Coven

Coven
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action - Attack
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Menagerie
Illustrator(s)	Claus Stephan
Card text
+1 Action + Each other player Exiles a Curse from the Supply. If they can't, they discard their Exiled Curses.

Coven is an Action-Attack card from Menagerie. It is a delayed curser that puts Curses into Exile, and later moves them into players' decks.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• Curses are Exiled in turn order; it may be that one player Exiles a Curse while another discards the Curses from their mat.

Other rules clarifications

• Exiling a Curse from the supply or discarding a Curse from Exile does not count as "gaining" a Curse; this means that, unlike other cursers, Coven's attack can't be avoided with Watchtower or Trader.

Strategy

Coven is an Attack whose effect is not felt immediately. Typically, the junking aspect of Curses is stronger than the   loss, which means Coven may have relatively little impact if you don’t expect to play it enough times to discard your opponent’s Curses from Exile; conversely, investing heavily in Covens in an attempt to ensure that you can achieve this may not be the best use of resources. This is because Coven often has strong competition at the pricepoint from other Action cards that may provide better short-term benefits for your deck, and it’s also a stop card; thus, it can incur large opportunity costs.

Overall, the decision to gain an early Coven may be less clear than with various other cursers. When considering the effect of the Coven attack, it is important to determine how likely it is that the Curses will be emptied before the game is over, and what the impact of this will be, especially in light of your opponents’ decisions. If multiple players go for Coven, then the Curses will probably empty, and achieving deck control will be important so that your deck can absorb the Curses with minimal disruption; however, Coven is most attractive in cases in which this is difficult (e.g. because trashing is absent or weak). If all players avoid Coven in the early game, it can still become useful payload once you have established deck control, as functionally a non-terminal Monument.

When the Curse pile is low, you can consider using effects such as Mission or Seize the Day to get the Curses into your opponent’s deck first, especially if they are about to shuffle. Occasionally, an opponent gets such strong deck control that the junking effect won’t hurt them significantly; in these cases, it can be strategic to avoid discarding their Curses by not playing your Coven and have them continue to suffer the   deficit instead. This is more common if you have a single Coven, or can trash your Covens for some benefit at this point. Alternatively, you may wait to discard the Curses until near the end of the game, when your opponent has lost some deck control by gaining Provinces and won’t have time to trash all the Curses.

In rare cases, if you are skipping Coven you may wish to take a mid-game opportunity to discard your Curses from Exile so that you can trash some of them earlier, rather than have to deal with 10 at once. This is most likely to be reasonable when it doesn’t entail spending a Buy on a Curse for this purpose, but you happen to gain one for other reasons, such as the Plague Hex.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		+1 Action + Each other player Exiles a Curse from the Supply. If they can't, they discard their Exiled Curses.	Menagerie	March 2020

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Dutch	Heksenkring			+1 Actie + Iedere andere speler verband een Vloek uit de voorraad. Kan hij dat niet, dan legt hij al zijn verbannen Vloeken af.	(2020)
German	Hexenzirkel			+1 Aktion + Jeder Mitspieler verbannt einen Fluch aus dem Vorrat. Wer das nicht kann, legt seine verbannten Flüche ab.
Japanese	魔女の集会 (pron. majo no shūkai)

Trivia

Official card art.

Preview

Coven has yet another trick. It hands out Curses, but they don't just poison your deck immediately; they accumulate in Exile and then one day you dump them all into your deck at once. I will just tell you now, you better not be relying on Bounty Hunter to get rid of the Curses; you can keep collecting the bounty, but Coven will keep dumping them back into your deck.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Menagerie Previews 3: Exile

Secret History

Somehow this never changed.

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

Retrospective

I'm pretty pleased with Coven, but it was funny hearing people being scared of it when the preview went up.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Dominion Discord, 2020