Bureaucrat
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! Print !! Digital !! Text !! Release !! Date | ! Print !! Digital !! Text !! Release !! Date | ||
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− | | {{CardVersionImage|BureaucratOld|Bureaucrat first edition}} || {{CardVersionImage|BureaucratDigitalOld|Bureaucrat from Goko / Making Fun}} || Gain a Silver card; put it on top of your deck. Each other player reveals a Victory card from his hand and puts it on his deck (or reveals a hand with no Victory cards). || Dominion || October 2008 | + | | {{CardVersionImage|BureaucratOld|Bureaucrat first edition}} || {{CardVersionImage|BureaucratDigitalOld|Bureaucrat from Goko / Making Fun}} || Gain a Silver card; put it on top of your deck. Each other player reveals a Victory card from his hand and puts it on his deck (or reveals a hand with no Victory cards). || Dominion 1st Edition || October 2008 |
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− | | {{CardVersionImage|Bureaucrat|Bureaucrat second edition}} || {{CardVersionImage|BureaucratDigital|Bureaucrat from Shuffle iT}} || Gain a Silver onto your deck. Each other player reveals a Victory card from their hand and puts it onto their deck (or reveals a hand with no Victory cards). || Dominion 2nd Edition || October 2016 | + | | {{CardVersionImage|Bureaucrat|Bureaucrat second edition}} || {{CardVersionImage|BureaucratDigital|Bureaucrat from Shuffle iT}} || Gain a Silver onto your deck. Each other player reveals a Victory card from their hand and puts it onto their deck (or reveals a hand with no Victory cards). || Dominion [[Second Edition|2nd Edition]] || October 2016 |
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Revision as of 23:05, 12 August 2017
Bureaucrat | |
---|---|
Info | |
Cost | |
Type(s) | Action - Attack |
Kingdom card? | Yes |
Set | Base |
Illustrator(s) | Matthias Catrein |
Card text | |
Gain a Silver onto your deck. Each other player reveals a Victory card from their hand and puts it onto their deck (or reveals a hand with no Victory cards). |
Bureaucrat is an Action-Attack card from the Base set. It is a gainer which lets you gain Silver cards without buying them, and puts them on top of your deck so you can use them next turn; it also slows down your opponents by making them put Victory cards from their hands back on top of their deck. However, it gives you no to spend on the turn you play it.
Contents |
FAQ
Official FAQ
- A player with no cards in their deck will have the card they put on top become the only card in their deck.
Other Rules clarifications
Strategy Article
Bureaucrat was discussed in this forum thread.
Bureaucrat is a bad card. It's bad enough that it used to be ranked the worst cost. But opinion about it has changed recently, such that now it's considered closer to mediocre than terrible. Let's minutely look at every part of Bureaucrat, and see if we can figure out why Bureaucrat is bad and why Bureaucrat is good.
The bad
- Does not directly improve your current hand.
- This is probably the biggest turn-off of Bureaucrat. When you open Smithy, you get to draw a big hand. When you open Masquerade, you get to pass junk and trash the junk you receive, all while maintaining the same hand size. When you open JoaT, you at least draw back up to 5 cards in hand while gaining that Silver. Bureaucrat gives you nothing at all. You effectively play that turn with a 4 card hand.
- What distinguishes Bureaucrat from JoaT is that the Silver is gained on top of the deck, rather than in the discard, so it's somewhat unfair to look at how it affects the current hand. To get the full picture, you have to look at the benefit added to the next hand. The problem is...
- The improvement to your next hand is weak.
- Because the Silver is gained on top of your deck, you essentially draw 4 cards from the top of your deck, then draw a Silver. At first glance, this might look like + to your next hand. But it isn't. Consider the following scenarios, from best to worst.
- 5th card from top of deck is Victory. Drawing a Silver instead of an Estate has improved your hand by +. Yay!
- 5th card from top of deck is Copper. Your next hand improved in value by +. Well, better than nothing...
- 5th card from top is Silver. Next hand has not improved in value. Effectively slows down your reshuffle while doing nothing
- 5th card from top is Gold. Next hand value -. Well that sucks.
- 5th card from the top is Platinum ! Your hand just decreased by -! Seriously Sucks!
- 5th card from top was an engine component you needed to go off this turn. You kinda deserve this one for playing Bureaucrat in an engine deck.
- I haven't accounted for the hands two turns, three turns, etc. after you play Bureaucrat, or cases where you want weaker hand values (i.e. you'd rather have / than /), but overall my feeling is that on average the net effect is much weaker than a straight up +.
- Because the Silver is gained on top of your deck, you essentially draw 4 cards from the top of your deck, then draw a Silver. At first glance, this might look like + to your next hand. But it isn't. Consider the following scenarios, from best to worst.
