Draw

Laboratory, the archetype for this category.

Official Rules

• "+X Card(s)" – the player immediately draws X number of cards from his Deck. If there are not enough cards in his Deck, he draws as many as he can, shuffles the Discard pile to form a new Deck, and then draws the rest. If he still does not have enough cards left after forming a new Deck, he just draws as many as he can.

Different uses of the term "Draw"

In Dominion, the word "Draw" has been used in multiple ways.

• Synonymous with +Cards, as seen from the rules quote above
• As a concept for describing capabilities of certain decks.

Draw concept definition

Draw is any combination of cards that increases the number of cards in hand, without decreasing the number of actions remaining.

The presence of draw in a given kingdom is important because having a cap on the number of cards you can have in your hand is a significant limiting factor in the potential of decks you’re able to build; Kingdoms with draw and kingdoms without draw play very differently. Without the presence of draw in a kingdom, the focus of most decks shifts to the cantrips, plus the most desirable non-drawing cards available.

List of Draw cards

Cards that can provide the draw effect will be listed below. Without the presence of at least one card on this list, it is impossible for a kingdom to have "draw" as defined above. However, the presence of most of the cards below does not necessarily mean that draw is possible -- some of the cards require some level of support to achieve the draw effect. Draw cards are sorted into sections according to what type of support they require in order to give the draw effect.

Draw that doesn’t require a lot of support

The length of this list is pretty short compared to everything else; these cards just draw you cards if that’s what you want. If you need to meet a requirement in order to enable that draw, it’s usually not a huge deal to do so.

Alchemist, Caravan, Cursed Village, Den of Sin, Governor, Hireling, Hunting Party, Laboratory, Lost City, Sauna/Avanto, Scrying Pool, Stables

Draw that requires some other non-Village support

Most draw cards require some support in order to work. With this list of cards, you will need some support in order to make them work, but the support is there often enough that it’s frequently worth using these cards as a source of draw.

• Advisor needs a deck with few enough bad cards in it that you can reasonably expect to draw something good.
• Apprentice needs a deck with enough expensive cards that you can afford to trash some without ruining the potential of your deck.
• Apothecary can’t increase the number of non-Copper cards in your hand, which is a huge mark against it in terms of actual draw; you usually need some other enabler like Warehouse to make it function as draw, otherwise its effect is closer to sifting.
• City needs a way to empty a supply pile quickly enough to be useful as a source of draw.
• City Quarter and Herald need an action-dense deck to be effective.
• Crossroads and Shepherd need a way to line them up with enough Victory cards to make the draw worthwhile.
• Encampment needs a way to line it up with Gold or Plunder, or else it doesn’t stay in your deck.
• Expedition needs additional buys and money because you have to buy it repeatedly.
• Ghost, Golem, King's Court, Pathfinding, Teacher's +1 Card token, and Prince need Action cards to find in your deck that you’re happy to play and/or use as sources of draw, even if they only have +1 Card (which is not normally enough by itself to give you a draw effect).
• Imp needs enough unique cards in your deck to play with its ability, otherwise it will need Village support.
• Menagerie needs a deck that can provide opportunities to activate its draw ability.
• Minion and Tactician need a form of “virtual payload” to mitigate their drawbacks of discarding your hand.
• Storyteller needs high-value treasures, or having money before playing it, to work as draw.
• Will-o'-Wisp can be hard to get, plus it doesn’t always draw you an extra card.
• Wishing Well normally only works as draw when you have some way of knowing what the second card of your deck is, which requires somewhat narrow support.

Draw that requires village support

All of these cards are terminal when used for their draw ability. In order to achieve the above definition for draw, the support of a Village in the kingdom is required.

Be careful, though, that you consider the village you plan to use with these draw cards, and make sure it will actually work. For example, if your village is Festival and your draw card is Moat, your hand size hasn't actually increased while maintaining the action count.

Catacombs, Council Room, Courtyard, Cultist, Diplomat, Enchantress, Embassy, Envoy, Faithful Hound, Gear, Ghost Ship, Haunted Woods, Hunting Grounds, Journeyman, Library, Margrave, Masquerade, Moat, Nobles, Patrol, Pooka, Rabble, Ranger, Royal Blacksmith, Smithy, Steward, Torturer, Tragic Hero, Vault, Watchtower, Werewolf, Wharf, Wild Hunt, Witch

Draw with serious issues

The cards in this list can be used, in theory, to meet the requirements for draw; but it’s usually extremely difficult or impossible without very strong support. Many of these cards are good cards, but they don’t serve the purpose of meeting the objective of the draw definition very well. That’s not to say that you can’t make them work in a pinch when nothing better is available, but it’s a lot of work and frequently won’t be worth it to pursue.

• Archive and Crypt will increase your hand size, but the issue here is that you can’t use just these cards to draw your deck in any meaningful way, as other cards that you might want could be “trapped” in duration-land with these cards.

• Crypt also only works on treasure cards.

• Cobbler, Ghost Town, Haven, Native Village, Royal Carriage, and Save are all just forms of pushing a card from a previous hand off to a future hand — you’ll need something like a megaturn deck to take advantage of this kind of thing.

• Ironmonger can increase your handsize, but in order to get this to happen reliably, you need a high density of victory cards in your deck, which usually makes decks much worse and doesn’t function well without another source of draw.

• Jack of All Trades is a great card, but as much as I’ve tried, I’ve never made it really work as a very good source of draw in a deck; the main issue is that draw-to-X decks really don’t like to have treasures in them, and Jack gains you treasures every time you play it, plus drawing to 5 is pretty weak. Usually you get much more benefit out of the other things this card gives you.

• Madman is a one-shot and is tough to gain.

• Magpie only works on treasure cards

• Warrior can be tough to get a lot of, and usually aren’t good at drawing cards until you get a Champion out.

• Patrician is difficult to enable, especially if you want to have a lot of Patricians, plus there are only five of them.

• Settlers/Bustling Village are very difficult to enable, and most of the draw you can expect to get from these cards is just Coppers.

• Shanty Town‘s draw very rarely happens and is pretty much impossible to make reliable.

• Summon can work as draw but is usually very expensive and it only effectively gives you one card worth of draw.

• Vagrant can only draw cards that aren’t very good, so it’s more of a sifter than a draw card in real games of Dominion.

Draw that doesn’t work out in practice

These cards, while you can theoretically make them work as draw, have issues that are serious enough that they can almost never provide the draw effect in a real game of Dominion.

• Adventurer can only draw treasures, and requires Village support to fit this definition.

• Beggar and Counting House are not only terminal, but they only draw Coppers, so you need to convert that into better cards. Beggar gains you a whole bunch of Coppers which you have to deal with somehow, and Counting House requires you to have Coppers in your discard to work at all.

• Fortress needs to be combined with some very specific sources of trashing in order to function as draw, which is convoluted enough that it’s almost never possible; the main exception being with Mercenary.

• Sir Destry, Zombie Apprentice, Trusty Steed, and Pixie will only work once per turn for you, and they’re not fantastic at actually drawing cards either.

• Scout is a bad card.

• Tribute isn’t reliable enough at drawing cards to work out.

• Villa increases hand size when gained and returns to the Action phase, so it technically fits the definition of draw. With Alms this can function as draw once per turn, but isn't practical.

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