Black Cat

Black Cat
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action - Attack - Reaction
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Menagerie
Illustrator(s)	Marco Morte
Card text
+2 Cards If it isn't your turn, each other player gains a Curse. When another player gains a Victory card, you may play this from your hand.

Black Cat is an Action-Attack-Reaction card from Menagerie. It lets you give out a Curse to all your opponents when one of them gains a Victory card.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• When you play this on your turn, you draw 2 cards.
• When you play it on another player's turn - usually only possible via its reaction - you draw 2 cards, and then everyone else gains a Curse, in turn order starting with the player whose turn it is.
• When anyone else gains a Victory card - whether or not it is your turn - you may play this from your hand.
• See the Reactions section.

Other rules clarifications

• If another player gains a Victory card during your turn (for example, if you give them an Estate with Ambassador), you can react with your Black Cat, but you will not give out any Curses.
• If you get attacked during your turn, you can still use Reactions like Horse Traders and Caravan Guard.
• If another player gains a Province, but you first gain a Curse from another player's Black Cat, then you may play Sheepdogs in response to the Curse, but you can't react with any of your Black Cats in the middle of the Curse gain. This is because all on-gain effects from the Province are "paused" to resolve on-gain effects from the Curse, and they unpause once the other player's Black Cat has finished resolving.

Strategy

Black Cat’s value in a given Kingdom is mostly tied to its Reaction, which allows it to act as both non-terminal draw and a junking attack. The strength of this Reaction is in turn dependent on how likely it is that you’ll be able to React, and how detrimental the Curses are to your opponents. When you aren’t able to React with it (likely because it wasn’t in your starting hand, or your opponents simply didn’t green), Black Cat is much less useful, as its fallback function is only to provide terminal draw that increases your hand size by one. This is typically outcompeted by other options for draw, and so Black Cat is usually best viewed as supplemental terminal draw which you’ll need to support with some villages if you want to make use of it when you can't React. Occasionally, however, the low price can make it appealing when you have very easy access to terminal space (e.g. with Academy or Lost Arts).

There are a few factors to consider when using Black Cat for its Reaction.

1. Being able to React depends on whether your opponents will gain Victory cards at all, and if so, how often. Most of the time, this means that Black Cat is primarily useful in endgames where your opponents will green consistently over multiple turns, for example if they’ve adopted a money strategy. On the other hand, if your opponents have ways to score without gaining Victory cards (e.g. by playing Monuments), or can green in a single megaturn, it may be difficult to get much value out of Black Cat.
2. In cases where you will be able to React, you will generally want to add Black Cats to your deck in the late midgame, once the greening phase is imminent. Occasionally, Black Cat can be relevant at earlier stages of the game, if the Kingdom offers useful dual-type Victory cards like Nobles, or if your opponents start greening very early (e.g. for a rush or via Rebuild).
3. The impact of Black Cat’s junking is dependent on how easy it is to deal with the Curses. The most common way to do so is via trashing: strong trashers such as Chapel can make Black Cat much less threatening, although Attack immunity effects such as Lighthouse can also be effective. If such effects are present, Black Cat loses much of its impact, but in their absence it can be particularly devastating, as adding Curses on top of Victory cards can make your opponents’ deck control deteriorate even more quickly than usual.
4. There are multiple ways to increase the likelihood of having a Black Cat in your starting hand in order to React during an opponent’s turn. The most straightforward method is to simply have multiple Black Cats. This makes it correspondingly likely that you will be able to find at least one, and that you will draw others with your initial copy in order to continue Reacting. In Kingdoms where Black Cat is important, it can therefore be a good idea to use a source of +Buy or a gainer to add multiple Black Cats to your deck quickly. Other methods include using effects that guarantee that you have at least one copy in hand (such as Scheme or Save), increasing your hand size via effects such as Way of the Squirrel, or intentionally triggering reshuffles containing Black Cats.

From a defensive perspective, there are also a few points to keep in mind when greening against an opponent with Black Cats.

