Copper

Copper
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Treasure
Kingdom card?	No
Set	Base
Illustrator(s)	Ryan Laukat
Card text

Copper is one of the three basic Treasure cards included in every game of Dominion. It produces + when played. Each player starts the game with seven Coppers in their deck, meaning that, under ordinary circumstances, each player will be able to spend a total of on their first two turns—either on one turn and on the other, or (one-sixth of the time, on average) and . Each standalone set comes with 60 Copper cards, which means the Supply will usually start with 60 Coppers minus 7 for each player in the game (46 for a 2-player game).

In games with an Heirloom-granting Kingdom card, one of your starting Coppers will be replaced with the corresponding Heirloom.

Learning that Copper is bad for your deck and that trashing it is usually a good idea is an important early step in learning Dominion strategy.

Strategy

The strategy for Copper is typically quite simple: Copper is a bad card because it is an inefficient stop card which will interfere with control of your deck. As a result, in many games, and especially when building an engine, you should aim to trash most or all of your starting Coppers.

There are a few nuances here, however. First, at the start of the game, Coppers are your only economy, so if you trash them all before adding other cards that produce , you will become unable to buy anything useful. This means you should think about how much purchasing power you will have left before getting rid of all or most of your Coppers using a very strong trasher such as Chapel. Second, Copper trashing is occasionally a low priority if you are pursuing a money strategy, or if your draw is very strong (e.g. Wharf). Finally, Copper has synergies with a few cards: For example, you can build an engine that uses Apothecary to increase your hand size by drawing Coppers alongside sifters such as Cellar to replace the Coppers you drew with better cards.

Buying Coppers is almost always a bad idea. The main exception is when you have a card such as Altar or Bat which can gain a powerful card, but requires you to trash something. In an engine that is reliably drawing and has extra +Buy, you can consider buying Coppers as fuel to use these cards more. Strategies that benefit by buying many cards on the same turn (e.g. with Merchant Guild) can also make use of the fact that Copper costs , but you should be careful about filling your deck with too much junk before the final turn of the game. Finally, the synergy between Beggar and Guildhall is an example of a rare case where a deck can be built around a synergy with Coppers.

Cards that interact with Copper

The cards in italics have been removed.

Copper gainers

• Prosperity: Mountebank
• Hinterlands: Cache, Noble Brigand, Ill-Gotten Gains
• Dark Ages: Beggar, Count
• Adventures: Treasure Trove
• Empires: Banquet
• Nocturne: Greed
• Menagerie: Alliance
• Rising Sun: Bureaucracy

Other interactions

• Dominion: Moneylender
• Intrigue: Coppersmith
• Seaside: Cutpurse
• Alchemy: Apothecary
• Prosperity: Counting House, Grand Market
• Adventures: Miser, Bonfire
• Empires: Royal Blacksmith, Settlers, Fountain, Palace
• Nocturne: Monastery, Bad Omens, Locusts
• Renaissance: Ducat, Silos

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
			Dominion 1st Edition	October 2008
	never implemented		Base Cards 1st Edition	June 2012
			Dominion 2nd Edition	October 2016
	never implemented		Base Cards 2nd Edition	June 2018

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Chinese	銅錢 (pron. tóngqián, lit. copper coin)
Czech	Měďák
Dutch	Koper				Eerste editie (2008)
	Koper				Tweede editie (2017)
Finnish	Kupariraha (lit. copper coin)
French	Cuivre
German	Kupfer				(2008)
	Kupfer				(2019)
Greek	Χάλκινο (pron. khalkino)
Hungarian	Réz
Italian	Rame
Japanese	銅貨 (pron. dōka, lit. copper coin)
Korean	동 (pron. dong)
Norwegian	Kobber
Polish	Miedziak				(2009)
	Miedziaki				(2016)
	Miedziaki				II Edycja (2017)
Romanian	Aramă
Russian	Медь (pron. myed')
Spanish	Cobre				First Edition Base (2008)
	Cobre				First Edition Intrigue (2009)
	Cobre				Second Edition Base (2016)

Trivia

Official card art.

Secret History

These cards are unchanged from day one. You could argue that the actions got tweaked to fit the treasures. The treasure pile sizes changed to match different estimates for the total set size, and ended up generous on all counts. In development the issue of the names for these came up - is it simpler if it's Copper Mine rather than Copper? In the end you can see that Copper won out. It just makes it a lot easier to name action cards if the treasures are treasures rather than mines.

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

Copper junking

I have tried "Each other player gains a Copper" a number of times, including in Plunder, and it has yet to survive, except on Mountebank which you may note I replaced. It's possible when it doesn't happen every time, e.g. on Jester and Noble Brigand, though I'm not thrilled with it on Jester and I also replaced Noble Brigand. There are too many Coppers, and the pile doesn't scale with the number of players.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Interview with Donald X.