Navigator

Navigator
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Seaside
Illustrator(s)	Maura Kalusky
Card text
+ Look at the top 5 cards of your deck. Either discard them all, or put them back in any order.

Navigator is an Action card from Seaside. It is a terminal Silver, meaning that it gives you + but no +Action; it is also a deck inspector, so when played, it lets you look at the next 5 cards in your deck and discard them if you don't like them.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• You discard all 5 cards (or however many were left after shuffling) or none of them.
• If you do not discard them, put them back in any order.

Strategy

Navigator is a weak terminal Silver, as the sifting effect it provides is inflexible and rarely useful, making the card skippable in most cases. If you cannot make good use of the deck inspection and discarding and don’t have a specific reason to prefer Action-based payload, a Silver will usually be preferable as a way to generate , as it doesn’t use up your terminal space. Even if the bonus effect may be of some use, Navigator’s opportunity cost is generally too high, as there are almost always better options for deck control at that price point and better uses for your terminal space.

Because Navigator can only discard either all or none of the five cards you look at, it tends to compare unfavorably to more flexible sources of deck manipulation effects, e.g. Cartographer. This ability does provide some passably usable synergies, however (e.g. it can be a way to discard Tunnel or Village Green, or set up to draw with cards like Wishing Well); if these synergies provide you with an advantage in a Kingdom that is weak overall, Navigator may occasionally be worthwhile. More likely, Navigator can see use as a supplementary source of Action-based in a deck that requires this (e.g., because you are using draw-to-x), provides the spare terminal space, and lacks better options. Cycling by discarding cards from your deck may also be sometimes useful to play key cards as fast as possible (e.g. attacks such as Mountebank) or get through lots of bad cards in a slog, though you should be wary of triggering bad shuffles.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		+ Look at the top 5 cards of your deck. Either discard all of them, or put them back on top of your deck in any order.	Seaside 1st Edition	October 2009
		+ Look at the top 5 cards of your deck. Either discard them all, or put them back in any order.	Seaside 2nd Edition	July 2017

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Chinese	領航員 (pron. lǐnghángyuán)
Czech	Navigátor
Dutch	Navigator
Finnish	Luotsi (lit. maritime pilot)
French	Navigateur
German	Navigator			+ Sieh dir die obersten 5 Karten von deinem Nachziehstapel an. Lege entweder alle diese Karten ab oder lege sie in beliebiger Reihenfolge verdeckt zurück auf deinen Nachziehstapel.	(2009)
Italian	Navigatore
Japanese	航海士 (pron. kōkai-shi)			+ 山札の上から5枚を見る。それらを捨て札にするか、好きな順番で山札の上に戻す。
Korean	항해사 (pron. hanghaesa, lit. shipmate)
Polish	Nawigator			+ Podejrzyj 5 wierzchnich kart ze swojej talii. Odrzuć je wszystkie albo odłóż z powrotem na wierzch talii w dowolnej kolejności.	(2016)
Russian	Штурман (pron. shturman)			+ Посмотрите на 5 верхних карт вашей колоды. Либо сбросьте их все, либо положите назад в любом порядке.
Spanish	Navegante

Trivia

Official card art.

Card Art

The art depicts developer Dale Yu.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, 'Art Trivia'

Secret History

Originally this didn't let you reorder the cards, but I thought that would be something the developers would want changed, since they'd behaved similarly on similar stuff. You know, so you don't have to carefully keep the order the same. Anyway they didn't actually complain about this one but I changed it to let you reorder the cards anyway. It makes the card marginally more powerful.

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

Retrospective

Navigator is not prized, but it looks reasonable to me, and as I have said many times, if I made all cards better by making them maximally complex, the game would have no players.

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

[Pearl Diver and Navigator] would be ones I'd replace, except, I couldn't, just as I couldn't rename Harem; they depict real people. Why not offer those real people new better art on their new card, you ask? That sounds good to me, and I thought it would get Harem renamed, but it didn't.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Dominion and Intrigue second editions

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