• Often, you can use deck tracking to know where their Black Cats are likely to be, and then use that information to decide how to approach your turn. Sometimes, you’ll need to gain Victory cards regardless of their ability to React. For example, passing up on a Province might be too great a setback, or buying out the remaining Estates might be enough for a winning pileout even if you take some Curses. Other times, the prospect of Curses might be enough to dissuade you from buying a low-  Victory card (e.g. Duchy). The most important cases to be aware of are those at the very end of the game, where Black Cat might be able to distribute enough Curses to change who has the   lead during a pileout attempt, or lead to a sudden pileout itself by emptying the Curses.
• The fact that Black Cat affects you on your own turn means it interacts atypically with certain forms of defense. In particular, Reactions like Moat and Watchtower are highly effective because it's much easier to ensure you have specific cards in hand at the end of your own turn than during an opponent's turn. Conversely, Guardian usually provides no defense at all.
• Rarely, you might be able to modify the contents of your opponents’ hands. For example, drawing cards for them with Council Room increases their chances of attacking you, while certain handsize Attacks, such as Archer, can sometimes force an opponent to discard their Black Cats.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		+2 Cards If it isn't your turn, each other player gains a Curse. When another player gains a Victory card, you may play this from your hand.	Menagerie	March 2020

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Dutch	Zwarte Kat			+2 Kaarten Als het niet jouw beurt is, pakt iedere andere speler een Vloek. Als een andere speler een overwinningskaart pakt, mag je deze kaart uit je hand spelen.	(2020)
French	Chat Noir
German	Schwarze Katze			+2 Karten Wenn jetzt nicht dein Zug ist, nimmt jeder Mitspieler einen Fluch. Wenn ein Mitspieler eine Punktekarte nimmt, darfst du diese Karte aus deiner Hand spielen.	(2020)
Japanese	黒猫 (pron. kuroneko)
Polish	Czarny kot				Although Polish version is not released, this name is referred to in Polish Dominion 2E rulebook.

Trivia

Official card art.

Black Cat was the first Attack-Reaction card, and it is the only Kingdom Attack card costing less than .

Preview

Menagerie has two minor themes I didn't mention yet. Surprise! The first one is reaction cards; there are five of them. Five! Four of them do the trick Sheepdog did of letting you play them at an unusual time; Black Cat is one of those. It's a Witch they have to activate for you. I will just point out now: when they gain a Province and that lets you use Black Cat, the other players gain Curses and that lets them use Sheepdogs.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Menagerie Previews 5: More Cards

Secret History

The second reaction in the set. I wanted a black cat! Probably it would curse people? Could it be blue? I got all those things. At first it triggered on their gain and you discarded it to Curse them. It wasn't good enough. Shifting it to being played also let it be an Attack; Moat couldn't stop the discarded version.

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

Further comments by Donald X.

In response to people expressing confusion over being able to react with multiple Black Cats to the same gain, Donald X. responded with:

Suppose you have two Wharfs. You draw two cards for one. Now it's not the start of your turn anymore, so you don't get the other two cards. That's how to fight that part of the Black Cat argument. You simply can't have it be that Wharf fails there; it has to be that multiple things can happen "when x" and they all get to happen. Reactions work even if they weren't in your hand when whatever it was happened; that could have been different (e.g. reveal them all, then resolve them all) but that's how they work.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Dominion Discord, 2021

It's "when x happens." For example, it's the start of your turn. You resolve Wharf and draw 2 cards and get +1 buy. Now it's not the "start of your turn" anymore, is it! But a 2nd Wharf still resolves and that's as it should be.

After you resolve a Wharf, it's not, in the English sense of these words, "the start of your turn." As soon as absolutely anything happens, it's no longer the start. But in Dominion, it's "the window for start-of-turn abilities" and the 2nd Wharf still gets to happen. "Information," new or otherwise, is simply not part of any of this.

The only difference with Black Cat is that it may not have been in your hand when the   card was gained. And well. Either we had to not require it to be in your hand, or it had to be that like you set them all aside before resolving them. I went with, they do not have to be in your hand at the start of the condition. And note that this is true of "start of your turn" too; if you manage to get a Hireling into play while it's your "start of turn," it will immediately work.

Again this is just super not changing. You can ban Black Cat! IRL you can just never play with it. There are other people who like it though.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, TGG Discord, 2023