Cornucopia

Cornucopia
Info
Type	Small Expansion
Icon
Cards	150
Kingdom	132 (13 sets)
Randomizers	13
Other Card(s)	5 Prize cards
Theme(s)	Variety
Release	June 2011
Cover artist	Alayna Danner
Official Rulebook	PDF

Cornucopia is the fifth Dominion expansion, released in June 2011. The basic theme of the set is cards that either create or reward variety in your deck and hand. It is a small expansion. The box contains 13 sets of Kingdom cards and is popular for its focus on engine-friendly cards. It is no longer sold as a separate item, instead being paired with Guilds in a standard box. It got paired also with Alchemy in other languages.

Contents

Kingdom cards

• : Hamlet
• : Fortune Teller, Menagerie
• : Farming Village, Horse Traders, Remake, Tournament, Young Witch
• : Harvest, Horn of Plenty, Hunting Party, Jester
• : Fairgrounds

Prizes

The 5 cards in the Prize pile are unique.

• : Bag of Gold, Diadem, Followers, Princess, Trusty Steed

Additional materials

• Bane card (only included in the revised mixed box)

Additional rules

• “In play” - Action cards and Treasure cards played face-up to a play area are in play until they are moved somewhere else—usually until they are discarded during a Clean-up phase. Only played cards are in play; set aside cards, trashed cards, cards in the Supply, and cards in hands, decks, and discard piles are not in play. Prizes that no-one has gained are not in play. Reaction abilities like Horse Traders' do not put those cards into play. Duration cards (from Dominion: Seaside), once played, remain in play until the turn they are discarded.
• A player may play his Treasure cards in any order and may choose not to play some (or even all) of the Treasure cards he has in his hand. During the Buy phase, a player must play all of the Treasures he wishes to play before he buys any cards, even if he has +Buys; he cannot play more Treasures after Buying a card.
• Young Witch adds an extra Kingdom card pile to the game. This extra pile is just like the other piles; if it is empty that counts for the game end condition, the cards in it can be bought and can be gained directly via cards like Horn of Plenty, etc. It is part of the Supply.
• There are five Prizes: Bag of Gold, Diadem, Followers, Princess, and Trusty Steed. These cards are never part of the Supply. That's the only new rule for Prizes, but it has various consequences. If the Prizes run out, that does not count towards the game end condition. The Prizes may not be bought, or gained via cards like Horn of Plenty; they may only be gained via the card Tournament, or via cards that gain cards other than from the Supply (such as Thief from Dominion). Ambassador (from Dominion: Seaside) cannot return Prizes to their pile. Trashed Prizes go to the trash pile, like other cards; they do not return to the Prize pile. When using Black Market, do not put Prizes in the Black Market deck. Prizes cannot be bought, but have a cost of , which matters for cards like Remake.
• A number of cards in Cornucopia care about cards being different. "Differently named" cards are simply cards with different names (like the Prizes) - they aren't copies of the same card. "Duplicate" cards are cards that have the same name - two copies of the same card.

Flavor text

Autumn. It seemed like the summer would never end, but that fortune teller was right. It's over. Autumn, the time of the harvest. Agriculture has advanced significantly in recent years, ever since the discovery of the maxim, "leaves of three, let it be." Autumn, a time of celebration. The peasants have spent a hard week scything hay in the fields, but tonight the festivities begin, starting with a sumptuous banquet of roast hay. Then, the annual nose-stealing competition. Then you have two jesters, one who always lies, one who always tells the truth, both hilariously. This celebration will truly have something for everyone.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Rio Grande Games

Mechanics

This is the 5th expansion to the game of Dominion. It adds 13 new Kingdom cards to Dominion, plus 5 unique cards. The central theme is variety; there are cards that reward you for having a variety of cards in your deck, in your hand, and in play, as well cards that help you get that variety.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Rio Grande Games

Cards gallery

Kingdom cards

Sort by NameSort by Cost

Prizes

Sort by NameSort by Cost

Impact

Cornucopia was the first set to introduce special cards that are not in the Supply that can only be gained by the use of a particular Kingdom card (in this case, the Prizes); Dark Ages, Adventures, Nocturne, and Menagerie would later follow up on this theme.

Engines

Cornucopia is filled with cards which enable strong engine building. Some of these include:

• Farming Village: A simple village that always reaps a treasure or action card.
• Hamlet: A cheap pseudo-village capable of providing extra buys or actions.
• Horn of Plenty: Provides an easy way to gain cards as well as the capability of producing megaturns.
• Hunting Party: Enables very simple Hunting Party + X engines.
• Menagerie: A centerpiece of some of the most fun engines to play, Menagerie is a cantrip which serves as a great counter to hand size reduction attacks.
• Tournament: The card itself is a useful early game cantrip, and the Prizes are all quite valuable in most engines.

