Fortress
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* Cards that trash from the top of your deck. | * Cards that trash from the top of your deck. | ||
** {{Card|Lookout}} not only becomes a far less risky play in the late game with a few Fortresses in your deck, but it also becomes a cantrip if it hits a Fortress, letting it act as a momentum-conserving sifter rather than the dead card it usually becomes once you're done trashing. | ** {{Card|Lookout}} not only becomes a far less risky play in the late game with a few Fortresses in your deck, but it also becomes a cantrip if it hits a Fortress, letting it act as a momentum-conserving sifter rather than the dead card it usually becomes once you're done trashing. | ||
− | ** {{Card|Sentry}} becomes borderline broken with a large supply Fortresses and a little luck. Did your | + | ** {{Card|Sentry}} becomes borderline broken with a large supply Fortresses and a little luck. Did your Sentry find two Fortresses? Put them both in your hand, and suddenly your sifter/trasher has become a double {{Card|Laboratory}}! |
** {{Card|Doctor}} can be used in the late game to harmlessly pick Fortresses off the top of your deck. However, unlike the previous example, Doctor's unreliable draw is terminal, making this strategy is inadvised unless you have the actions to spare. | ** {{Card|Doctor}} can be used in the late game to harmlessly pick Fortresses off the top of your deck. However, unlike the previous example, Doctor's unreliable draw is terminal, making this strategy is inadvised unless you have the actions to spare. | ||
* The {{Card|Remodel}} family - cards which trash and gain. With Fortress, these become [[gainer|gainers]] which can directly gain expensive actions - like {{Card|University|Universities}} but with fewer restrictions! | * The {{Card|Remodel}} family - cards which trash and gain. With Fortress, these become [[gainer|gainers]] which can directly gain expensive actions - like {{Card|University|Universities}} but with fewer restrictions! |
Revision as of 15:39, 8 June 2018
Fortress | |
---|---|
Info | |
Cost | |
Type(s) | Action |
Kingdom card? | Yes |
Set | Dark Ages |
Illustrator(s) | Marco Morte |
Card text | |
+1 Card +2 Actions When you trash this, put it into your hand. |
Fortress is an Action card from Dark Ages. When played, it gives the same +1 Card/+2 Actions as Village; it costs more because if you trash it, it just goes back into your hand! This enables a variety of cute combos with Dark Ages cards which could trash it and with trash for benefit cards.
Contents |
FAQ
Official FAQ
- When you play this, you draw a card and get +2 Actions.
- If this is trashed, you take it from the trash and put it into your hand.
- This happens no matter whose turn it is when Fortress is trashed.
- It is not optional.
- You still trashed Fortress, even though you get it back; for example if you play Death Cart and choose to trash Fortress, the "if you do" on Death Cart is true, you did trash an Action, so you do not trash Death Cart.
Other Rules clarifications
- When you put Fortress in your hand after trashing it, it is not 'gained' - you just put it in your hand. You can't reveal Trader or Watchtower to do something else with it.
- If a Possessed player's Fortress is trashed, the Possessing player chooses whether to put it back in hand immediately, as usual, or to set it aside with other trashed cards, to be returned to the Possessed player's discard pile at the end of the turn.
- If you trash a Fortress from the Supply with Lurker, you put the Fortress into your hand.
Strategy Article
There isn't a strategy article for Fortress, which is sad because it's a fun card!
In many cases, Fortress will play the same as a Village which happens to cost . No big deal, you can run your engine off of that, too, like a Walled Village or something. But Fortress has extremely powerful interactions with many trashers. They are unique enough that it is worth going through them individually, since all the trash-for-benefit cards start behaving very differently when they no longer actually have to permanently trash a card from your hand to give the benefit!
- Many cards that trash for no benefit have no particular interaction with Fortress. This includes Chapel, Steward, Dame Anna, Jack of all Trades, Masquerade - nothing in particular happens with them and Fortress.
- Cards that can only trash fixed numbers of cards.
- Trading Post can be used as a Silver-gainer if you have Fortresses in hand - "trash" two Fortresses to gain a Silver, immediately get them back. This can also let Trading Post be used as a single-card trasher when you have only one card to trash.
- Mercenary has an ability which activates only if you trash two cards. Late-game, when you have nothing to trash, you can use two Fortresses to keep using your Mercenary as a Militia attack.
- Count can trash your whole hand and only your whole hand. If you keep Fortresses in hand (and perhaps put something back on top of the deck with Count) you can keep playing your turn after trashing your hand.
- Cards that trash from the top of your deck.
- Lookout not only becomes a far less risky play in the late game with a few Fortresses in your deck, but it also becomes a cantrip if it hits a Fortress, letting it act as a momentum-conserving sifter rather than the dead card it usually becomes once you're done trashing.
- Sentry becomes borderline broken with a large supply Fortresses and a little luck. Did your Sentry find two Fortresses? Put them both in your hand, and suddenly your sifter/trasher has become a double Laboratory!
- Doctor can be used in the late game to harmlessly pick Fortresses off the top of your deck. However, unlike the previous example, Doctor's unreliable draw is terminal, making this strategy is inadvised unless you have the actions to spare.
