Loan

Loan
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Treasure
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Prosperity
Illustrator(s)	Simon Jannerland
Card text
Reveal cards from your deck until you reveal a Treasure. Discard it or trash it. Discard the other cards.

Loan is a Treasure card from Prosperity. When played, it digs through your deck for another Treasure card which you can trash or discard. Typically it is used to trash unwanted Copper, but can be frustrating in that you have no control over whether it will find a Copper or discard a Treasure you would have preferred to play..

It was removed from the second edition of Prosperity and replaced with Investment and Crystal Ball, new Treasures that can function as trashers.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• When you play Loan, you get , reveal cards from the top of your deck until revealing a Treasure card, and then decide whether to trash that card or discard it.
• Then you discard all of the other revealed cards.
• If you run out of cards before revealing a Treasure, shuffle your discard pile (but not the revealed cards) to get more; if you still do not find a Treasure, just discard all of the revealed cards.

Strategy

Before it was removed, Loan was a trasher of limited impact. Trashing is generally very good, but Loan is a weaker option for doing so because it is unable to trash the worst of your starting cards: Estates. If thinning is very valuable due to the availability of an engine with strong payload and you either have no better thinning option, or can pair Loan with a good Estate trasher, Loan can be helpful in the early game. When Loan is the only Copper trasher, it is often a difficult decision whether to purchase a Loan or to forgo trashing. In this context, Loan can be a good purchase when there is strong Action payload such as Goons or Bridge but the draw is unreliable. Loan is generally not useful in money strategies, and engines with very strong draw (such as Wharf) may be better off drawing through the Coppers rather than trashing them.

Loan’s main advantages in the early game are that it is non-terminal, only costs , and, in a deck of mostly Coppers and Estates, acts similarly to a cantrip that can sift past Estates. This allows it to pair with other good opening cards, which are often terminal and may cost . Salvager is a good example of an Estate trasher that might work well alongside Loan for these reasons. The small amount of cycling in the early game helps you get to good cards faster.

One of the disadvantages of Loan in the early game is that decks with Loan often struggle to hit high price points early. In the early game you often want to purchase at least one Silver or an equivalent source of in order to afford cards. Loan is a card you buy instead of a Silver, which means you’re less likely to hit important price points than someone who skips Loan. If Silver is your other opening buy, your Loan might find your Silver, both discarding it and also failing to trash a Copper. For this reason, players with Loan often try to avoid buying other Treasures, but following this rule may also slow down your build. Thus, building a deck that reliably trashes with Loan requires that you make effective use of sources of virtual coin such as Militia to make . Loan may still discard your Militia, but at least it will find a Copper to trash (and if it doesn’t discard your Militia, it will cycle towards it, so you should still get roughly the same number of Militia plays on average).

Later in the game, if you draw your deck, Loan will not trash any cards. If you are drawing your deck but still want to trash, you may need to use a card such as Oasis to discard a Copper before playing Loan.

Loan can also trigger a shuffle at an inopportune moment. If you know that you have no more Treasures in your draw pile and some in your discard, it can be important to choose not to play Loan so that you can shuffle the good cards you have in play or in your hand back into your deck at the end of the turn.

External strategy articles

Note: Article(s) below are by individual authors and may not represent the community's current views on cards, but may provide more in-depth information or give historical perspective. Caveat emptor.

• theory's 2010 article

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		When you play this, reveal cards from your deck until you reveal a Treasure. Discard it or trash it. Discard the other cards.	Prosperity	October 2010
		When you play this, reveal cards from your deck until you reveal a Treasure. Discard it or trash it. Discard the other cards.	Prosperity (2016 printing)	February 2017
		Reveal cards from your deck until you reveal a Treasure. Discard it or trash it. Discard the other cards.	Prosperity (2020 printing)	October 2020

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Chinese	借貸			當你打出這張卡，展示你的牌庫直到展示一張錢幣卡為止。選擇移除或棄掉那張錢幣卡後，棄掉剩下的卡。
Czech	Půjčka
Dutch	Lening			Als je deze kaart speelt, toon dan kaarten van je trekstapel totdat je een geldkaart toont. Leg deze af of vernietig deze. Leg de andere getoonde kaarten af.
Finnish	Laina
French	Prêt
German	Lohn (lit. wage)			Sobald du diese Karte ausspielst, decke solange Karten vom Nachziehstapel auf, bis du eine Geldkarte aufdeckst. Entsorge diese oder lege sie ab. Lege die anderen aufgedeckten Karten ab.	(2016)
German	Lohn (lit. wage)			Decke Karten von deinem Nachziehstapel auf, bis du eine Geldkarte aufdeckst. Lege jene ab oder entsorge sie. Lege die anderen Karten ab.	(Nachdruck 2021)
Italian	Prestito
Japanese	借金 (pron. shakkin)			財宝カード1枚が公開されるまで山札を上から公開する。その1枚を捨て札にするか廃棄する。公開した他のカードを捨て札にする。
Polish	Kredyt (lit. credit)			Po zagraniu odkrywaj karty ze swojej talii, aż natrafisz na kartę Skarbu. Odrzuć ją albo wyrzuć na śmietnisko. Odrzuć pozostałe odkryte karty.	(2016)
Russian	Ссуда (pron. ssuda)
Spanish	Préstamo

Trivia

Official card art.

Secret History

The original card said "when you spend this, trash another treasure spent with it." All of the Prosperity treasures originally had "when you spend this" phrasings. They caused some confusion - what if a treasure worth has such a rule, and you spend on something and on something else? I eventually reworded them all as "when you play this" or "while this is in play." Loan didn't work like that and died. Then later I brought it back by having it look for a treasure in your deck.

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

Retrospective

Loan is easily the dud for me. I knew this during that extra testing period but decided to keep it. Looking at it in the set, it's okay. It has basically the same issues as Lookout, only not as bad; less experienced players are terrified of flipping over a Platinum that they now don't get to draw on this pass, while experienced players know that Loan is fine but not the best trasher ever; sometimes it's exciting because you are not buying any other treasures this game. I buy it more than Lookout, but whatever, in general this flipping over of cards thing has to come paired with something like "and get the good ones" in order to not bum people out too much. I don't think Venture makes people not buy it because maybe they'll flip over their good actions, although they will sometimes. But Loan, not a star. Anyway I kept it in knowing this.

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

Donald X.'s thoughts on Loan being unpopular

Loan is there for you, except when it isn't. Ideally you have no non-Copper Treasures. Then if you flip your good actions you are sad, but still getting to trash Coppers you didn't have to pass on playing. If you have the gall to open Silver / Loan it will endlessly seek out the Silver for you, and if you open Loan / Loan, it will seek out the Loan, that's just how it goes. As usual with Copper-trashers, it's better if something else is there to take out the Estates. Casual players don't like it or Lookout, so they weren't great to make, but I buy them plenty.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, $3 Cost Card Rankings Bottom Half