Champion

Champion
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action - Duration
Kingdom card?	No
Set	Adventures
Illustrator(s)	Alayna Danner
Card text
+1 Action For the rest of the game, when another player plays an Attack, it doesn't affect you, and when you play an Action card, you first get +1 Action. (This is not in the Supply.)

Champion is an Action-Duration card from Adventures. It stays in play permanently, giving you immunity from all Attacks and making every Action you play non-terminal. It is not in the Supply, but can be exchanged for using a Hero. There are only 5 copies of Champion in the Champion pile.

Although not a Traveller itself, it is the conclusion of a Traveller line: Page - Treasure Hunter - Warrior - Hero - Champion.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• Champion stays in play for the rest of the game once played.
• For the rest of the game, it provides you with an additional +1 Action each time you play an Action, which means you will always be able to play all of your Actions; and it protects you from all further Attacks played (whether you want the protection or not).
• Champion only protects you from Attacks played after it; for example it does not stop a previously played Swamp Hag from giving you Curses that turn.

Other Rules clarifications

• Champion does not protect you from the effects of cards that are not of the Attack type, such as Possession and Masquerade; the effects of cards that are not the result of them being played, such as the effect of buying Noble Brigand; or the effects of landscapes that have attack-like abilities, such as Circle of Witches.
• Removing Champion from play (such as by playing it with Throne Room and using Way of the Horse for one of these plays) does not end the effect.
• Although ordinarily Champion makes it impossible to run out of Actions, Snowy Village can overrule that. If you play Snowy Village, then for the rest of the turn, Champion will not give you the expected extra Action for each Action card you play, and so you can run out.

Strategy

To better understand the Kingdoms and contexts in which Champion appears, it may be useful to refer to the overall strategy section for this Traveller line.

Champion is a very powerful card, and is usually the main reason the Page line is such a high priority. The more important of its two effects is the permanently unlimited terminal space: with Champion in play, you can easily draw your deck using terminal draw cards and play as many terminal payload cards as you can draw, without spending resources on village support. This allows you to build much more quickly and draw your deck more reliably. The complete attack immunity always has at least some relevance, in that Warrior is available to your opponents in Page Kingdoms, but can be more important if other strong Attacks are present as well.

The sudden access to unlimited terminal space that you gain by playing Champion creates something of a dilemma in how to build your deck. Although you now have the capacity to make use of large amounts of strong terminal draw and payload, it is usually impossible to add this instantly in order to take advantage of this newfound capacity. Conversely, gradually adding these cards earlier (while advancing your Travellers) is usually difficult: it necessitates either spending a certain amount of resources on villages whose value will fall significantly once you play Champion, or accepting that these cards will be difficult to use (which impedes your Traveller progression) until Champion is in play. The best option is often to strike a balance between adding terminals early (before you can play them) and adding them later (when you already have Champion and the end of the game may be approaching). This generally means gaining terminal draw cards once your Traveller is fairly well advanced (perhaps to Warrior or Hero) and avoiding playing them until you have Champion in play (unless you can be certain that your most advanced Traveller will neither be drawn dead nor miss the next shuffle).

Methods to alleviate the above dilemma may be available in some Kingdoms. For example, Silk Merchant and Lackeys provide Villagers that are likely to be sufficient to meet your temporary need for terminal space. Ways can also be helpful, either because they let you play your terminals before you have Champion (such as Way of the Pig) or because they allow you to extract some value from your villages afterwards (such as Way of the Sheep or Way of the Owl).

