Shanty Town
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− | | Трущобы (pron. ''trushshoby'', lit. ''slum'') || || || | + | | Трущобы (pron. ''trushshoby'', lit. ''slum'') || || {{CardLangVersionImage|DigitalRussian}} || '''+2 Действие'''. Раскройте вашу руку. Если у вас нет карт Действия в руке, '''+2 Карты'''. |
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!Spanish | !Spanish |
Revision as of 10:26, 22 November 2017
Shanty Town | |
---|---|
Info | |
Cost | |
Type(s) | Action |
Kingdom card? | Yes |
Set | Intrigue |
Illustrator(s) | Maura Kalusky |
Card text | |
+2 Actions Reveal your hand. If you have no Action cards in hand, +2 Cards. |
Shanty Town is an Action card from Intrigue. It is a village—i.e., it gives +2 Actions. However, since it only draws cards when you have no other Action cards in your hand, it must be used somewhat differently than a standard Village for best effect, and can be used to counter some Attacks. This is discussed in more detail in the strategy article below.
Contents |
FAQ
Official FAQ
- You get +2 Actions, then reveal your hand.
- If it has no Action cards in it (including Action cards with other types too, such as Nobles), then you draw 2 cards.
Other Rules clarifications
- If you Throne Room a Shanty Town, you reveal your hand, get +2 actions, and potentially draw two cards, then you reveal your hand again, get 2 more actions, and potentially draw two more cards. You do NOT reveal your hand once and get +4 cards.
Strategy Article
There has not been a Shanty Town article published on the Dominion Strategy blog, but there have been forum discussions on it here and an article here by O.
Shanty Town is the oft-maligned cousin of Village. At , it shares a price point with the vanilla Village, which alone tells us something. It is not a village+ (like Worker's Village, Mining Village, Walled Village, and Wandering Minstrel at ) or a Village- (Native Village at ). It is a card that plays entirely different from the plain old Village, and shares only the characteristic of giving two actions.
A good way to think of Shanty Town in many (but not all) games is as a restricted Laboratory.
When is Shanty Town a good buy?
Shanty Town does not have a single thematic board type that makes it powerful. Rather, a piecemeal combination of a bunch of different cases make it a card that I would argue is more often a good buy than a vanilla village.
Terminal-Less decks
In games where there are no terminal actions worth getting (notable cards to cause this are Familiar, Caravan and Tournament) early on, Shanty Town functions identically to a Laboratory if you buy one, and each additional one functions as a slightly riskier Lab (as your two Shanty Towns can combine). A lab for is nothing to scoff at, and while Shanty Town is not deck–making in these games it provides a significant boost.
Keep in mind that you can often still keep 1–2 terminals in your deck if your deck is large enough; the collision chance is small enough that buying Shanty Town will still benefit you.
Draw to X Engines
The draw to X engines that Shanty Town works best with are Watchtower, Library and Minion (which functions as a draw to X). It's an iffy prospect with Jack of all Trades that I would not recommend.
Shanty Town is superior to the vanilla village in Draw-To-X engines, though it is still inferior to Fishing Village (what isn't?). This is because there are three possibilities with shanty town in a draw-to-x-engine:
- A) It is drawn with a Draw-To-X-enabler card (Library, Watchtower, Minion)
- B) It is drawn with no other terminal
- C) It is drawn with another terminal that is not draw-to-x
Possibility A is a relatively likely option, and in this case, Shanty Town is nearly identical to a vanilla village. (It's ever so slightly worse with Watchtower and basically equivalent with Library and Minion, due to Library's filtering and Minion's discard mechanic) Possibility B is the second most likely option, and in this case Shanty Town is +2 Cards +2 Actions, far superior to Village. Possibility C is relatively unlikely in most draw-to-x decks, and is either significantly worse (no need for +actions, terminal not draw) or slightly worse (need for +actions or terminal draw card).