Randomness

Though overall a well received set, Cornucopia features a "swingy" card which can cause frustration among players.

• Tournament: Because of the power of the Tournament prizes, the first player to win a prize is often able to build on that to win further prizes and/or the game. Even skilled play can sometimes be undone by a lucky or well timed draw.

Theme

Game designer Donald X. offered some insight into some themes of the set here.

• 5 care about variety: Menagerie, Harvest, Horn of Plenty, Hunting Party, Fairgrounds
• 4 provide variety: Remake, Tournament, Young Witch, Jester
• 4 off-theme: Hamlet, Fortune Teller, Farming Village, Horse Traders

Alternate versions

• 
  Polish version (by Bard)

Trivia

Official box art.

Dale Yu leaked photos of the Cornucopia Kingdom cards, which were discussed here.

Cornucopia is the only set not to have any artwork done by Matthias Catrein, although he still did the card layout. Alchemy and Guilds both have no Kingdom cards illustrated by him, but Catrein did the artwork for the Potion symbol (), and the artwork for the Guilds box.

In other languages

• Czech: Roh hojnosti
• Dutch: Overvloed (lit. abundance)
• Finnish: Elonkorjuu (lit. harvest)
• French: Abondance (lit. abundance)
• German: Reiche Ernte (lit. rich harvest)
• Italian: Cornucopia
• Japanese: 収穫祭 (pron. shūkaku-sai, lit. harvest festival)
• Polish: Róg Obfitości (lit. horn of plenty)
• Russian: Изобилие (pron. izobiliye, lit. abundance)
• Spanish: Cornucopia

Secret history

Alchemy was originally a large set, which when I made it meant it was 20 cards. I didn't count Potion. When Dominion itself was finalized, it stole whatever cards it wanted from future sets, including Gardens and Library and Festival from Alchemy. And some cards got stolen for other sets too, as I worked on them, turning former 20-card sets into 25-card sets and getting rid of dud cards. Whatever; Alchemy was last, I would get around to fixing it up eventually. It still had the Potions stuff, and I penciled in a "hand" theme for what the rest of the set would do. Cards that involved your hand. This fit with some cards that had been pushed back to be fixed up and some other homeless cards that I liked.

Around the time Prosperity was wrapping up and Seaside was getting printed, it turned out the publishers wanted small sets, could I make one please, and also, could it come out next (pushing Prosperity back). The way to get something fastest was to have it already done. Alchemy was ideal, as it had a hunk of the right size to break off of it, and it was in tatters anyway from me never getting around to working on it. I took the Potions stuff and tweaked it into a small expansion. So now there was a list of existing cards, plus untested ideas, waiting to turn into a hand-themed small set for a year after Alchemy.

When I got around to working on Cornucopia, I went with the hand theme, adding more cards that fit it, polishing up what I had, and adding cards that didn't fit it too, because what, they can't all be on-theme. And we started playtesting it.

It turned out that the "hand" theme was invisible. It made the cards play well together, but no-one recognized that it was the theme of the set. It was just not distinct enough.

The set at the time had Fairgrounds and Menagerie in it, and people would incorrectly guess that that was the theme, and that there just wasn't much of it. "Variety" sounded like a good theme, so I ran with it. Some of the hand stuff that wasn't also variety-related left, and I added more variety stuff. This theme was recognizable and worked out and well there it is.

In the end the set has only two cards that are mutated versions of cards originally in the large Alchemy set - Jester and Diadem. Some of the other cards started in other sets, and some are original to Cornucopia.

Those publishers that wanted small expansions presumably wanted them so that people who didn't want to pay the same for an expansion as for the main game could get them. And if such people exist then they don't have the large expansions. Well Alchemy is not ideal as the only expansion you have. I mean it's just so exotic. I felt like these publishers would have preferred something less exotic. Alchemy was all they could have in the time frame it was wanted, but I had plenty of time here, so this expansion tries to be more reasonable as an expansion for someone who doesn't have many expansions.

Other outtakes:

- For a while, one of the stand-out cards in the set was , "Gain Silvers to your hand until you have 5 cards in hand." Only not with that exact wording. We argued a bunch about the wording before it died, which was a lesson in how not to use time. Anyway it looks exciting, right? But some games you can't get rid of cards from your hand easily enough (or at all), so it's just a poor man's Explorer. It initially dazzled people, but I don't think anyone missed it when it left. I do a very small number of narrow cards that are cool when you can pull them off, and this wasn't good enough to be one of those.

- Before Fairgrounds, I tried a VP card with an alternate cost. Instead of paying for it, you could trash two Action cards from your hand. You don't want to trash your Action cards though, so this didn't end up being very interesting.