- Engine possibilities are dulled down.
- Straightforward. You're gaining more money, which reduces the chance of engine components colliding. Except it's not straightforward. More on that later.
So, if Bureaucrat has all these downsides, why play it?
The good
- You gain a Silver instead of getting straight up +
- Sure, the marginal benefit this shuffle is not very good, but the point of Bureaucrat is that it offers a way to pick up extra Silver on the cheap. The benefits of Bureaucrat increases over time. Consider the money density contributed by Bureaucrat. With 0 plays, it adds + per card. 1 play boosts it to per card. 2 plays brings it to 4/3 per card. The more you play Bureaucrat, the more it improves your money density. However, tellingly, it never quite manages to bring it up to per card that just buying Silver would do. It'll get asymptotically close to , but it won't reach /card. But if your deck is satisfied with not-quite /card over many cards, Bureaucrat gets appealing.
- There's also an interesting engine dynamic to this: if you can gain money from Bureaucrat, you don't have to spend buys picking up the Silver needed to buy engine components. There's going to be a point where Bureaucrat will become a hindrance, but early on picking up a Bureaucrat on an engine board could give you the edge to build up faster. This works out best in a game with early and heavy trashing, where Bureaucrat Silver-gaining can happen even if you turn your current hands into messes that can't buy anything. Trash late and the economy sustaining effects won't matter. Little or weak trashing will cause Bureaucrat to negate most of the benefits of trashing you'll get. This early + strong trashing leaves 2 cards that could synergize: Chapel and Steward. All other trashers will only trash 1 card, or cost or more. However, Steward will provide the money you need anyways (which is why Steward feels so useful, now that I think about it), so Chapel is pretty much your only option for this scenario.
- The attack slows down your opponent.
- Let's get this out of the way first: You aren't going to chain Bureaucrats. If you can reliably chain Bureaucrats, there are just sooooo many better actions you could be chaining in a deck that manages to keep firing while gaining large amounts of Silver. So, we'll only consider the one play of Bureaucrat.
- Similarly to how Bureaucrat affects you, playing Bureaucrat does not affect your opponent's turn. S/he really didn't need that Victory card to play their hand. Bureaucrat turns your opponent's next hand into a 4 card hand, as a mini-Ghost Ship.
- A 4 card hand isn't a particularly strong attack. So, when is Bureaucrat's attack useful? Well, it's primarily useful when it actually hits. In most games, the odds of Bureaucrat hitting a Victory card decrease sharply. So, the attack gets better when your opponent does a strategy that gets Victory cards fast. Hybrid cards, Gardens, and Silk Road come to mind.
- It's also useful when Victory cards are good to have in hand. The main three cases for this are when you want to play a hybrid card, when you have a trasher in hand, and when you have something like Vault, Cellar, or Warehouse to change a useless card in hand into a benefit. However, it's worth noting that you have just as good a chance to push a green card from a hand that doesn't want it to a hand that does.
In conclusion, Bureaucrat isn't for every game. In Big Money, there's usually a much better card to get over Bureaucrat: it takes Bureaucrat 4 plays to contribute the 1.6/card baseline Province decks want, and by then the game should wrapping up. In engine games, Bureaucrat can be useful, but usually requires some good trashing support, which has the unfortunate tendency to make the attack part of Bureaucrat not work. The case where it seems to shine the most is in alternative VP strategies. The lower money density doesn't matter as much, the smoothing out effect over multiple cards is a strong point, and the attack is relevant for much of the game. But apart from those games, Bureaucrat just doesn't cut it.
Bureaucrat, like other gainers costing below , can make a reasonable Gardens strategy, but it is markedly weaker than the strong Gardens enablers like Ironworks or Workshop.
It's technically possible to "pin" the opponent to the same 0-card hand if they have five Victory cards in their deck and you play five Bureaucrats each turn, but this is impractical outside of contrived puzzle-like situations.
Synergies/Combos
- Gardens. Bureaucrat+Gardens is a playable Gardens strategy, albeit one that wants to get a bunch of Silvers and be able to afford Duchies and even Provinces by the end.
- Duke. Bureaucrat's Silvers are pretty good for getting up to for Dukes and Duchies.
- The presence of alt-VP cards like Harem or Nobles makes this card's attack more likely to hit mid-game.
- Alt-VP strategies in general. Bureaucrat becomes more powerful against an opponent who is buying green cards early.
- Engine games with Chapel. Bureaucrat can act as a way to gain a couple Silver while trashing, allowing you to focus on buying engine pieces.
- Opponents going for strategies that are helped by Victory cards, such as a Crossroads deck
Antisynergies
- Trashers or remodeling cards, which will quickly clear out opponents' Estates, making the attack less likely to hit.
