Chancellor

Chancellor
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Base
Illustrator(s)	Matthias Catrein
Card text
+ You may immediately put your deck into your discard pile.

Chancellor is an Action card from the Base set. It is a terminal Silver, meaning it provides + but no +Action. Its ability to put your deck into your discard pile cycles your deck, allowing you to draw good cards you recently bought or gained more quickly than otherwise. This card is considered among the weakest of cards, and is outclassed by (although cheaper than) Scavenger from Dark Ages.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• You must resolve the Chancellor (decide whether or not to discard your Deck by flipping it into your Discard pile) before doing other things on your turn, like deciding what to buy or playing another Action card.
• You may not look through your Deck as you discard it.

Other Rules clarifications

Putting your Deck in your Discard pile in this manner does not count as individually discarding each card in your deck, and you may not reveal Tunnels from your deck as you put it in your discard pile with Chancellor.

Strategy Article

Original version written by Drew Hardin and edited by Theory

This article will discuss the Chancellor. The Chancellor is commonly viewed as a weak card. The most common arguments are that the card is highly situational and the benefit of the card power is marginal. I will attempt to refute both claims and propose how the Chancellor can benefit your strategy.

Issue #1: Is the Chancellor situational?

Yes. Chancellor is one of the cards that you should use only in certain situations. In this sense the reputation is deserved. However, I would point out that most cards are situational and should only be used in specific situations. If anything, the sign of a truly powerful card is the ability to use it in almost every situation. Chancellor is simply not one of those cards. Very few cards are useful in all situations.

Issue #2: Is the Chancellor benefit marginal?

This is where I disagree. Chancellor’s power allows a player to immediately cycle the draw deck into the discard pile regardless of the number of cards in the draw deck. In practice this power can be very useful.

Issue #3: The Chancellor power requires lots of memorization.

Simulation data suggests that using the Chancellor power each time you play the Chancellor is only marginally weaker than making an optimal Chancellor play. Most of the benefit of the Chancellor comes from using the power.

Issue #4: The Chancellor is highly random

Yes. The card is random. If you draw it early it is much better than drawing it late. Then again, most cards have this problem to some degree. Drawing Silver Copper Estate Estate Estate is a bad draw on Turn 3. If you worry about drawing a card at the wrong time then Dominion is going to make you miserable. The Chancellor power is about using the card to the maximum when the situation is in your favor (such as drawing Chancellor Silver Copper Copper Estate on Turn 3) and avoiding the problems when the situation is not in your favor (such as drawing Chancellor OtherTerminalAction Estate Estate Estate on Turn 3).

Using the Chancellor Effectively

To understand how to use the Chancellor it is helpful to understand why the power is useful. There are several features of the Chancellor power that are important to incorporate into your play.

The first feature is fairly obvious. Early in the game when you buy almost anything your best cards are now in your discard pile. The Chancellor gives you the opportunity of putting those cards into your draw deck on your next draw.

The second feature is less obvious. When you buy a very good card (a good VP card late or a powerful or card early) you have often used up more of your good cards than bad cards. This is especially true very early in the game when you only have 1 or 2 cards granting . It would be best to get those cards back into play.

The third feature of the Chancellor is the optionality of the card. You don’t have to use the power unless you desire. If you feel that your draw pile is better than your discard pile you can skip the power. The card is a may, not a must. You gain the benefit but can avoid the negatives.

The fourth feature of the Chancellor is the opportunity to defend against cards such as the Bureaucrat. When you are successfully attacked by the Bureaucrat, you will place a Victory card at the top of your deck, guaranteeing that it will dilute your hand on the next draw. Responding with a Chancellor shuffles your deck and reduces your chances of drawing that Victory card.

Buying a Chancellor is essentially taking a gamble. In essence you are replacing a safe Silver purchase for a risky Chancellor purchase. The Chancellor has the same + value as Silver but requires an Action to gain the benefit while the Silver does not.

Simulation evidence suggests that buying a second Chancellor is of minimal value (an exception may be the Chancellor/Stash) so more often than not you are faced with only one question you must decide:

Should I buy the Chancellor instead of my first Silver?

Phrased differently, the question is really:

Is the benefit of using the Chancellor greater than the risk of drawing the Chancellor and not being able to play the Terminal Action?

If the answer to this question is yes then buy the Chancellor instead of the Silver. The problem is determining if the answer is yes or no.

The benefit of the Chancellor buy is simple. Each time you play the Chancellor the next time you draw cards you get a reshuffle. Most of the time this means that if you use the Chancellor as the last action of the turn all the cards you just bought (and used that turn) are back in the draw pile and may be redrawn immediately.

