Canal

Canal
Info
Cost
Type	Project
Set	Renaissance
Illustrator(s)	Joshua Stewart
Project text
During your turns, cards cost less.

Canal is a Project from Renaissance. It provides permanent cost reduction on your turns only.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• During your turns, all cards, including cards in the Supply, in hands, and in Decks, cost less, but not less than .
• For example if you have Canal and play Villain, other players discard a card costing at least , which could not be Estate, as Estate only costs on your turns.

Strategy

Canal is an expensive Project that reduces the cost of all cards during your turn by . Without a source of +Buy, this is essentially equivalent to the Key, which can be mildly useful as a consistent source of economy. With sources of +Buy, Canal scales your payload nicely just like other sources of cost reduction. More importantly, Canal is very helpful with Workshop variants that can gain cards costing up to as they can effectively now gain far more powerful cards. Canal also improves some Command cards such as Captain which can then play Action cards that otherwise cost .

When to get Canal is dependent on how it affects your deck. If it has a major impact, such as allowing your Seers to draw each other, you may wish to try and prioritize getting Canal relatively early and add some extra Silvers to do so. If you mostly plan to use it as an additional source of non-stop card payload that scales nicely with all of your additional Buys from your Markets, you can probably just aim to take it opportunistically when you happen to hit .

Canal has two main cases where it is less impactful. First, given its cost, Canal can be too slow, especially in rushes. Second, in Kingdoms with limited gains, the cost reduction may not be worth either the opportunity cost or the price. When your greening is limited to a single Province per turn, buying Canal rather than a Province likely puts you behind on scoring. If, however, you only generate anyway or you assume that sometime later Canal will enable you to buy a Province that you wouldn’t have gotten otherwise (e.g., because your economy is unreliable), it can be worthwhile.

Like other cost reduction effects, Canal anti-synergizes with most trash-for-benefit effects. Unlike other cost reduction, however, you cannot opt to play those other effects before applying the cost reduction, as Canal is always active during your turn. This makes it much more awkward to use with cards such as Apprentice.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		During your turns, cards cost less, but not less than .	Renaissance	November 2018
		During your turns, cards cost less.	Renaissance (2021 printing)	2019 / 2021

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Chinese	運河 (pron. yùnhé)
French	Canal			Pendant vos tours, les cartes coûtent de moins, mais pas moins que .
French	Canal			Pendant vos tours, les cartes coûtent de moins.
German	Kanal			Während deiner Züge kosten Karten weniger (aber nicht weniger als ).	(2019)
German	Kanal			Während deiner Züge kosten Karten weniger.
Japanese	運河 (pron. unga)			あなたのターン中、カードのコストは下がる(以下にはならない)。
Russian	Канал (pron. kanal)

Trivia

Official card art.

Secret History

Unchanged. A lot of these ideas were just fine from the get-go.

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

Relevant outtakes

A straight + per turn. It's similar to Canal, isn't it. It ended up on Key.

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

Why "during your turn" instead of "during your Buy phase?"

It's just lining up with other Bridges. The TFB cards can take the hit.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Interview with Donald X.