Throne Room
| Throne Room | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Info | |
| Cost |
 |
| Type(s) | Action |
| Kingdom card? | Yes |
| Set |
Base |
| Illustrator(s) | Harald Lieske |
| Card text | |
| Choose an Action card in your hand. Play it twice. | |
Throne Room is an Action card from the Base set. It allows you to play another Action card from your hand twice, as if you had a Village and two copies of that Action card. It's great when you have lots of Action cards and are sure you'll be able to draw Throne Room in hand with a good Action, but be careful—if you buy it too early, or when you have too many Treasure and Victory cards and not enough Action cards, you'll have no Actions to play with it and it'll be a dead card!
FAQ
Official FAQ
- You pick another Action card in your hand, play it, and play it again. The second use of the Action card doesn't use up any extra Actions you have.
- You completely resolve playing the Action the first time before playing it the second time.
- If you Throne Room a Throne Room, you play an Action, doing it twice, and then play another Action and do it twice; you do not resolve an Action four times.
- If you Throne Room a card that gives you +1 Action, such as Market, you will end up with 2 Actions left afterwards, which is tricky, because if you'd just played Market twice you'd only have 1 Action left afterwards. Remember to count the number of Actions you have remaining out loud to keep from getting confused!
- You cannot play any other Actions in between playing the Throne Roomed Action twice.
Other Rules clarifications
When you play Throne Room you MUST pick an action from your hand to play twice if you have any actions in your hand; you can't choose not to.
When you play Throne Room and choose to target a Duration, the Throne Room stays out in play with the Duration that it affects. If you Throne Room a Throne Room which affects a Duration, the top-level Throne Room does not stay in play and gets cleaned up during the Clean-up phase of the turn.
Remember that Throne Room does NOT "double" a card - it simply makes you play it twice. It may have different effects the first and second time it is played, so remember to follow all the instructions on the card fully from top to bottom, and then go back and follow them a second time.
Strategy Article
There is no strategy article on Throne Room.
Throne Room is a powerful addition to most decks with a high action density. It's weak in games where you might draw it without any good actions. It typically not a good buy on turn 1 or 2, since you won't yet have good actions to Throne Room.
Throne room as a village
In the presence of cards that give +1 action, a Throne Room can be used as a makeshift Village. Cantrips are especially useful to this end, as they replace the two cards played, leaving an additional +2 Actions.
In some cases, the combination of Throne Room and cards giving +1 action can be used to construct a viable engine that would normally require villages, on boards without any villages. As with most engines, trashing is important.
Throne room as a replacement for cards that run out
In some games, there is a race to grab certain cards before the pile empty, like Minion, City, or Grand Market, cards that you want to play as many copies of as possible per turn. If the density of these cards in your deck is high enough and your deck sufficiently thin that you draw one of these cards each turn, Throne Rooms can act as a "substitute" for these power cards. This benefit is especially useful because you can pick up the Throne Rooms for cheaper than the desirable cards.
Synergies/Combos
- Desirable cantrips make a Throne Room more likely to function as a Village, and reduce the risk of drawing the card dead.
- Strong trashing like Chapel helps line up Throne Room with good targets.
The Throne Room Variations
Donald X posted his thoughts on combos with the Intrigue cards:
right there. Baron can offer you the chance to buy Provinces at earlier points in the game than you're used to - as soon as turn three, off of a Baron / Silver start. Do you actually want a turn three Province? Well, sometimes...
Bridge: This is one of the ones you really want to Throne Room. One of my playtesters had a turn that went, Throne Throne, first Throning Bridge, then Throning Bridge... buy 5 Minions. Minion costs 
. Maybe it's a better story if you know what all these cards do. Anyway Throne Room / Bridge, that's one people really go for.
Conspirator: Throne gets you all the way there. You played Throne Room, that's one action; you play Conspirator, that's a 2nd action; Throne makes you play Conspirator a 2nd time, that's your 3rd action, so you get your +1 Card +1 Action from Conspirator.
Coppersmith: Coppers worth 
each! Not shabby.
Great Hall: The beauty of this combo is just that it's insurance. You don't want to draw Throne and have nothing to Throne with it. Great Hall helps you reduce the risk of drawing a dead Throne.
Masquerade: The second time Masquerade goes off, everyone just passes the card they got passed the first time. It's certainly fine to be drawing four cards and trashing two things and passing two things, but it doesn't hurt the other players any extra the second time.
Mining Village: This is a confusing one. Mining Village says, you may trash Mining Village, "if you do..." If you Throne a Mining Village, and trash it the first time you play it, you won't manage to trash it the second time. It's trashed already. The "if you do" test fails; you did not. You can Throne it and trash it once, but you can't get 
from one Mining Village this way.
Minion: You might be tempted to take +
for the first one, then get a new hand with the second one and take it from there. Better is to draw first, that way if you get a dud draw you can draw a second time instead of your +. There are other options though. Minion is a combo with itself, so Throne / Minion is a fine path to be on. (I corrected this in a reply to the BGN article; obv. you take the new hand first.)
Nobles: This is a strong one. Typically you take +3 Cards the first time, then pick Actions or Cards based on whether or not you have more actions to play.
Pawn: Throning Pawn lets you pick one of everything, and get Market the hard way. I don't really recommend that. Throne the most expensive card you can, that's my advice. Still, you work with what you've got.
Saboteur: Expensive attacks are usually some of the more exciting things to Throne Room. If you can get enough Saboteurs played, you can stop the other players from getting anywhere. Of course that doesn't just happen easily, because, well what fun would that be.
Torturer: No-one wants to get Tortured twice, but when it happens, at least you can gain a Curse the first time, then discard the Curse with something else the second time.
Tribute: This could get you anything from nothing (hitting four Curses), to +8 Cards +4 Coins +4 Actions (Nobles / Harem twice). You may get unlucky and hit duplicates, or hit actions when you can't use them, but this turn is probably going to be pretty impressive.
Trivia
Secret History
. My feeling was that you didn't want to buy two on turns 1 and 2, and probably didn't want to buy one on either of those turns (except with the Feast combo). Later in the game it doesn't matter as much whether it costs or . So why not ? In general, if a card can be cheaper, I make it cheaper. I want the cards as cheap as possible without breaking the game, rather than as expensive as possible without going unplayed. So, I knew Throne Room was good, but it seemed like was okay.
's, but we decided we could live with just having four. There's Silver at , so it's fine to sometimes deal out a random 10 and not get a .
Retrospective