In a Kingdom with Tournament, the very large number of +Actions that Champion generates means that Diadem can often be worth extremely large amounts of . However, this is often still insufficient to make it more desirable than some of the other Prizes.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Notes	Release	Date
		+1 Action For the rest of the game, when another player plays an Attack, it doesn't affect you, and when you play an Action, +1 Action. (This stays in play. This is not in the Supply.)		Adventures	April 2015
		+1 Action For the rest of the game, when another player plays an Attack card, it doesn't affect you, and when you play an Action, +1 Action. (This stays in play. This is not in the Supply.)	Digital version may show a cost of rather than .	Adventures (2016 printing)	August 2017
		+1 Action For the rest of the game, when another player plays an Attack, it doesn't affect you, and when you play an Action card, you first get +1 Action. (This is not in the Supply.)	Digital version may show a cost of rather than .	Adventures (2022 printing)

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Dutch	Kampioen			+1 Actie Je bent voor de rest van het spel beschermd tegen aanvalskaarten van andere spelers. Elke keer dat je een actie speelt: +1 Actie (Deze kaart bevindt zich niet in de voorraad).	(2015)
Finnish	Mestari
French	Championne (note: explicitly feminine)
German	Champion			+1 Aktion Immer wenn ein Mitspieler eine Angriffskarte spielt, bist du davon nicht betroffen. Immer wenn du eine Aktionskarte spielst: +1 Aktion (Diese Karte bleibt bis zum Spielende im Spiel und gehört nicht zum Vorrat.)	(2015) card text mistakenly includes a dividing line ...bis zum Spielende für den Rest des Spiels…
	Champion			+1 Aktion Bis zum Spielende: Wenn ein Mitspieler eine Angriffskarte spielt, bist du davon nicht betroffen und wenn du eine Aktionskarte spielst: +1 Aktion. (Diese Karte bleibt im Spiel und gehört nicht zum Vorrat.)	(Nachdruck 2021) card text mistakenly includes a dividing line Bis zum Spielende Für den Rest des Spiels:…
	Champion			+1 Aktion Für den Rest des Spiels: Spielt ein Mitspieler eine Angriffskarte, bist du von ihr nicht betroffen, und, wenn du eine Aktionskarte spielst, erhältst du zuerst +1 Aktion. (Diese Karte gehört nicht zum Vorrat.)
Japanese	チャンピオン (pron. chanpion)			+1 アクション ゲーム終了まで、他のプレイヤーがアタックカードを使用するとき、その影響を受けず、あなたがアクションカードを使用するとき、+1 アクション。 (これは場に残り続ける。このカードはサプライに置かない。)
Russian	Чемпион (pron. chempion)

Trivia

Official card art.

Secret History

Champion started out being a Moat that gave + and +3 Actions. I wanted a Moat on that line of cards and it was the only place I could have it, the other cards all had upgrading text. It seemed dull for the top card. I got the idea of making it a permanent Moat, that Moated from your deck, but the tracking was wonky. So I made it a Duration card like Hireling and then the only issue was what it could do for you besides Moating. Infinite actions was just an obvious thing, trying to look more exciting than a straight +1 per turn like Hireling's.

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

Donald X.'s opinion

I don't get complaints about Champion's infinite actions at all. It must just be a perceptual thing. There were people saying that a card could never cost , because that would break the game, as if 1) that card would be in every game from that point on, 2) you would always want it when you could have it, 3) when you did get to buy it the game would actually be worse. It's the same here. Page isn't in every game, in fact you almost never see it. When you do have it you don't just start the game with Champion in your deck. Once you have that Champion you don't just naturally have a deck full of terminals. You put work into getting Champion before the game ends, into having your deck function before you get it and yet having it pay off once you've got it.

And really. In Dominion, you can play one action on your turn, except, and then buy one card, except, and then discard everything, except, and draw a new hand of five, except. Treasures just make money, except, victory cards are dead, except. There's the cost in the corner, except, and the types on the bottom, except. You open with / or / or / or /; the trash has cards that are out of the game now; there are 10 kingdom cards and 7 base cards; your deck starts out with 7 Coppers and 3 Estates.

Over and over I tried to find anything left that there was no exception for, and made the exception. You can't just make one game into every game, because you have a particular audience and there's what they like. There are no Dominion cards that require anagramming, for example. In the 90s I sometimes tried to stretch games that far, here now it turns into Scrabble, and well it's no good, you want to find a core to rally around, and then deviate from that while staying in the area. Anyway Champion fits neatly into the framework of Dominion, it is not anagramming. And I've played with it plenty and it's pretty sweet.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, How do you feel about Champion?