Witch's Hut

From Dominion Strategy Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page is awaiting large-scale edits by the community to meet quality and format standards. The information on this page may be outdated. Join the #wiki-general channel on the Dominion Discord server to participate.


Witch's Hut
Info
Cost $5
Type(s) Action - Attack
Kingdom card? Yes
Set Hinterlands
Illustrator(s) Julien Delval
Card text
+4 Cards
Discard 2 cards, revealed. If they're both Actions, each other player gains a Curse.

Witch's Hut is an Action-Attack card from the second edition of Hinterlands. It provides terminal draw with some sifting, and can become a curser if you are willing to discard your Action cards.

FAQ

Official FAQ

  • You reveal the discarded cards even if they aren't both Actions.
  • If they're both Actions - even if they also have other types - each other player gains a Curse.

Strategy

Witch's Hut is a bit of a tricky card: potentially strong but with an inherent conflict. It is most powerful in a deck-drawing engine, where it provides big card draw, and the cursing benefit is more likely to be able to be used, due to the action-rich nature of these decks. However, if other players are using this strategy, the curses will typically cause the engine to lock up and lead to a slog, and the presence of curses in the deck makes it harder to match it up with actions to discard. This tends to lead to games where the curses are dealt out a bit slower than with a simple curser like Witch, but it can also lead to there being a more dramatic split of curses if one player is more efficiently able to set up this card to discard actions.

Because it relies on actions for the cursing effect, Witch's Hut is strongest when you can avoid purchasing any treasure and instead build up to buying one or more through virtual coin, ideally non-terminal actions as you can then play them before playing this card. The idea is that you want every purchased card both to bring you closer to buying Witch's Hut and to make Witch's Hut more likely to activate when it is played. Ideally your purchased cards will provide a net gain of +Action so that you can play multiple Witch's Huts in one turn.

Pawn is a great synergy, cheap and offering virtual coin and +Buy, allowing you to quickly pack your deck with actions. Peddler is good and can often be purchased cheaply in decks aiming to optimize a Witch's Hut strategy. Caravan Guard provides non-terminal virtual coin, and its special effect is more likely to activate if other players also have Witch's Hut. Oasis is a powerful and cheap non-terminal virtual coin whose discarding effect is unlikely to harm you if you have curses in the deck. Settlers is excellent as long as your deck still contains some copper. Some villages can synergize with this card, probably the strongest are Fishing Village which provides an abundance of actions as well as virtual coin, and Harbor Village which synergizes with other virtual coin. Hamlet is also good, as it is cheap its discarding probably will not harm you much as you will probably gain curses.

Additional synergy cards include Weaver or Trail which get played when discarded effectively giving you its benefits and contributing to the discarded action count.

Although it alone does not facilitate Witch's Hut, Conspirator is usually a good addition to decks built around this strategy. Lighthouse also provides these same benefits, but it effectively blocks the attack. Because of the strong synergy, however, on a board with both Witch's Hut and Lighthouse, the purchase of multiple Lighthouses is almost mandatory.

One of the best times to buy Witch's Hut is on a $5/$2 split in the opening, especially in the presence of a cheap facilitating action costing $2 like Pawn or Settlers.

Witch's Hut plays differently depending on whether or not there are good trashers, but the presence of good trashers typically doesn't make it a better or worse buy. In a game with Witch's Hut, good enablers, and trashers on the board, however, buying trashing is typically mandatory: if you don't, you'll end up with curses, and you'll be more likely to lose the race to match up your Witch's Hut with actions and thus lose the cursing race. A particularly nice card that synergizes with Witch's Hut in multiple ways is Sailor, which provides +1 Action, and Virtual Coin and trashing on the coming turn. It is especially strong in the presence of other durations but can be worthwhile as a combo with Witch's Hut even in their absence; in this case it can still be used to buy and then play a copy of itself.

Versions

English versions

Print Digital Text Release Date
Witch's Hut Witch's Hut from Shuffle iT +4 Cards
Discard 2 cards, revealed. If they're both Actions, each other player gains a Curse.
Hinterlands (Second Edition) July 2022

Other language versions

Language Name Print Digital Text Notes
German Hexenhütte German language Witch's Hut from Shuffle iT +4 Karten
Lege 2 Karten aufgedeckt ab. Wenn beides Aktionskarten sind, nimmt jeder Mitspieler einen Fluch.
Polish Chatka wiedźmy Polish language Witch's Hut +4 karty
Odrzuć 2 karty, odkrywając je. Jeśli obie są kartami Akcji, każdy z pozostałych graczy dodaje Klątwę.
(2024)

Trivia

Official card art.

Card Art

At this point I give the artists a one-line description, and get to approve sketches. I try to leave a lot up to them but am sometimes more specific. For Witch's Hut the line was: "Witch's Hut: A walking hut in a swamp; Baba Yaga's hut."

Preview

Oracle isn't weak or strong really, but it's crazy slow. It's the bane of playtesting; they endlessly flip over the card you actually wanted to playtest. I haven't played with it in years, except for one game to make sure I really wanted to get rid of it. I did.

Witch's Hut again ties into the filtering theme. It's both the new Embassy and the attack that replaces Oracle.

Secret History

In some sense the new Embassy, combining an attack for the Oracle slot. We tried versions with different discard conditions; this one was hard enough.


Cards $2 CrossroadsFool's Gold $3 DevelopGuard DogOasisSchemeTunnel $4 Jack of All TradesNomadsSpice MerchantTraderTrailWeaver $5 BerserkerCartographerCauldronHagglerHighwayInnMargraveSoukStablesWheelwrightWitch's Hut $6 Border VillageFarmland
Removed cards $2 Duchess $3 Oracle $4 Noble BrigandNomad CampSilk Road $5 CacheEmbassyIll-Gotten GainsMandarin
Combos and Counters Trader/Feodum
Other concepts When gain

View all Dominion cards