Citadel

Citadel
Info
Cost
Type	Project
Set	Renaissance
Illustrator(s)	Harald Lieske
Project text
The first time you play an Action card during each of your turns, replay it afterwards.

Citadel is a Project from Renaissance. Each turn it lets you play your first Action card twice, as if you had first played a Throne Room. Citadel only lets you play the Action card for free the second time, the first time still uses your Action.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• Once you've claimed this ability, it is not optional.
• This can affect an Action card played outside of the Action phase, if it is your first Action card played that turn; for example if you also had Capitalism, you could opt to play a Flag Bearer in your Buy phase as your first play of the turn, and it would still be played twice.
• Citadel can cause a Duration card to be played twice; you will have to remember that on your next turn.

Other rules clarifications

• If you're under the influence of an opponent's Enchantress, the first Action card you play will first give you +1 Card and +1 Action, and then will replay itself for its normal effect.
• If you play a card, but then somehow play a second card before you begin executing the first card's instructions, the first card is still the one Citadel replays.
• If you buy Citadel, return to your Action phase (with e.g. Villa), and then play the Villa as your first Action of the turn, Citadel will replay it.
• Citadel is getting errata to "The first time you play an Action card during each of your turns, replay it afterwards." With the new rules for playing cards, Citadel would no longer be able to replay one-shot cards like Horse; this errata will preserve that ability.

Strategy

Citadel is a fairly powerful Project and Throne Room variant that is very often worth buying, despite its high price tag. It’s usually best thought of as primarily supporting your deck control by ensuring a good start to each turn.

If the Kingdom offers a reasonably good engine, Citadel can usefully improve its reliability, and it can also significantly bolster a weak or unreliable engine. This is because Citadel’s effect is equivalent to Throning the first Action card that you play, thus functioning both as a village and as an extra copy of that card in your starting hand. When your draw cards are terminal (e.g. Hunting Grounds), the first card you play each turn—and thus the one you replay with Citadel—will usually be a village or cantrip, and so the extra +Action and extra card's worth of search space granted by Citadel to find your draw cards is often valuable. Citadel can also provide strong reliability support if you can begin the turn by playing a draw card, either a non-terminal one (e.g. Laboratory) or by using an effect like Coin of the Realm, a Villager, or a non-terminal Way on the second play, as these can allow you to continue your Action phase despite beginning it with a terminal. If you have a very reliable deck, perhaps towards the end of the game, you might prefer to use Citadel to double-play a payload card for greater impact.

When Citadel is the only source of draw or +Actions available in the Kingdom, the effect provided (e.g. by playing a cantrip at the start of your turn) is likely to be powerful enough to make this Project worthwhile, but it can’t usually enable a full-blown engine where one wasn't otherwise possible. However, increasing the number of terminals you can play per turn from one to two or drawing a single extra card for each hand can still be quite valuable. If you're employing a more money-based strategy and not aiming to draw your deck, Citadel can occasionally be helpful, as it's possible that you can derive a significant amount of benefit from double-playing whatever you have in hand—perhaps a terminal draw card or an Attack.

Buying Citadel is often a good choice the first time you can afford , usually in the midgame; it could even be worth trying to buy it earlier if there are strong enablers of -spiking such as Bounty Hunter or Expedition.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		The first time you play an Action card during each of your turns, play it again afterwards.	Renaissance	November 2018
		The first time you play an Action card during each of your turns, play it twice instead.	Renaissance (2021 printing)
		The first time you play an Action card during each of your turns, replay it afterwards.	2019 Errata	June 16, 2021 / February 18, 2022

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Chinese	堡壘 (pron. bǎolěi, lit. fortress)
Dutch	Burcht (lit. Castle)			In elk van je beurten: de eerste keer dat je een Actiekaart speelt, speel deze daarna direct nogmaals.
French	Citadelle			À chacun de vos tours, la première fois que vous jouez une carte Action, rejouez-la ensuite.
German	Zitadelle			In jedem deiner Züge: wenn du das erste Mal eine Aktionskarte ausspielst, spiele sie danach erneut aus.	(2019)
Japanese	山砦 (pron. sansai)			あなたのターン中、あなたが最初にアクションカード1枚を使用するとき、その解決後にそれを再使用する。
Russian	Цитадель (pron. tsitadyel')
Spanish	Ciudadela			La primera vez que juegas una carta de Acción en cada uno de tus turnos, la vuelves a jugar después.

Trivia

Official card art.

Preview

Citadel repeats your first Action each turn. You are going places once you have one of these.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Renaissance Previews #5: Fair, Silos, Citadel, Star Chart, Sewers, Innovation, 2018

Secret History

For strumphf's 2022 advent calendar, Donald X. went in-depth on the development of Citadel.

This also started as part of a 2-sided State, though it was the harder-to-get 2nd side. It originally replayed your first play each turn, which could be Action, Treasure or Night; this was just too confusing though, everyone just mentally thought it only worked on Actions. Spelling it out was poor, so, it just works on Actions. So much for the sneaky Throne Room for Night cards.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of Dominion: Renaissance, 2018

Other development details

Donald X. considered limiting Citadel's effect to non-Duration cards to avoid tracking difficulties, but in practice no tracking difficulties arose.