- The Remodel family - cards which trash and gain. With Fortress, these become gainers which can directly gain expensive actions - like Universities but with fewer restrictions!
- Remake and Upgrade can gain you -cost cards (and Upgrade is even a cantrip when used like that!)
- Develop can gain two cards, a and a , which immediately go on your deck. You can then play your Fortress to draw one of them!
- Farmland... well, buying Farmland with a Fortress in hand can get you a second Farmland for a total of 4VP, or maybe you can get a Gold for a pseudo-Hoard effect. Not so impressive compared to others on this list, since Farmland's trashing happens during your buy phase and by then it's too late to play the Fortress from your hand.
- Likewise with Governor, you can (not)trash a Fortress to gain a or a Gold, if you'd rather give the opponent a chance to trash rather than gain a Silver. Not so impressive. Especially since the opponent can choose to trash a Fortress and thus gain a -coster for free.
- Graverobber and Expand can gain you cards - but that's just a tad short of what you need for a Province. Perhaps you want to stock up on King's Courts? Maybe if Upgrade or Remake are in the Kingdom...
- Mandatory trashers - cards that give some benefit but require you to trash a card to get it.
- Rats turns into a straight-up cantrip Rats gainer when you have a Fortress in hand. If you have a reason for wanting all 20 Rats in the end-game, maybe to pile them out or to pump up your Gardens, Fortress can help you get them without having them eat the rest of your deck.
- Altar can target Fortress if you just want to gain cards without trashing anything.
- Death Cart can become a terminal Platinum with no drawback if you have Fortress in hand.
- Junk Dealer, Trade Route and Forager can be used for the + and +Buy in the late-game.
- Situational trashers - a few cards with weird trashing properties.
- Forge becomes pretty great, since you can Forge two Fortresses into a Province. Throne Room a Forge? Two Provinces! King's Court a Forge? Three Provinces! Ah ah ah!
- Transmute... well, Transmuting a Fortress can gain you a Duchy for free. Seems sorta sad putting this on the line right after Forge. King's Court a Transmute for three Duchies... Ah ah ah...
- Hermit can trash a Fortress from your discard pile to put it in your hand.
- Lookout can turn into a cantrip with one card worth of filtering.
- Watchtower isn't really a trasher, but can put the Fortress into your hand immediately after you gain it (say, with Ironworks) by "trashing" it.
- Lurker can gain a Fortress straight to hand.
- Trashing attacks.
- Procession!!!!! Now we get to the meat of this list, with all of the broken combos!
- This gets its own bullet point and sub-bullet point. Playing Procession on Fortress gets you +2 cards and +4 Actions, AND lets you gain a action. You have all the actions you need to play all those juicy expensive terminals. Awesome.
- Standard trash for benefit cards are all amazing with Fortress.
- Apprentice draws you four cards - that's as good as THREE Laboratories, or like a Village followed by a Hunting Grounds. Consider your deck drawn.
- Salvager gives + and a buy. Pretty nice.
- Trader gives you four Silvers. Probably not that impressive if you're running an engine that will get gummed up, though. Maybe with Feodum this is a good idea, or if you've trashed all the treasure in your deck already. (Maybe with Counterfeit?)
- And in the spirit of saving the best for last, BISHOP. Bishop and Fortress combine to create an endless unstoppable Golden Deck of pure victory points. Even with no other cards, if you have a deck of four Bishops and four Fortresses, you can play all four Bishops every turn, trash the same Fortress four times for an incredible 12 per turn with no change in deck composition and no chance of bad shuffle luck. King's Court can trivially ratchet this up to 18 /turn, and I don't even want to think about what you could do if you made it into a setup with double Tactician.
Synergies/Combos
To summarize the list above:
- Fortress is absolutely amazing with Procession and Bishop.
- It can have very powerful interactions with other trash for benefit cards like Apprentice or Salvager
- It can be used to provide endless fuel to mandatory-trashers that give other benefits like Altar or Death Cart
- It can defend against trashing attacks
- In a pinch, it can function as a standard Village
Antisynergies
Versions
English versions
Digital | Text | Release | Date | |
---|---|---|---|---|
+1 Card. +2 Actions. When you trash this, put it into your hand. |
Dark Ages 1st Edition | August 2012 | ||
+1 Card. +2 Actions. When you trash this, put it into your hand. |
Dark Ages 2nd Edition | September 2017 |
Other language versions
Language | Name | Digital | Text | Notes | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Czech | Pevnost | ||||
Dutch | Vesting | ||||
Finnish | Linnoitus | ||||
French | Forteresse | ||||
German | Festung | ||||
Japanese | 城塞 (pron. jōsai) | +1 カードを引く。 +2 アクション。 これを廃棄するとき、手札に加える。 | |||
Korean | 요새 (pron. yosae) | ||||
Polish | Forteca (note: as referred to in Polish Empires rulebook) | ||||
Russian | Крепость (pron. kryepost') | ||||
Spanish | Fortaleza |
Trivia
Secret History