Inventor

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Inventor
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Renaissance
Illustrator(s)	Julien Delval
Card text
Gain a card costing up to , then cards cost less this turn.

Inventor is an Action card from Renaissance. It is both a gainer and a cost reducer; therefore playing one Inventor improves the range of cards you can gain with your next Inventor.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• First you gain a card costing up to ; then, after that happens, prices are lowered for the rest of the turn.
• The cost lowering applies to all cards everywhere, including cards in the Supply, in hands, and in Decks.
• It's cumulative; for example if you play two Inventors, the cost reduction from the first applies to playing the second (for example it could gain a Duchy, which would then cost ), and afterwards cards cost less for the rest of the turn.

Other rules clarifications

• If you gain an Inventor with Inventor and then play the gained Inventor with Innovation, the first Inventor's cost reduction hasn't kicked in yet, so the second Inventor can still only gain a card costing .
• If you play the same Inventor multiple times with a Throne Room variant, costs are reduced multiple times.
• Even if you trash an Inventor from the play area (e.g., with Procession), the cost reduction remains in force till the end of the turn.

Strategy

Original article by RTT

Inventor is the new hot Bridge-Workshop hybrid from the newly released Renaissance expansion. Inventor does two different things: it gains a card up to , and reduces the cost of all cards by afterwards. Let’s see how good that is on its own in different situations and how you can put both of these abilities to their best use.

Playing a Single Inventor

In decks where you can only expect to play one Inventor per turn, Inventor functions like a Workshop that also gives you +. If you have a source of +Buy, it can be even more efficient. In a “single terminal kingdom” that’s going to be pretty rare, but hey, maybe you got Inventor from the Black Market. A Workshop with + attached for doesn’t sound like a bad deal at all. The downside of a Workshop is often the lack of economy on the turns you play it. With Inventor you don’t sacrifice early economy as much and still get the powerful gaining effect.

Stacking Inventors

Luckily, Inventor can do even better when you play it more than once, because the gaining part synergises really well with its own cost reduction. The second Inventor play is already much more valuable than the first, because cards are some of the most powerful cards in Dominion. With every Inventor you play, you will be able to gain a more expensive card than before. In many kingdoms, there won’t be a or card that you want to gain though, making the 3rd and 4th play somewhat equal to the second in power level.

From the 5th play onward, Inventor is able to gain Provinces.

Megaturning with Inventor

Unlike Bridge, you usually cannot rely on just Inventors as your payload for a megaturn style deck. Playing 7 Bridges can empty the Provinces, while 7 Inventors will just gain 3 of them. So for a megaturn you will either need to play even more Inventors (which will be really hard if the pile is at all contested), or find other cards to supplement your deck. Ideally, extra buys paired with good economy work will make the most of Inventor’s cost reduction.

In practice, I find Inventor decks work out a bit differently than one might expect. Because gaining and cards (including more Inventors) is so strong already, your deck will improve more quickly, and you will be able to empty the Provinces over 2 or 3 turns more easily than trying to gain them all in one turn.

Inventor gaining so many cards will also naturally drain the piles, making a three-pile ending much more likely. Keep in mind that Inventor can gain Duchies a lot faster than Provinces, so maybe you want to 3-pile with Duchies instead if the situation calls for it.

Synergies

• Throne Room variants (stacks the cost reduction like Bridge)
• Highway which enables even a single terminal Inventor to get 5-cost cards, such as Highway itself.
• +Buys or other gainers
• Cantrips or Villages you don’t mind gaining extra copies of to enable big Inventor turns

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		Gain a card costing up to , then cards cost less this turn (but not less than ).	Renaissance	November 2018
		Gain a card costing up to , then cards cost less this turn.	Renaissance (2021 printing)

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Chinese	發明家 (pron. fāmíng jiā)
Dutch	Uitvinder			Pak een kaart die maximaal kost. Daarna kosten kaarten deze beurt minder (maar niet minder dan ).
French	Inventeur			Recevez une carte coûtant jusqu'à , puis les cartes coûtent de moins à ce tour (mais pas moins que ).
French	Inventeur			Recevez une carte coûtant jusqu'à , puis les cartes coûtent de moins à ce tour.
German	Erfinder			Nimm eine Karte, die bis zu kostet, danach kosten Karten in diesem Zug weniger (aber nicht weniger als ).	(2019)
German	Erfinder			Nimm dir eine Karte, die bis zu kostet. Ab jetzt kosten Karten weniger in diesem Zug.
Japanese	発明家 (pron. hatsumei-ka)			コスト以下のカード1枚を獲得する。 このターン、(サプライ以外も含めた)すべてのカードのコストは下がる。
Russian	Изобретатель (pron. izobryetatyel')
Spanish	Inventor			Ganas una carta que cueste hasta . A continuación, las cartas cuestan menos durante este turno (pero no menos de ).

Trivia

Official card art.

Secret History

One of the 2-sided State cards was a Workshop that could get you a Scheme-a-turn that turned into Citadel (but it worked on Treasures too). For some reason I added a Bridge effect to it, while it still used a State. Then I decided the State needed a different card, but kept the Workshop plus Bridge card sans States. We also tried it at with the bottom part of Silk Merchant, but that was too helpful. Inventor does mega-turns, and ideally you don't always have just what you need there.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of Dominion: Renaissance, 2018