Travelling Fair

Travelling Fair
Info
Cost
Type	Event
Set	Adventures
Illustrator(s)	Julien Delval
Event text
+2 Buys When you gain a card this turn, you may put it on top of your deck.

Travelling Fair is an Event from Adventures. It is both a source of +Buy, and a means to top-deck gained cards.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• When you buy this, you get +2 Buys (letting you buy more Events or cards afterwards).
• Then for the rest of the turn, whenever you gain a card, you may put it on your deck.
• This works on cards you buy, as well as cards gained other ways, such as gaining cards with Ball.
• It does not work on Travellers exchanged for other cards; exchanging is not gaining.
• Putting the card on your deck is optional each time you gain a card that turn; you could put some on top and let the others go to your discard pile.

Strategy

There is no strategy article for Travelling fair, but it has been discussed briefly on the forum.

Travelling Fair is a tactical event that is only useful when purchased in conjunction with another card. Similarly to Stonemason, its price tag is deceptive—you usually need to consider it when you reach a high money value such as or . It is distinctly unlike Stonemason—or the vast majority of cards, for that matter—in that its primary purpose is setting up your next turn.

Travelling Fair's two things that it does are connected in a way that may not be immediately intuitive; I get +2 Buys and I can topdeck cards I buy... I guess this buy phase is gonna be, uh. Real good. The thing about those two things is that they are both particularly useful in engines where you can produce a lot of money but you have trouble drawing your deck, such as games with Bank Cultist. Whereas a trim deck that can draw itself readily doesn't really benefit from topdecking a Village and Smithy, and it will reliably get its +Buy cards each turn, a deck with weak/no trashing is in large danger of stalling each turn that is mitigated by topdecking Village and Smithy, and it runs the risk of missing its +Buy each turn. Thus, the trim deck will often contentedly pick up a Vagrant or something in addition to its engine components, whereas the bloated deck will probably want a Travelling Fair.

Counting House combined with Travelling Fair can get 4 provinces in, like, 12 turns, and it can keep going afterwards.

The strength of Travelling Fair in bloated and lucrative decks is very well exemplified by its poster boy combo with Counting House: Counting House notoriously sucks because, well, coppers are generally bad. Having a lot of them, which Counting House wants to do, means you won't draw your Counting House very often, and when you do, you can't reliably connect them with stuff like +Buys, and also, generally, there isn't really a benefit to playing more than one of them per turn, and they are only worth jack if you play them late in a shuffle. Travelling Fair ameliorates all of these issues—you can make sure that you're playing exactly one each turn with the topdecking ability, and the +Buys are always there so you can reliably get a province and a Counting House each turn at some point. That, and, well, buys are always useful: they can get you coppers. That's not something you'll hear often.

That whole spiel isn't to say that you shouldn't ignore it if there isn't some big sloggy lug like Counting House. In, for example, a kingdom with Hamlet, Hunting Grounds, and Militia, you would probably want to buy Hamlets rather early over Silvers since you need to have a lot of them to reliably line one up with Hunting Grounds. However, add Travelling Fair into the mix and all the sudden Silvers, Golds, Wine Merchants, Barons, et cetera seem stronger; spiking up to an early or is great when you can topdeck Hamlets and Hunting Grounds.

Also, generally, you'll be able to tell oftentimes when Travelling Fair is good even outside of an environment of weak trashing. Donate aside, there will almost always be some point in time where your deck is imperfect enough for topdecking to matter. If you open Silver/Silver and spike on turn 3, Travelling fair + Trading Post is a huge get. And, of course, if Travelling Fair is the only +Buy in the kingdom then you'll probably want it no matter what your deck is like.

Don't underestimate its +Buy, either; everyone has had that game where they paid for a Herbalist because they need the +Buy, but Travelling Fair means you never have to have a crappy turn like that. Just focus on getting as much as possible, and let this handy little Event take care of the rest.

Synergies/Combos

• Treasure Map - buying two Treasure Maps with Travelling Fair ensures you can trash them both on your next turn
• Cards that make it easy to get large amounts of money but hard to reliably kick off a Village/Smithy-type chain: Bank, Cultist, Fortune, Treasure Trove, etc.
• Counting House (!)
• Cards that you want to play right away, such as Peasant and Page
• Villa in conjunction with gainers that work during the action phase
• Turns where you just happen to get a lot of money
• Games where it's the only source of +Buy

Antisynergies

• Reliable draw (especially cards that sacrifice drawing power or money value for reliability, such as Tactician and Enchantress)
• Strong trashing, such as Donate and Chapel
• Decks with low money output that don't buy cards, such as Horn of Plenty megaturns

Alternate versions

• 
  Digital version for Dominion Online

Trivia

In other languages

• Dutch: Kermis
• Finnish: Kiertelevät markkinat (lit. nomadic markets)
• French: Forains (lit. fairground)
• German: Wanderzirkus
• Japanese: 移動遊園地 (pron. idō yuenchi, lit. travelling circus)

Secret History

An easy one with no issues.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of Dominion: Adventures