Jester

Jester
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action - Attack
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Cornucopia & Guilds
Illustrator(s)	Jeff Himmelman
Card text
+ Each other player discards the top card of his deck. If it's a Victory card he gains a Curse. Otherwise either he gains a copy of the discarded card or you do, your choice.

Jester is an Action-Attack card from Cornucopia. When played, it makes each other player discard the top card of their deck, and either give them a copy of it, gain you a copy of it, or give out a Curse. It can thus be either a junker or a gainer, depending on your opponents' luck!

FAQ

Official FAQ

• Each player with no cards in his deck shuffles his discard pile in order to get a card to discard. If he still has no cards, he does not discard one.
• For each player who discarded a card, if it is a Victory card, he gains a Curse, and otherwise, you choose: either that player gains a copy of the card, or you do.
• The gained copies and Curses come from the Supply and are put into the discard piles of the players who gain them.
• If a card is revealed for which there are no copies in the Supply, no one gains a copy of it.
• This Attack hits other players in turn order, which can matter when some piles are low.
• A card with multiple types, one of which is Victory (such as Nobles from Dominion: Intrigue) is a Victory card.

Strategy Article

There's no strategy article for Jester.

Jester is a middle-of-the-range attack, sort of like a combination of Smugglers and Witch or Ambassador. It can sometimes copy opponents' good cards—maybe you can make them skip their first Platinum and get to use it before them!—but can sometimes skip their bad cards. It supports Cornucopia's variety theme by not letting you choose which cards are offered to you to gain. The card's uncertainty weakens it, but the attack's dependence on deck composition also makes it shape strategy in games where it is a good buy. It synergizes with top-deck inspection like Spy or Scrying Pool, but not necessarily enough to focus your strategy around.

Like Thief, it becomes significantly more powerful in 3- or 4-player, when you have a much higher chance of getting an expensive card from at least one of your opponents.

Jester can be a bit of a swingy card. Early on, hitting their Estates makes it function like a Curser, but its effect is weaker if it hits Copper and even weaker when it hits cards like Silver.

Because the attack is strongest when it hits Victory cards, Jester tends to be stronger on boards with desirable Alt-VP and against opponents playing an Alt-VP strategy, like Silk Road or Duke/Duchy. Jester also makes Great Hall much less attractive, as it provides a downside to gaining or buying Great Halls. Although the attack is much weaker than Mountebank overall, the two cards share in common the fact that the Curse pile tends to be slow to run out under these cards. Jester tends to be a poor buy when other cursing attacks are on the board.

Jester has the distinction of being one of the few ways you can gain $P cards without having a Potion, if you get lucky enough to find one on top of your opponent's deck.

Dependence on opponent's strategy

The attack becomes especially weak late in the game if your opponent is pursuing a different strategy from yours. For example, if you are playing big money against an engine, Jester could hit terminal actions which you do not want in your deck, but which you also do not want your opponent to gain a copy of. Similarly, playing an engine against a big money opponent, Jester hitting Silver places you in the dilemma of gaining a Silver, which might actually harm your deck, vs. having your opponent gain one and benefit from it.

Synergies/Combos

• Spy, Scrying Pool
• More than 2 players.
• Alt-VP
• Fortune Teller

Antisynergies

• Smugglers. Presumably you want to, at some point, follow your own strategy instead of duplicating ALL your opponents' cards!
• Other attacks.
• Opponents playing a different strategy from yours, one that involves cards you do not want to gain.

Alternate versions

• 
  Digital version for Dominion Online
• 
  German Version by HiG
• 
  German Version by ASS

Trivia

Official card art.

In other languages

• Czech: Šašek
• Dutch: Nar
• Finnish: Narri
• French: Bouffon
• German: Harlekin
• Italian: Giullare
• Japanese: 道化師 (pron. dōkeshi, lit. clown)
• Polish: Błazen
• Spanish: Bufón

Secret History

Back when, there were cards like "trash the top card of each other player's deck." They died due to 1) being weak (hitting Copper all the time), 2) being swingy (hitting your Copper and someone else's Province), and 3) possibly reducing everyone's deck to 5 cards with no escape. In those days, Alchemy had the opposite card - "Each other player reveals the top card of his deck. Gain a copy of one of those cards." This was also weak and swingy, and died around the same time. I always had plans to fix it up though, and with Cornucopia got around to doing it. Jester lets you give them the card, so you don't mind hitting Copper as much, and it gives out Curses for VP cards, so as not to be so swingy. Of course you can gain multiple cards, which makes it swingy again. Jester gets crazy with five players and well if a card's going to get crazy with five players, it might as well be a fun one.

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