Poacher

Poacher
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Base
Illustrator(s)	Joshua Stewart
Card text
+1 Card +1 Action + Discard a card per empty Supply pile.

Poacher is an Action card from the second edition of the base set. It is a Peddler variant, but it gets weaker late in the game by making you discard from your hand if any Supply piles have been emptied.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• You draw your one card before discarding.
• If there are no empty piles, you do not discard. If there is one empty pile, you discard one card; if there are two empty piles, you discard two cards, and so on. This includes all Supply piles, including Curses, Coppers, Poacher itself, etc.
• If you do not have enough cards to discard, just discard the rest of your hand.

Other rules clarifications

• Non-Supply piles, such as Spoils, do not matter to Poacher.

Strategy

Poacher is a useful card to increase your output early in the game. Its price of makes it more affordable than similar cards like Market, and its drawback usually doesn’t manifest until much later in the game. As a Peddler variant, Poacher should be viewed as a way to add payload to your deck without increasing how much draw you need. However, unlike most cantrips, you shouldn’t get too many of them, or else you’ll have to start discarding a lot of cards as soon as one pile is emptied. If this is likely to happen early in the game (e.g., because Witch will be handing out the Curses quickly), Poacher may look less attractive than usual from the beginning.

Opening with Poacher is generally good if buying a card such as Sentry is a priority. The most straightforward comparison for Poacher is to Silver. With a Poacher/Silver opening, you are about as likely to generate on turn 3 or turn 4 as with a Silver/Silver, at around 91%. The advantage of Poacher is that it’s not another stop card in your deck like a second Silver would be, and so getting deck control should be slightly easier. You generally shouldn’t take Poacher over a trasher (such as Moneylender), but it can be especially useful if you open with it alongside a cheaper trasher such as Chapel.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		+1 Card +1 Action + Discard a card per empty Supply pile.	Dominion 2nd Edition	October 2016

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Chinese	盜獵者 (pron. dàoliè zhě)
Dutch	Wilddief			+1 Kaart +1 Actie + Leg per lege voorraadstapel 1 kaart af.
French	Braconnier
German	Wilddiebin (Note: explicitly feminine)			+1 Karte +1 Aktion + Lege pro leerem Vorratsstapel eine deiner Handkarten ab.	2. Edition (2019)
Japanese	密猟者 (pron. mitsuryō-sha)			+1 カードを引く +1 アクション + 空のサプライ1山につき1枚捨て札にする。
Polish	Kłusownik
Russian	Браконьер (pron. brakonyer)			+1 Карта +1 Действие + Сбросьте по одной карте за каждую пустую стопку Резерва.
Spanish	Cazador Furtivo			+1 Carta Acción + Descarta una carta por cada pila agotada del Suministro.	Dominion 2nd Edition

Trivia

Official card art.

Secret History

This is in a player interaction slot, vacated by Spy. I thought of having some vanilla bonuses with the penalty of discarding a card per empty pile. The vanilla bonuses had to be essentially fair at the price of the card, since you might never empty a pile until the game was over. So really it required a vanilla card I hadn't made yet. Well there was one of those, and it was +1 Card +1 Action + for . So there it is. Avoiding making that card all these years finally paid off.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of the Dominion 2nd Editions