Alliance

Alliance
Info
Cost
Type	Event
Set	Menagerie
Illustrator(s)	Hans Krill
Event text
Gain a Province, a Duchy, an Estate, a Gold, a Silver, and a Copper.

Alliance is an Event from Menagerie. It allows you to gain one of each Basic card (except Curse) with just one buy for .

FAQ

Official FAQ

• You gain each of those cards that is present in the Supply; you cannot choose not to gain one. You gain them in the order listed.

Strategy

As an expensive but high-scoring Event, Alliance is best viewed as a scoring alternative to buying Province directly. Because it gives you six stop cards, it effectively offers a tradeoff between greater   per and Buy and a more negative effect on your deck control. Therefore, Alliance tends to pay off only in situations where either deck control is unimportant or you have such strong control that you can handle the influx of stop cards and make good use of them, most often via trash-for-benefit effects. If neither of these situations apply, Alliance may be actively worse than just buying Province, and if Province itself is inferior to an alt-VP alternative (e.g. Colony or Dominate), Alliance is likely undesirable.

One unusual property of Alliance is that it rapidly depletes the amount of   remaining: with no alt-VP present, four Alliances is sufficient to secure half of all   available (and thus usually the win) in a two-player game. Thus, it can sometimes be a good idea to build just enough to buy four Alliances, as if you build further it will be impossible to catch up via Duchies to an opponent who already has four Alliances. It is worth noting, however, that buying one or two Alliances will often severely damage your deck control and can prevent you from buying more, but if you have the tools to keep your deck under control it can be important to preempt your opponent in buying multiple Alliances.

Alliance can work as an efficient way to score   when you simply don’t care about its downsides with respect to deck control. The clearest such case is at the very end of the game, when it offers a straightforward   bonus over Province and deck control no longer matters. Even if you can't end the game immediately, Alliance can be a good option if your deck control has already deteriorated so that you're not drawing your deck and you're unlikely to shuffle it again. Along similar lines, Alliance can be a reasonable way to score in money strategies, since you lack control over your deck anyway. However, is a difficult price point to afford reliably with most money strategies, and Alliance pushes your money density towards per stop card, which makes it difficult to afford subsequent Alliances. As such, you’ll usually need some additional Kingdom support to buy Alliance consistently. While sifters such as Dungeon can help, Guildhall is particularly notable. Using it can allow you to secure four Alliances fairly quickly, since your early Treasure purchases can help you get your initial Alliance, and the three Coffers you get with each Alliance can help you to afford future ones.

In most Kingdoms, it’s a better idea to maintain deck control in preference to buying Alliance too early (or perhaps at all), as losing deck control may leave your deck unable to continue scoring successfully. However, with strong enough draw and thinning, it may be possible to counteract the effect of gaining multiple stop cards. While effects such as Sanctuary or Watchtower can help you control the net amount of stop cards in your deck, strong trash-for-benefit effects can go one step further and derive an additional positive benefit. As such, Alliance is most likely to be attractive if you can use such effects to turn some of the less desirable cards (often Gold or Silver) into other resources, e.g. draw with Apprentice or Villagers with Recruiter. Less frequently, Alliance can be used to provide fodder for effects such as Forager when extra gains are otherwise severely limited. Occasionally, effects such as Shepherd and Storyteller can use the cards from Alliance for draw, reducing their hit to your deck control.

As an Event, Alliance is sometimes useful for greening while under the effects of Haunted Woods or Mission.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		Gain a Province, a Duchy, an Estate, a Gold, a Silver, and a Copper.	Menagerie	March 2020

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Dutch	Bondgenootschap			Pak een Provincie, een Hertogdom, een Landgoed, een Goud, een Zilver en een Koper.	(2020)
German	Bündnis			Nimm eine Provinz, ein Herzogtum, ein Anwesen, ein Gold, ein Silber und ein Kupfer.
Japanese	同盟 (pron. dōmei)

Trivia

Official card art.

Preview

You get all that stuff! You can't not take some of it.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Menagerie Bonus Previews

Secret History

Matt wanted some expensive Events. Okay, how about, gain a lot of cards? I tried two of them and liked them both. This one was always like this. I considered putting Curse on it but man you already don't want all of what you're getting.

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