Pearl Diver

Pearl Diver
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Seaside
Illustrator(s)	Maura Kalusky
Card text
+1 Card +1 Action Look at the bottom card of your deck. You may put it on top.

Pearl Diver is an Action card from Seaside. It is a cantrip, and thus it rarely hurts to have it in your deck, but its ability to move cards from the bottom of your deck to the top rarely helps very much either.

It was removed from the second edition of Seaside and replaced with Sea Chart which is a stronger cantrip because it can sometimes act as non-terminal draw.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• First draw a card and get +1 Action; then look at the bottom card of your deck, shuffling first if needed.
• If you choose to put the bottom card on top of your deck, be sure not to look at the card above it.

Strategy

Before it was removed, Pearl Diver was a cheap but weak cantrip. While it does not usually hurt your deck, it doesn’t provide much value either so you will mostly gain it when you cannot buy more expensive cards and there are no alternatives available.

Pearl Diver is most commonly useful for various purposes where cheap cantrips are generally applicable:

• As a means to increase the density of Action cards in your deck without affecting your deck control. This is useful when scoring with effects such as Vineyard, or for drawing with effects such as Piazza or Scrying Pool.
• As cheap targets for on-buy effects such as those of Goons and Merchant Guild, or to facilitate a three-pile ending.
• As a cheap non-terminal target for Throne Room variants and Adventures tokens (such as from Pathfinding).
• As a cheap way to access powerful Ways such as Way of the Horse.

The option to inspect and topdeck the bottom card of your deck is generally low impact, as even at its best it will never offer an improvement over simply having better shuffle luck. Pearl Diver may occasionally allow you to make sure an important card does not miss the shuffle, but in the early stages of the game where this is important, Pearl Diver has some opportunity cost and the most likely outcome is that you’ll simply look at a junk card. Pearl Diver is an option on a / opening split because it nearly guarantees that the other card bought in the opening does not miss the reshuffle. However, given the low impact of the bottomdeck inspection, many other cheap cantrips (e.g., Hamlet) are overall preferable for the use cases outlined above because they offer a better additional effect.

External strategy articles

Note: Article(s) below are by individual authors and may not represent the community's current views on cards, but may provide more in-depth information or give historical perspective. Caveat emptor.

• Chris is me's 2016 article

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		+1 Card +1 Action Look at the bottom card of your deck. You may put it on top.	Seaside	October 2009
		+1 Card +1 Action Look at the bottom card of your deck. You may put it on top.	Seaside (2017 printing)	July 2017

Other language versions

Most languages translate this card using the title of the Bizet opera, The Pearl Fishers.

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Chinese	採珠人 (pron. cǎizhūrén)
Czech	Lovec perel
Dutch	Parelduiker
Finnish	Helmenkalastaja
French	Plongeur de perles
German	Perlentaucher			+1 Karte +1 Aktion Sieh dir die unterste Karte deines Nachziehstapels an. Du darfst diese auf deinen Nachziehstapel legen.	(Nachdruck 2018)
German	Perlentaucher			+1 Karte +1 Aktion Sieh die unterste Karte deines Nachziehstapels an. Du darfst jene auf deinen Nachziehstapel legen.	(Nachdruck 2021)
Italian	Pescatore di Perle
Japanese	真珠採り (pron. shinju-tori)			+1 カードを引く +1 アクション 山札の一番下のカ一ドを見る。それを一番上に置いてもよい。
Korean	진주조개잡이 (pron. jinjujogaejab-i)
Polish	Poławiacz pereł			+1 karta +1 akcja Podejrzyj kartę ze spodu swojej talii. Możesz położyć ją na wierzchu talii.	(2016)
Russian	Ловец Жемчуга (pron. lovyets zhyemchuga)			+1 Карта +1 Действие Посмотрите на нижнюю карту вашей колоды. Вы можете положить её наверх.
Spanish	Pescador de Perlas			+1 Carta +1 Acción Mira la última carta de tu mazo. Puedes ponerla encima del mazo.

Trivia

Official card art.

Card Art

The art depicts playtester Wei-Hwa Huang. He won a tournament at the Gathering of Friends where being depicted was the prize.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, 'Art Trivia', November 2012

Secret History

Borrowed from a later expansion to replace Haven. Nothing changed during testing but the name.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of the Seaside Cards, June 2011

Why don't more cards interact with your bottom card?

When you have multiple cards that interact with the top, they can interact with each other. The same applies to the bottom, but because it's wonkier, there will be fewer of those cards, so it's less likely you will see those interactions. So, there's not much point to doing much with it. Stash originally went on top rather than letting you choose, and at the same time there was a   card that went on the bottom. I also had a version of Pearl Diver that had you look at the top and choose to put it on the bottom or not.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Interview with Donald X., May 2014

I also had, take the top and the bottom, put one on top and one on the bottom. I did not test versions that involved discarding one of the cards. There's probably room there for another card, but I had Pearl Diver, and it's no star, so it's not like I was looking to do something especially similar.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Interview with Donald X., May 2014

Retrospective

Pearl Diver is not prized, but it looks reasonable to me, and as I have said many times, if I made all cards better by making them maximally complex, the game would have no players.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, What Donald X. Might Do With a Dominion Time Machine, June 2012

[Pearl Diver and Navigator] would be ones I'd replace, except, I couldn't, just as I couldn't rename Harem; they depict real people. Why not offer those real people new better art on their new card, you ask? That sounds good to me, and I thought it would get Harem renamed, but it didn't.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Dominion and Intrigue second editions, September 2016

Second Edition Removal

Pearl Diver is inoffensive but also very low value. You want it when a cantrip that does nothing is useful.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Seaside 2E Previews 2, May 2022