Conclusion: While Shanty Town is not amazingly better than Village in draw-to-x, it is enough of an improvement to merit significant consideration in these decks.
As a counter to attacks
Shanty Town is much more likely to activate fully when you are playing it against attacks, primarily discard attacks. Shanty Town reacts slightly different against different ones, however.
- Militia: Shanty Town is only so-so against Militia. Often you would rather keep another terminal (say... a Militia ;)) as opposed to trying to recover your deck with Shanty Town.
- Ghost Ship: Shanty Town is an excellent counter to Ghost Ship. This is because instead of discarding your terminal actions, you can topdeck them and then draw them with your activated Shanty Town. This actually is almost a complete counter to Ghost Ship in many cases, because if they hadn't played Ghost Ship your Shanty Town would not have activated (both situations leave you with 4 cards and 2 actions).
- Margrave: Shanty Town is nice with Margrave because not only does it provide a bit of a counter, it also facilitates the terminal draw aspect of Margrave if you have it in your own deck.
- Followers: If your opponent has Followers, then it is a Tournament game. In which case you probably wanted a Shanty Town anyways to go with your Tournaments.
- Torturer: Shanty Town does not really counter Torturer very well because you're unlikely to have actions outside of +actions and Torturer itself. However, since Torturers are on the board you probably want a good amount of Shanty Towns anyways. In the early game, Shanty Town even works slightly better than Village for starting a Torturer chain.
- Goons: See Torturer, really.
In games flush with actions
Fishing Village is your biggest culprit here, though certainly it's not the only case. If you have enough +Actions available to you on a given turn, you can simply play your terminals before your Shanty Town and then use your Shanty Town as a Lab. In practice it plays similar to the case of terminal-less decks, just with less of a guarantee.
When you need the +Actions regardless
OK, so Shanty Town is worse than Village in some cases. Suck it up, sometimes you will still desperately need +actions in your engine. This tends to be true in Torturer games, megaturn games involving terminal draw, and many others. Even when it's worse than a normal Village, it's still a village variant and sometimes that's what you need. A good litmus test in these cases is that if Shanty Town has no support, if you would buy Native Villages for your engine, you probably should still buy Shanty Town.
With massive, bloated decks
If you have 15 Coppers and 5 Curses in your deck, Shanty Town is far more likely to give you +2 cards. 'nough said.
When is Shanty-Town a bad buy?
- With medium to heavy trashing! Trashing your starting Coppers/Estates makes it much more likely to collide and not activate. In these cases you need to evaluate if there's better alternatives and only get Shanty Town if you desperately need the +actions.
- Most terminal draw goes pretty terribly with Shanty Town, especially Envoy, Embassy, Smithy, and Council Room. Attacks are less bad because you more frequently want to build an engine around them, and because Shanty Town counters some of them. Vault is meh-probably take Silver instead, but it makes little difference either way.
- Big Money games involving a few terminal actions, draw or not (Jack of all Trades, Merchant Ship, Masquerade, etc.)
In conclusion: Shanty town is situational, and only sometimes can really be viewed as a village, and should not be maligned as a worse alternative to Village.
Synergies/Combos
- Draw to X, especially Minion.
- Torturer
- Ghost Ship
- Caravan, Tournament, Familiar, other cantrips and nonterminals.
- Bloated games caused by cursers
- Fishing Village (though they conflict at and FV is usually better)
- Powerful Engines
Antisynergies
- Big Money+X, where X is terminal
- Games with moderate to heavy trashing that aren't powerful engines needing +action
Versions
English versions
Digital | Text | Release | Date | |
---|---|---|---|---|
+2 Actions. Reveal your hand. If you have no Action cards in hand, +2 Cards. | Intrigue 1st Edition | July 2009 | ||
+2 Actions. Reveal your hand. If you have no Action cards in hand, +2 Cards. | Intrigue 2nd Edition | October 2016 |
Other language versions
Trivia
Secret History