- Engines with slower trashing than Chapel, which are typically harmed by the influx of Silver.
- Most Big Money boards. There's usually a stronger alternative, and the Bureaucrat attack will do little past early game.
- Playing with Shelters (Dark Ages) instead of the three starting Estates.
Versions
English versions
Digital | Text | Release | Date | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Gain a Silver card; put it on top of your deck. Each other player reveals a Victory card from his hand and puts it on his deck (or reveals a hand with no Victory cards). | Dominion 1st Edition | October 2008 | ||
Gain a Silver onto your deck. Each other player reveals a Victory card from their hand and puts it onto their deck (or reveals a hand with no Victory cards). | Dominion 2nd Edition | October 2016 |
Other language versions
Language | Name | Text | Release | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Chinese | 官員 (pron. guānyuán, lit. administrator) | |||
Czech | Úředník (lit. official) | |||
Dutch | Bureaucraat | |||
Finnish | Byrokraatti | |||
French | Bureaucrate | |||
German | Bürokrat | Nimm dir ein Silber und lege es verdeckt auf deinen Nachziehstapel. Jeder Mitspieler muss eine Punktekarte aus seiner Hand aufdecken und sie verdeckt auf seinen Nachziehstapel legen. Hat ein Spieler keine Punktekarte auf der Hand, muss er seine Kartenhand vorzeigen. | Dominion (HiG) | |
German | Bürokrat | Nimm dir ein Silber vom Vorrat und lege es verdeckt auf deinen Nachziehstapel. Jeder Mitspieler muss eine beliebige Punktekarte aus seiner Hand aufdecken und sie verdeckt auf seinen Nachziehstapel legen. Spieler, die keine Punktekarte auf der Hand haben, müssen ihre Kartenhand offen vorzeigen. | Dominion (ASS) | |
Hungarian | Hivatalnok (lit. clerk) | |||
Italian | Burocrate | |||
Japanese | 役人 (pron. yakunin, lit. government official) | 銀貨1枚を山札の上に獲得する。他のプレイヤーは全員、手札の勝利点カード1枚を公開し、山札の上に置く (勝利点カードがない場合、 手札を公開する)。 | ||
Korean | 관료 (pron. gwanlyo) | |||
Norwegian | Byråkrat | |||
Polish | Urzędnik (lit. official) | |||
Romanian | Birocrat | |||
Russian | Чиновник (pron. chinovnik, lit. official) | |||
Spanish | Burócrata |
Trivia
Card Art
Secret History
For a long time the main set had an attack that read "trash the top card of each other player's deck." As related in the BGN interview, it had 3 big problems: 1) adds way too much randomness, 2) can result in everyone stuck with a 5-card deck, 3) is otherwise weak. When it left during development, I tried replacing it with an expansion card called Militia: "Each other player reveals their top card. If no-one revealed Copper, trash those cards. Otherwise, gain a Silver card." This fixed the weird-game-state problem of the previous card, and was less random, but still could make for some really unfun moments. Also it had a weird interaction with Moat, the way Moat worked at the time. It made you need to resolve the attack in slo-mo. Anyway it was no good. We quickly playtested a bunch of variations on Militia and the previous card, before I realized we could go with a discard-based attack instead, and that would make Valerie a lot happier - she hated the Militia variants.
The main set already had a discard-based attack. I had started with a 3rd expansion card, Bureaucracy: "+. Each other player puts a card from his hand on top of his deck." So it turns out there's a basic problem with discard-based attacks in Dominion. Consider "each other player discards a card." If that gets played once against you in a round, it tends to do nothing at all. Twice and it ranges from mildly annoying to annoying. Three times and it's devastating. It just nukes your turn. Now, you can get the effect three times by say having each opponent in a 4-player game play it once. You don't even need Villages and Throne Rooms. This effect naturally ranges from incredibly weak to incredibly broken.
There are solutions of course. My first solution was to go with "each other player discards down to 3 cards." That card, with +, made it into the set with the name Bureaucracy.
Now that I needed an attack to replace Militia, I took Bureaucracy a different direction. I kept the Silver-gaining of Militia, but had it go on top of your deck to make it more interesting, and went with a discard effect that only hit Victory cards, as another way to limit how devastating the discard can be. I used the "on top of your deck" part of the original Bureaucracy to make it more different from the card then called Bureaucracy. We already had art commissioned for a card called Militia, so this card was called Militia.
The original Bureaucracy had a flavor justification - putting a card back is like, you know, red tape. Bureaucracy. Slowing you down. So at this point the titles of the two cards were reversed. So we swapped them. Then, the other attacks were all guys, so Bureaucracy became Bureaucrat.