Loan
Loan | |
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Info | |
Cost | |
Type(s) | Treasure |
Kingdom card? | Yes |
Set | Prosperity |
Illustrator(s) | Simon Jannerland |
Card text | |
When you play this, 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 and works best in a treasure-less engine.
Contents |
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.
Other Rules clarifications
Strategy Article
Original article by theory
Loan is a much-maligned card. In the mid- to late-game, Loans do more harm than good, bypassing your good Actions only to discard your Platinums or Golds. Effective use of the Loan is very situational.
First, Loan is a good defensive card. Loans can clear out the Coppers that Mountebanks add to your deck. Attacks that give you Curses are blunted when you can use the Loan to skip over worthless cards. If you plan to gain money through Actions to defend from Pirate Ships, then Loans can also quickly clear your deck of Pirate Ship targets. And if you are being attacked by Ghost Ship, then you can dump useless cards onto your deck in anticipation of using Loan to discard it.
Second, Loan is useful when there are ways to turn it into something else, e.g., Remodel, Bishop, Salvager, or Apprentice. Those cards are generally too inefficient at deck-thinning because trashing Coppers provides little to no benefit for them. Here, Loan can clear out the Coppers quickly before getting out of the way and turning into a useful Action, giving 1 VP token, adding , or drawing 3 cards. Mines can also turn unwanted Loans into Gold, though Loan sort of anti-synergizes with a Mined deck.
Third, as alluded to earlier, Loan is helpful in godawful decks burdened with useless cards, where having to discard a Treasure is well worth being able to skip all the Curses and Victory Cards before it. Of course, this can backfire; in a deck with only one Gold, it can really sting to have to discard it. But in, say, a Goons deck, where you are buying up Coppers for VP tokens, Loan can help get rid of the junk. Alternatively, Loan is quite useful in no-treasure strategies like Minion.
Fourth, if Venture is the best available, and you anticipate buying several of them, Loans can be indispensable in clearing out your Coppers. The problem is that you might trigger the Loan with the Venture... which then forces you to discard another Venture.
(As was noted in the comments to the original article, this isn’t totally accurate; Loan is good in bad Treasure decks, not necessarily in bad Action decks.)
The real problem with Loan is that it’s only a card to buy if no viable alternatives are available. In every respect it is out-classed by something else: Reaction cards are better at dealing with attacks; Chapel and Remake are better for deck-cleansing; Ventures are a better option for getting through the deck; Watchtowers are better for Goons. And unless Loans are the only source of deck-thinning in the game, even the simple Silver is probably preferable. In big money games, the lost tempo from buying Loan instead of Silver can set one back more than any gain from trashing coppers.
The one aspect that Loan uniquely excels at is the no-Treasure deck. This might be because you are paranoid about Pirate Ships, but more likely it is because you are running Combo: Minion and Loan.
Synergies/Combos
- Remodel, Salvager, Apprentice, Bishop
- Navigator
- Goons
- Minion
- Tunnel
- Attack cards (as a defense)
- Venture (only if there aren’t other trashing options)
Antisynergies
Versions
English versions
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 1st Edition | 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 2nd Edition | February 2017 |
Other language versions
Trivia
Secret History
Retrospective