Bandit

Bandit
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action - Attack
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Base
Illustrator(s)	Julien Delval
Card text
Gain a Gold. Each other player reveals the top 2 cards of their deck, trashes a revealed Treasure other than Copper, and discards the rest.

Bandit is an Action–Attack card from the second edition of the base set. It is a trashing attack that targets your opponent's Treasure cards and gives you free Gold.

It replaces the removed card Thief, an extremely weak Treasure-trashing Attack from the first edition.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• First you gain a Gold from the Supply, putting it into your discard pile.
• Then each other player, in turn order, reveals their top 2 cards, trashes one they choose that is a Treasure other than Copper (e.g. Silver or Gold), and discards the other revealed cards. A player who did not reveal a Treasure card other than Copper simply discards both cards.

Strategy

Bandit’s primary role is to add Gold to your engine after you are successfully drawing your deck. Typically, when building an engine, you will spend your initial turns trashing your starting cards and buying draw cards. This often leads to a deck that draws itself reliably but doesn’t achieve much once drawn. Buying a Bandit at this point will jumpstart the process of adding payload to your deck, as the Bandit will add a Gold every turn thereafter, assuming you successfully draw your deck. If you have overdraw, you can even gain the Gold and play it on that same turn.

In order for Bandit to provide an ongoing benefit in this context, you need two things:

1. a way to keep adding additional draw cards to your deck so that you can still draw it after adding Golds (which are stop cards)
2. a reason why adding many Golds will be worthwhile, typically either +Buy or trash-for-benefit cards like Remodel

Indeed, the combination of Bandit and Remodel is one of the stronger forms of payload in the Base Dominion set, as it allows you to gain an extra Province each turn.

Bandit’s attack is rarely an important part of the card, but it can be helpful if its odds of hitting a Treasure are high enough. Typically this means it’s useful in kingdoms with strong trashing and where Treasure is a major source of payload (as opposed to Action cards like Festival). In games with more than two players, Bandit can trash more Treasures than it gains. If multiple opponents are playing Bandits, using Treasure payload becomes less attractive.

Despite the fact that gaining Golds is a valuable thing to do in money strategies, Bandit is only occasionally the best terminal Action to use in a money-oriented deck. This is because Bandit makes no and draws no cards, so it worsens your current turn in exchange for a benefit that won’t be experienced until the next time you shuffle your deck. Cards with more immediate benefits should often be preferred.

Therefore try to spice up Bandit, e.g. with Vanilla bonus Adventures tokens from Teacher, Lost Arts, Training, Pathfinding. Or try investing in possibilities playing Bandit during your turn without having extra actions, e.g. by Village Green.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		Gain a Gold. Each other player reveals the top 2 cards of their deck, trashes a revealed Treasure other than Copper, and discards the rest.	Dominion (Second Edition)	October 2016

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Chinese	強盜 (pron. qiángdào)			獲得一張黃金，其他玩家展示牌庫頂的兩張牌，移除其中一張非銅幣的錢幣卡，棄掉剩下的卡片。
Dutch	Bandiet			Pak een Goud. Iedere andere speler toont de 2 bovenste kaarten van zijn trekstapel, vernietigt getoonde geldkaarten met uitzondering van Koper, en legt de rest af.	Tweede editie (2017) "...vernietigt getoonde geldkaarten één getoonde geldkaart…"
	Bandiet			Pak een Goud. Iedere andere speler toont de 2 bovenste kaarten van zijn trekstapel, vernietigt één getoonde geldkaart met uitzondering van Koper, en legt de rest af.	Tweede editie (herdruk 2019/2020)
French	Brigand
German	Banditin (Note: explicitly feminine)			Nimm ein Gold. Jeder Mitspieler deckt die obersten 2 Karten seines Nachziehstapels auf, entsorgt eine aufgedeckte Geldkarte außer Kupfer, und legt den Rest ab.	2. Edition (2019) one or more other versions listed here
Japanese	山賊 (pron. sanzoku)			金貨1枚を獲得する。他のプレイヤーは全員、山札の上から2枚を公開し、銅貨以外の公開した財宝カード1枚を廃棄し、残りを捨て札にする。
Polish	Bandyta
Russian	Бандит (pron. bandit)			Получите Золото. Каждый другой игрок раскрывает 2 верхние карты своей колоды, выкидывает раскрытую карту Сокровища (не Медь) и сбрасывает остальные раскрытые карты.
Spanish	Bandido			Ganas una carta de Oro. Los demás jugadores tienen que revelar las 2 cartas superiores de sus respectivos mazos, eliminar una carta de Tesoro revelada que no sea de Cobre y descartar las demás.	Segunda Edición (2016, 2021)

Trivia

Official card art.

Secret History

This of course replaces Thief. You gain a Gold so that it's always doing something useful. It doesn't trash Coppers, so it both doesn't have that huge penalty, and can't threaten new players with eating all of their Treasures.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of the Dominion 2nd Editions