University

University
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Alchemy
Illustrator(s)	Marcel-André Casasola Merkle
Card text
+2 Actions You may gain an Action card costing up to .

University is an Action card from Alchemy. It is a gainer which lets you gain Action cards costing up to .

FAQ

Official FAQ

• Gaining an Action card is optional.
• Cards with in their cost cannot be gained by this.

Other Rules clarifications

• Cards with multiple types, one of which is Action, are Actions and can be gained this way.

Strategy

University is both a gainer for Action cards and a village. This combination makes it a non-terminal gainer with which you can build an engine fairly quickly, without any concern that your Universities might collide. Additionally, University's relatively high cost limit of allows you to gain much more powerful cards than you can with Workshop variants. University’s main downsides are that it is a card, and that it and Potion are both stop cards. The former means that acquiring Universities is a slow process, bottlenecked by buying and drawing a Potion. The latter greatly increases your need for draw. As a result, the most important targets for University are usually draw cards, and because it is a village, these draw cards can be strong terminal draw such as Wharf. If draw cards costing or less are absent, University may be less viable.

Assuming University is relevant in a given Kingdom, the most common question is when to gain the Potion. Most of the time opening with it is appealing, as you’re fairly likely to be able to afford a University on turn 3 or 4, and play it on turn 5 or 6. At this point, it’s probably best to gain Action cards which help you further establish deck control, usually in the form of draw. Occasionally, it may be worth delaying the Potion if there are other more urgent priorities. For example, when spiking for Inheritance the Potion is an active detriment. Alternatively, if your goal is to play an Attack such as Witch as soon and frequently as possible, gaining it via University may take too long, and the additional stop cards will slow down your cycling.

Once you have good deck control, University can also be used to gain strong payload cards such as Bridge Troll. As these are often terminal stop cards, it may be necessary to keep adding draw and even additional villages. The cost of University puts a hard limit on how quickly you can gain more copies (usually a maximum of one per turn), and you may not be able to gain enough draw to support indefinitely many copies in any case. However, since multiple Universities can gain terminals faster than you can or want to buy more Universities, you might need to supplement your Universities, preferably with hand size neutral villages. Although University can't gain most Victory cards and thus may be less relevant during the greening stage of the game, scoring with Distant Lands or Island can be an attractive option, especially if you can gain-and-play them.

In the end-game, University provides significant pile control, substantially increasing the likelihood of a pileout. While engines often stop gaining expensive Action cards during greening, University can continue to add these to your deck until the end of the game. Cantrips may become attractive targets once the key piles (i.e. draw and payload) are empty or low, at which point a pileout is usually imminent and tracking the number of gains available to your opponent is important in deciding how much you can lower the piles and whether you need to score during your turn. Although it is sometimes low at this point, the University pile itself is relatively unlikely to feature in a pileout, in contrast to many gainers. This is because it cannot be used to gain copies of itself, and each player is usually capped at buying one per turn unless they have the means to gain-and-play a second Potion.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		+2 Actions You may gain an Action card costing up to .	Alchemy 1st Edition	May 2010
		+2 Actions You may gain an Action card costing up to .	Alchemy 2nd Edition	December 2018

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Chinese	大學 (pron. dàxué)
Czech	Univerzita
Dutch	Universiteit
Finnish	Yliopisto
French	Université
German	Universität			+2 Aktionen Du darfst eine Aktionskarte nehmen, die bis zu kostet.	(2019) one or more other versions listed here
Italian	Università
Japanese	大学 (pron. daigaku)			+2 アクション コスト以下のアクションカード1枚を獲得してもよい。
Polish	Uniwersytet				Although Polish version is not released, this name is referred to in Polish Dominion 2E rulebook.
Russian	Университет (pron. univyersityet)			+2 Действия Вы можете получить карту Действия не дороже .
Spanish	Universidad			+2 Acciones Puedes ganar una carta que tenga un coste máximo de .	Doesn't have the 'Action' of 'You may gain an Action card costing...' (Puedes ganar una carta que tenga un coste máximo... v. Puedes ganar una carta de Acción que tenga un coste máximo...)

Trivia

Official card art.

Preview

When your University is gaining you Markets, it's a business school! When it gets you Festivals, it's clown college! When it's getting you Torturers, that's one badass university. If you have other Alchemy cards out then it will often teach new Apprentices. Yes all I really have to comment on here is the flavor. Gain actions, then play them, what's not to like. It's important that University can't gain itself, or you would see piles empty so fast.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Dominion: Alchemy Preview

Secret History

I tried this in another set long ago, in a broken form. This was a later addition to this set, to supplement the "cares about actions" sub-theme. First it was "+2 Actions. Gain an Action card," which looks so pretty, but was nuts whenever a good expensive action was out, like say Possession. Then I tried "+2 Actions. You may reveal an Action card from your hand. If you do, gain a copy of it." While that can gain you Nobles or Possession on occasion, overall it was weaker than the final version.

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