- I had a Village/Warehouse that cared about variety. "+2 Actions. +1 Card per differently named card you have in play, then discard that many cards." It was fine? It just wasn't that exciting or different.

- I tried an attack that had you put a card from your hand on your deck unless you revealed a hand with no duplicates. It was a cute Moat condition but did not work out.

- Prior to Young Witch, I had an attack that made everyone else discard Silver unless they revealed a particular card, which was either the cheapest card out, or a specific randomly determined card. Like I said under Young Witch, it was simplest to combine the random-Moat idea with the add-a-pile idea.

- There was a card, +, name a type, dig for it, put it on your deck. It cost . You can almost always name a type that isn't in your deck if you want, so it's "strictly better" than Chancellor. This really bothers some people (Anthony Rubbo being one of them). It had to be worse in some way and I didn't want it to be worse.

- There was a card that had you play another card, replacing all +'s in its text with whatever +'s you wanted. Besides rules issues, it was weak and narrow.

- Another card gave you increased card selection for the rest of the turn. "+1 Card +1 Action. While this is in play, when you draw a card, first look at the top card of your deck, and you may discard it." It was slow and got crazy quickly.

- I tried a card that conditionally let the other players draw a card, as a penalty, based on how much variety they had in hand.

- There was another Prize that didn't work out. "+2 Actions +. When you discard this from play, you may put it on your deck." It was crazy.

- I tried both Remodel and Workshop in versions that put the card you gained into your hand. The Remodel was just broken. For a while the Workshop looked promising, but well here it is in the outtakes section.

- I tried five different versions of a card that had been too powerful in Prosperity. None of them worked out but I guess I still haven't quite given up on it.

- Herbalist was in this set briefly.

- There is only so much space in 13 cards. There was a popular card that I decided would be better in a later set, so I moved it there. There was an attack that didn't quite work out, so I took it out, then fixed it up but could not add it back in. It too is in a later set. There was another card that started in Intrigue, moved to Alchemy, was played a lot here, turned out to be too strong, left, and then got fixed up for a later set.

True story!

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of the Cornucopia cards, 2011

Retrospective

Well I am pretty pleased with this one, but can probably still find something to poke at.

I guess my top thing is, it would be nice to have another card that really makes you want a variety of cards. Just to push the theme a little more.

Sweet set, no lie.

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

Recommended sets of 10

Note that the sets listed here are only the ones published before Guilds was combined with Cornucopia. For more recent recommended sets, see Cornucopia & Guilds Recommended sets of 10.

Cornucopia & Dominion

Bounty of the Hunt [images]
	Harvest			Horn of Plenty			Hunting Party			Menagerie			Tournament
	Cellar			Festival			Militia			Moneylender			Smithy

Bad Omens [images]
	Fortune Teller			Hamlet			Horn of Plenty			Jester			Remake
	Adventurer			Bureaucrat			Laboratory			Spy			Throne Room

The Jester's Workshop [images]
	Fairgrounds			Farming Village			Horse Traders			Jester			Young Witch
	Feast			Laboratory			Market			Remodel			Workshop
Landscapes and Additional Cards
	Bane pile: Chancellor

Cornucopia & Intrigue

Last Laughs [images]
	Farming Village			Harvest			Horse Traders			Hunting Party			Jester
	Minion			Nobles			Pawn			Steward			Swindler

The Spice of Life [images]
	Fairgrounds			Horn of Plenty			Remake			Tournament			Young Witch
	Coppersmith			Courtyard			Great Hall			Mining Village			Tribute
Landscapes and Additional Cards
	Bane pile: Wishing Well

Small Victories [images]
	Fortune Teller			Hamlet			Hunting Party			Remake			Tournament
	Conspirator			Duke			Great Hall			Harem			Pawn

Cornucopia & Hinterlands

Blue Harvest [images]
	Hamlet			Horn of Plenty			Horse Traders			Jester			Tournament
	Fool's Gold			Mandarin			Noble Brigand			Trader			Tunnel

Traveling Circus [images]
	Fairgrounds			Farming Village			Hunting Party			Jester			Menagerie
	Border Village			Embassy			Fool's Gold			Nomad Camp			Oasis

Cornucopia & Dark Ages

Dark Carnival [images]
	Fairgrounds			Hamlet			Horn of Plenty			Menagerie			Band of Misfits
	Cultist			Fortress			Hermit			Junk Dealer			Knights
Landscapes and Additional Cards
	Ruins			Shelters

To the Victor [images]
	Harvest			Hunting Party			Remake			Tournament			Bandit Camp
	Counterfeit			Death Cart			Marauder			Pillage			Sage
Landscapes and Additional Cards
	Ruins			Shelters