Church

Church
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action - Duration
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Promo
Illustrator(s)	Julien Delval
Card text
+1 Action Set aside up to 3 cards from your hand face down. At the start of your next turn, put them into your hand, then you may trash a card from your hand.

Church is a promotional Action-Duration card. It lets you save cards in your hand for next turn and is also a trasher.

FAQ

Official FAQ

There is no official FAQ for Church.

Other Rules clarifications

• You may set aside zero, one, two, or three cards from your hand. Put them face down; you may look at them.
• No matter how many cards you set aside, you may trash a card at the start of your next turn and Church is discarded at the end of that turn.
• The card you trash can be a card you had set aside, or a card that was already in your hand.
• If you play multiple Churches (or one Church multiple times such as via Throne Room), you may set aside multiple batches of up to three cards. What happens on your next turn is this: you put one batch of set-aside cards in hand, then trash, then put the next batch of set-aside cards in hand, then trash. You can choose which batch of set-aside cards you put in hand first.

Strategy

Church is a useful trasher with a strong auxiliary effect. Its ability to save cards for your next hand means it remains relevant throughout the game, providing flexible support for many different kinds of deck at various stages.

Church is often a good choice in the opening; it’s not unusual to add a second one early on, or even to consider opening with a pair of them. It’s not among the faster trashers --- as a Duration, it misses certain shuffles, as well as trashing only one card at a time --- but it’s good at targeting the cards you most want to trash (because you can choose from those in your starting hand plus those you’ve saved from last turn using the Church). Additionally, Church can provide temporary thinning by keeping junk out of some shuffles; this can be particularly powerful in the early game, when you can set aside a substantial portion of your deck. Although it’s a stop card, it’s non-terminal, and can mitigate early terminal collisions as well as offering some control over the distribution of across your early turns. Depending on what you want to buy, this can take the form of smoothing (by carrying an excess Copper or two over to your next hand) or spiking (by saving all or most of one hand’s payload in order to afford something expensive on the next turn). In Kingdoms with poor alternative deck control options, these functions remain helpful throughout the game.

During the course of building an engine, Church’s primary role often shifts towards helping you set up your next turn. Saving stop cards such as Province makes you less likely to dud, while saving draw cards or villages can help ensure you have the necessary ingredients for a good start to your next turn. This constitutes an especially strong synergy in the case of Shepherd and Crossroads, which Church can set up to draw reliably by ensuring that they collide with plenty of Victory cards. Church is also a convenient enabler of more specific collisions (e.g. Tournament with Province) and certain start-of-turn effects such as that of Mastermind or Transmogrify, for which it’s beneficial to hand-pick your target rather than hope for a favourable draw. Towards the end of the game, a pair of Churches can become a way to keep several Victory cards out of your deck each turn; this mitigates the usual reduction in reliability associated with greening.

It’s most common to play Church towards the end of your turn, once you’ve finished drawing and planned out your buys, enabling an informed choice of what to save for your next hand. Occasionally, you may be able to take advantage of the hand size reduction provided by a mid-turn Church play, e.g. with draw-to-x or a Menagerie or Diplomat activation; however, consistently setting aside multiple cards with Church is likely to impede your next turn when using this kind of draw.

Church won’t be your primary source of thinning if there’s a stronger trasher in the Kingdom, such as Chapel, and you’re therefore less likely to prioritise acquiring it. However, its versatility means that one or two may still be useful. The most likely case for skipping Church entirely is in a Kingdom that offers a strong engine with powerful trashing that moves towards a short greening phase, e.g. a megaturn.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		+1 Action Set aside up to 3 cards from your hand face down. At the start of your next turn, put them into your hand, then you may trash a card from your hand.	Church	2019

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
German	Schweriner Dom (lit. Schwerin Cathedral)			+1 Aktion Lege bis zu 3 deiner Handkarten mit der Bildseite nach unten zur Seite. Nimm sie zu Beginn deines nächsten Zuges auf deine Hand, danach darfst du eine deiner Handkarten entsorgen.	(2019)
Japanese	教会 (pron. kyōkai)

Trivia

Official card art.

This card was designed together with Captain on request by ASS to commemorate the victors of the "Jubiläumsmeisterschaft" (jubilee championship), organized 2018 in Germany and Austria to celebrate ten years of Dominion. The church shown in the art is Schwerin Cathedral. It represents Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the winner of a 12-month competition taking place 2018.

Secret History

Church was an early card in Nocturne. That version set aside up to 2 cards, and trashed up to 2 cards. We enjoyed it, but it was too powerful, and also there was a lot of competition for trashing in Nocturne. Other cards made it in instead. So then we needed a promo for a tournament Altenburger was running, that would have a winning province of Germany. What landmark, that there would be lots of in Germany, would be recognizable from medieval times? Hey, how about a church? That suggested a trasher, and I remembered this card. Changing the numbers to 3 set aside and 1 trashed fixed up the power level while also shifting the focus of the card. Now it's this way you can set up a turn, and hey it's also a trasher. Altenburger had people vote on which church, after a province won, and they picked Schwerin Cathedral. The German version of the card is called Schweriner Dom. This particular church changed a lot since medieval times - they built that tower. The art shows it as it exists today, not as it did then, because it makes it the recognizable thing and no-one minds that kind of anachronism, no-one I say.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of the Dominion Promos