In a perfect scenario you draw the Chancellor and your best cards on Turn 3. Then you draw the Chancellor and your best cards on Turn 4. In 41.7% of the openings the Chancellor will appear on Turn 3. If the power is then used to purchase a card it will appear again on Turn 4 38% of the time. In roughly 1 in 6 of your games you will have used the Chancellor power twice. If you draw the Chancellor on Turn 4 your new purchases will be one of the five cards you draw instead one of the three cards you draw after you draw the last two. Simply put, the Chancellor is an accelerator. It puts the cards you buy early into play faster. The key to the acceleration is the possibility of getting the Chancellor early.

The weakness of the Chancellor is the possibility of drawing the card as the terminal Action with another terminal Action. This is a very real problem and not a desirable outcome. However, the Chancellor is unusual in being able to reduce the impact of this problem. When the happens if you use the Chancellor power the Action Card you skipped this turn will be available to draw immediately instead of waiting another cycle to play.

Another weakness commonly stated about the Chancellor is the Chancellor has few combo cards (though the Counting House and Stash both benefit from putting the draw pile into the discard). This is true in the sense that the Chancellor rarely combines with any other or card (though Chancellor/Mining Village has an excellent chance of getting a good card early). For this reason the Chancellor often combines with an opening buy of Silver. This opening has been discussed elsewhere.

The Chancellor/Silver opening may not be sexy but it is a stronger opening than many others. The idea behind the Chancellor/Silver opening is to combine the Chancellor with the cards it works best with. The Chancellor combines just fine with any strategy that relies heavily on +1 Action chains or that uses the powerful +2 Action cost cards. In essence the Chancellor is about bypassing the early weak cards in favor of an accelerated and card buying spree.

So, the Chancellor is a card that produces a key early acceleration, sustains a middle game acceleration but risks costing you a key terminal Action at a bad time. The problem can be entirely mitigated by simply not buying a second terminal action. Sometimes you need to buy a second terminal action. So, what are the options for mitigating the problem and maximizing the benefit?

First, in some situations the Chancellor should be avoided entirely. The power of the Chancellor is increased in games where trashing is difficult or impossible. The ability to cycle becomes important in these games. The power weakens in heavy trashing games where the power is not needed. In general the Chancellor combines poorly with pure trash cards like the Chapel but does fine when used as part of a ‘trash for value’ strategy like the Salvager, Forge or Upgrade.

The Chancellor performs poorly when combined with terminal actions that draw cards, such as the Smithy, Council Room or Torturer and you are weak on +2 Action cards. In these situations you would rather have drawn Silver.

The Chancellor performs well with any strategy that is heavy on and makes heavy use of non-terminal Actions. Since most of these cards cost or it synergizes well with openings that early emphasize (such as the Chancellor/Silver).

The impact of attacks on the Chancellor is mixed. Like most heavy strategies discard attacks are a problem. The Chancellor defends well against Treasure stealing attacks such as the Thief and Pirate Ship. The Chancellor cycling ability helps minimize the impact of Curse based attacks by making use of variance to allow you to buy Provinces (or Colonies) with lucky draws then immediately put your best cards back into play.

Summarizing, the Chancellor is a card that plays well in setups where early acceleration through high mixes well with solid and cost cards. The card is basically a replacement for a Silver buy that attempts to speed up your development by taking advantage of early draws and decent card buys.

Synergies/Combos

• Combo: Chancellor and Stash is a powerful combo with another weak card (Stash).
• Chancellor enables cute tricks with Golem and Counting House, but this is not especially powerful.
• Chancellor/Potion is a good opening in a Familiar game, as it may let you see your Potions and Familiars early.
• On-buy/gain effect depending on discard pile－Inn ,Herald

Antisynergies

• Chancellor conflicts with other terminal actions, since his power is typically weak and not worth the risk of a terminal collision.
• Chancellor conflicts with engines which draw your whole deck anyway.

Trivia

Official card art.

Chancellor is extremely useful in the context of Dominion puzzles, which often start with "Assuming you have perfect shuffle luck, can you..."

In other languages

• Chinese: 大臣 (pron. dàchén)
• Czech: Kancléř
• Dutch: Raadsheer (lit. councillor)
• Finnish: Kansleri
• French: Chancelier
• German: Kanzler
• Hungarian: Kancellár
• Italian: Cancelliere
• Japanese: 宰相 (pron. saishō, lit. prime minister)
• Korean: 법관 (pron. beobgwan, lit. judge)
• Norwegian: Rikskansler
• Polish: Kanclerz
• Romanian: Cancelar
• Russian: Канцлер (pron. kantslyer)
• Spanish: Canciller

Secret History

When Valerie got her copy of the game at Origins 2007, she also got a copy of the first expansion as I had it then. So when cards left the main set, she knew all about those expansion cards, and on one occasion nominated this card to be swapped into the main set. I think she was looking for another + card, to provide another anti-Thief option. I really like having the card in the main set, as it's simple but subtle. New players are always like, huh? Why would I want to do that?

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

Retrospective

Chancellor doesn't add much and would have been better in Intrigue (where it came from); the fact that it's a puzzler is way better in an expansion than in the main set.

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