Soft terminal
Soft terminal is a subcategory of terminal Actions that give you a use for other, dead Action cards in your hand, often other copies of themselves. They are contrasted with "hard" terminals, which force a player to pick one of them to play. The archetypes of this are Remodel and Vault.
Examples
- Terminals that trash Actions for some benefit:
- Terminals that require discarding:
- Intrigue: Secret Chamber
- Prosperity: Vault
- Cornucopia: Horse Traders, Young Witch
- Hinterlands: Embassy
- Dark Ages: Storeroom, Count
- Terminals that put a card from your hand on top of your deck:
- Masquerade (you can pass a dead card, though not always wise)
- Cultist (able to play other copies of itself)
- Island
Trivia
While many players say they had mentally sorted cards into a nameless category similar to this, there had not been a specific name for it until Donald X. revealed in his ongoing interview on the forums that it was a category he explicitly endeavored to make cards for. "Soft terminal" arose as the community favorite title for the category, but other names floated were self-synergy, supercollider, and mitigator. Donald X. himself suggested spammable terminal.