Village (card category)
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* Prosperity: {{Card|King's Court}} | * Prosperity: {{Card|King's Court}} | ||
* Dark Ages: {{Card|Procession}} | * Dark Ages: {{Card|Procession}} | ||
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* Promo: {{Card|Prince}} plays a cheap card every turn without requiring an Action | * Promo: {{Card|Prince}} plays a cheap card every turn without requiring an Action | ||
Revision as of 05:11, 3 March 2015
Village is the informal generic name for the family of Dominion Action cards which offer the ability to generate +2 (or more) Actions—so called because many of them have "village" in their names. They are also sometimes called splitters. The simplest and most vanilla village card is Village itself. Typically, these cards will also offer +1 Card as well, but there are some village cards which will offer other benefits instead. Cards that do not explicitly or usually give +2 Actions are sometimes called pseudo-villages.
Villages are a fundamental component of engine strategies, because only with villages is it possible to play more than one terminal Action per turn, and it is terminal Actions that often provide some of the most desirable effects, such as +Cards, large amounts of +, or strong Attacks.
Every Dominion expansion has at least one village.
Contents |
List of villages
For some cards, +2 actions is an option you can choose when playing the card, not an automatic effect. In the lists below, these cards are italicized.
Drawing villages
These villages replace themselves in the hand by drawing at least one card when played—thus ensuring that the mere presence of the village in your deck doesn't prevent you from having in hand the terminal Actions you want to play it with.
- Dominion: Village
- Intrigue: Mining Village, Shanty Town (sometimes draws)
- Seaside: Bazaar
- Prosperity: City, Worker's Village
- Cornucopia: Farming Village, Hamlet, Trusty Steed (optionally draws)
- Hinterlands: Border Village, Inn
- Dark Ages: Bandit Camp, Fortress, Madman, Wandering Minstrel
- Guilds: Plaza
- Promo: Walled Village
Disappearing villages
These villages do not replace themselves in hand when played, which can sometimes make it more challenging to line them up with the terminals they need to support.
- Dominion: Festival
- Intrigue: Nobles, Shanty Town (sometimes draws)
- Seaside: Fishing Village, Native Village (can increase handsize through the Native Village mat)
- Alchemy: University
- Cornucopia: Trusty Steed (optionally draws)
- Dark Ages: Dame Molly, Necropolis, Squire
Hamlet, from Cornucopia, draws a card when played but must discard a card from hand to activate its village effect. Since it thereby reduces handsize, it fits well into some of the same engines that disappearing villages are best suited to. Similarly, Inn and Plaza also do well in such engines.
Conditional villages
These cards provide +2 or more actions sometimes, and the player cannot always control whether they will; how reliable they are as engine components may therefore vary greatly from game to game.
- Intrigue: Tribute works as a village only if one of the two cards on top of your opponent's deck (to your left) is an Action card.
- Hinterlands: Crossroads works as a village (providing +3 Actions) only the first time it is played per turn.
- Dark Ages: Ironmonger works as a village only if an Action card is revealed from your deck.
Pseudo-villages
These cards cause you to make 2 or more additional plays of Action cards without actually giving you +2 Actions (though the cards they play for you might do so).
- Dominion: Throne Room
- Alchemy: Golem
- Prosperity: King's Court
- Dark Ages: Procession
- Promo: Prince plays a cheap card every turn without requiring an Action
In addition, Tactician is a terminal Action when you play it, but it gives you an additional Action (as if you had played a village) on your next turn.
Trivia
Donald X. Vaccarino has explained that the reason cards that give +2 Actions are often named after "villages" or other populated places (e.g., City, Hamlet) is because extra Actions are thematically represented by "a group of people doing things for you". The only cards that always provide +2 Actions but whose names do not represent populated places are from Dark Ages: Dame Molly, Madman, and Wandering Minstrel.
Ruined Village is the only card with "village" in its name that does not provide +2 Actions; as a Ruins, it is notionally a village that has been stripped of most of its ability.
An inexperienced player who buys too many villages and not enough terminal Actions is informally referred to as a "village idiot".