Scheme

Scheme
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Hinterlands
Illustrator(s)	Julien Delval
Card text
+1 Card +1 Action This turn, you may put one of your Action cards onto your deck when you discard it from play.

Scheme is an Action card from Hinterlands. It allows you to place back on top of your deck an Action that you played this turn. This improves your deck's consistency.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• When you play this, you draw a card, get +1 Action, and set up an effect to happen later in the turn; once, when you discard an Action card from play, you can put it onto your deck.
• The Action card can be Scheme itself, or any other Action card you have in play, which might have been played before or after you played Scheme.
• Scheme is cumulative; if you play two Schemes, or Throne Room a Scheme, you will be able to put up to two discarded Action cards onto your deck, and so on.

Other Rules clarifications

• Scheme still has its clean-up effect even if it is no longer in play by the time you start your clean-up phase; specifically, if you play Procession on Scheme, at the start of clean-up you will be able to put two action cards from play on top of your deck, even though your Scheme has already been trashed and will not be in play itself.
• Due to the Stop-Moving rule, Scheme cannot top-deck an exchanged Traveller, and a Traveller cannot be exchanged if it's been topdecked with Scheme.

Strategy

Scheme is a cantrip whose topdecking effect is mainly useful for increasing engine reliability. Scheme is a cheap and useful addition to your deck when the guarantee of having a particular Action card in hand at the start of your turn is valuable, such as in the following cases:

1. Most often, the best cards to topdeck are those that will prevent you from dudding. This will often be cards that ensure you draw, and can be either non-terminal draw such as Hunting Party or Scrying Pool, or a village to pair with your terminal draw. Other times, topdecking sifting such as Forum may be a slightly indirect way of setting up a good starting hand. With multiple Schemes, it is possible to topdeck multiple key cards, including those that benefit from collision with one another, further increasing your reliability. When used in this way, Scheme is often best added in the midgame, once you have these key cards in deck. Adding additional Schemes later in the game to offset your increasing deck size (perhaps due to greening) is usually a good idea.
2. Guaranteeing you have a Reaction in your starting hand is another strong use for Scheme. It can allow you to consistently defend (e.g. with Moat), threaten to counterattack (e.g. with Black Cats), or activate effects such as Village Green against a handsize attack. It is worth noting that, because your opponents know what cards you topdeck, they may be able to play around these Reactions.
3. Less commonly, Scheme can be useful to play a key card more than once per shuffle. This is more likely to be relevant when you are not frequently shuffling, either in the early game or in junky decks, and most frequently includes thinners such as Bounty Hunter and Attacks such as Witch. In other words, if you are able to play both Scheme and the target card at the start of your shuffle, you can topdeck the target card and play it next turn, when normally you would have to wait until your next shuffle to play it again. In this role, Scheme may be good even in the opening, as a lucky collision on turn 3 can have a large payoff, and multiple copies can be used to repeatedly topdeck your target card turn after turn.

Sometimes the best card to topdeck will be Scheme itself. This is likely the case if your alternatives are topdecking a stop card or nothing at all. Topdecking Scheme is unlikely to cause you to dud, and effectively allows you to wait until you collide it with a good card to topdeck.

Scheme is less attractive if your engine is already very reliable without the topdecking effect, which most commonly occurs in decks with very few stop cards, likely as a result of good thinning and/or Peddler variant payload. Scheme is also susceptible to handsize attacks, most notably Minion, as they can sometimes force you to discard the cards you topdecked, thereby negating the boost to reliability.

Scheme synergizes well with a few specific effects:

• Effects such as Mastermind or Citadel that rely heavily on having a strong Action in your starting hand are much better when you are able to pick their targets.
• Outpost turns are much more dud-prone with only a three-card starting hand, so topdecking draw such as Menagerie can counteract that downside.
• Vanilla bonus tokens, especially the +Card tokens from Teacher or Pathfinding, are even more effective on Scheme than other cheap cantrips, as each copy can topdeck itself.
• King's Court can generate multiple Scheme effects and is itself greatly boosted in power if you can reliably find multiple copies in your starting hand, since the most important determinant of whether you will have an optimal turn is your ability to start chaining King's Courts early in order to amplify your triple-playing abilities. Even with only a single Scheme, topdecking two King’s Courts alongside a strong triple-play target both greatly increases your reliability and almost guarantees maximum chaining.
• Shepherd can be an exceptionally good topdeck target, as you can often trigger a shuffle of all Victory cards, then topdeck Shepherd, ensuring you do not dud and will extract maximum draw from your Shepherd.

External strategy articles

Note: Article(s) below are by individual authors and may not represent the community's current views on cards, but may provide more in-depth information or give historical perspective. Caveat emptor.

• jonts26's 2012 article

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		+1 Card +1 Action At the start of Clean-up this turn, you may choose an Action card you have in play. If you discard it from play this turn, put it on your deck.	Hinterlands	October 2011
		+1 Card +1 Action This turn, you may put one of your Action cards onto your deck when you discard it from play.	Hinterlands (2016 printing)	December 2016

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Czech	Pleticha
Dutch	Gekonkel
Finnish	Juoni
French	Complot
German	Komplott			+1 Karte +1 Aktion Zu Beginn deiner Aufräumphase darfst du eine deiner ausgespielten Aktionskarten wählen. Wenn du die gewählte Karte in dieser Aufräumphase ablegen würdest, darfst du sie stattdessen auf deinen Nachziehstapel legen.	(2011) "…eine deiner ausgespielten Aktionskarten, die du im Spiel hast,…"
German	Komplott			+1 Karte +1 Aktion In diesem Zug darfst du eine Aktionskarte auf deinen Nachziehstapel legen, sobald du sie aus dem Spiel ablegst.	(2019)
Italian	Macchinazione (lit. machination)
Japanese	画策 (pron. kakusaku)			+1 カードを引く +1 アクション このターン、場のアクションカードのうち1枚を捨て札にするとき、それを山札の上に置いてもよい。
Polish	Zmowa			+1 karta +1 akcja W tej turze możesz odłożyć jedną ze swoich kart Akcji na wierzch swojej talii, kiedy odrzucasz ją z gry.	(2024)
Russian	Схема (pron. skhyema)
Spanish	Confabulación

Trivia

Official card art.

Scheme had a minor functional change when Dominion was updated for its second edition. Previously, cards that were not discarded from play during Clean-up (such as Durations) could be chosen by Scheme's effect; this is no longer possible.

Theme

You know, you've got your plan, it involves a Spice Merchant, you do a lot of Spice Merchanting. It was a satisfying name; it seemed kind of weird since it's an abstract thing, but I couldn't do better.

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

Secret History

An old card. The premise was always the same, but the exact mechanism has varied a little. The important thing was not to have any weirdness with one-shots or duration cards or Throne Rooms played on duration cards. That's why it only works on cards that are discarded. Sometimes Scheme could work on itself, sometimes it couldn't, depending on what phrasing seemed simpler. It ended up working on itself; you can just be planning that Scheme for a while.

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

Why is the wording different from Herbalist?

Both cards just got the best wording they could have. In neither case did I really care if you could Throne it. By default I would like cards to be Throne-able, but Herbalist's best wording was to have below-the-line text. Scheme went through a bunch of wordings, at various points you could Throne it or couldn't, it could be used on itself or not. It had to be clear what happened with duration cards and trickier things like Throne used on duration cards. In the end it worked out that you can get back Scheme and can Throne it.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Interview with Donald X.