prevents you from playing a third copy of it from your deck as well as from your hand.
• If you remove a 2nd copy of an Action card from play (with e.g. Royal Galley or Way of the Horse), you can then play another copy of that Action from your hand.
• This attack applies to other players even during the turn you play it. So if you play Warlord and then gain a Province, each other player may play up to 2 Black Cats from their hands, but they can't play a 3rd one.
• However, if you play a Warlord (and haven't already played one), other players can react with as many Caravan Guards as they want, because the Caravan Guard reaction takes place before the Warlord restriction kicks in.
• The attack ends instantaneously when your next turn starts; you can't choose to execute other start-of-turn abilities while your Warlord's restriction on other players is still in effect. So if you start your turn by playing an Archer with Royal Galley, each other player can react with as many Caravan Guards as they want (even if you haven't taken the +2 Cards from Warlord yet).

Strategy

Warlord is a situationally game-changing attack that cripples certain decks and strategies, but does nothing against others. Without its attack, it is weak for a card costing , functioning like Laboratory that has had its +2 Card draw delayed by one turn and separated from the +Action, thus making it a bit fiddly to use; its function besides the attack is also somewhat comparable to Caravan, which only costs . So this card tends not to be worth buying unless the attack is worthwhile, except perhaps in situations where card draw is highly beneficial, no other draw is available, and there are only poor options at the price point.

The attack will cripple an engine that relies on playing 3 or more copies of a card in a given turn, such as ones based on Conspirator, or a deck-drawing engine that relies on a single type of village or terminal draw, or some other key card where multiple copies of it need to be played for the engine to work.

However, on some boards, it can be possible to construct an engine resilient to Warlord. Card diversity, having multiple cards that fulfill a particular role in the engine, effectively counters Warlord. An engine with high card diversity, including Menagerie, and with sifters, such as Inn or Grotto, or with a couple copies of Scheme to top-deck an unusable card, can be resilient to Warlord's attack. As explained below, it is hard for an opponent to reliably play Warlord every turn, so the resilience to its attack does not need to be perfect, and cards like Scheme or Grotto which delay unusable actions till the next turn are often particularly good counters to it.

Warlord is useless against most big money strategies as they tend to play at most one action per turn.

Warlord is also useless against engines or other decks based on alt-treasure, as they are immune to this card's effects.

Because they stay in play for multiple turns, Warlord is especially strong against engines that rely on durations as key components, such as when the only village is Fishing Village or the only card draw is Wharf. The normally-overpowered combo of Fishing Village + Wharf is severely curtailed by Warlord.

Warlord is also trickier to obtain, being part of a split pile, and since it is the third-highest cost in the pile, whether or not it is even able to be obtained is dependent on the other player's choices. Purchasing Battle Plan just to rotate the pile to buy this card is often too slow to be an effective counter to a strong engine strategy, if other players are not cooperating with your desire to purchase this card; this is especially likely in a 2-player game where your opponent can ignore this pile to break your strategy. Even if the card is easily obtained, it is often hard to obtain enough copies of it to reliably play one: once you expose this card, other players become more likely to buy it. The fact that Warlord counters most deck-drawing engines also means that you probably won't be able to reliably draw your Warlord every turn, even if you have two in your deck. The presence of Archer also often tends to weaken the sorts of engine strategies that Warlord is strongest against, decreasing the likelihood that one of your opponents will be playing a vulnerable strategy to begin with. So, while Warlord looks like a powerful attack, and is in theory, against skilled players its presence usually causes everyone to adapt their strategy to where it becomes weak.

Warlord can also be fully countered by Lighthouse or Moat (which incidentally also both counter Archer), so a deck able to reliably play Lighthouse or draw Moat can still build a functional engine in the presence of those cards.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		+1 Action At the start of your next turn, +2 Cards. Until then, other players can't play an Action from their hand that they have 2 or more copies of in play.	Allies	March 2022

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Dutch	Krijgsheer			+1 Actie Aan het begin van je volgende beurt: +2 Kaarten. Tot die tijd kunnen andere spelers geen actiekaart uit hun hand spelen waarvan ze 2 of meer exemplaren in het spel hebben.	(2022)
German	Kriegsherr			+1 Aktion Zu Beginn deines nächsten Zuges: +2 Karten. Bis dahin dürfen Mitspieler keine Aktionskarten aus ihrer Hand spielen, von der sie 2 oder mehr gleiche Karten im Spiel haben.

Trivia

Official card art.

Warlord is one of the few cards with four types.

Secret History

Archer and Warlord swapped places some (with their resources changing), and Warlord tried different ways of punishing repetition. For a while it made you trash cards you gained that were copies of cards you had in play, but this is problematic and also didn't do much. And originally it gave + next turn.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of Dominion: Allies, March 2022

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