Banquet

This page is awaiting large-scale edits by the community to meet quality and format standards. The information on this page may be outdated. Join the #wiki-general channel on the Dominion Discord server to participate.

Banquet
Info
Cost
Type	Event
Set	Empires
Illustrator(s)	Brian Brinlee
Event text
Gain 2 Coppers and a non-Victory card costing up to .

Banquet is an Event from Empires. It lets you get and cards at a discount, with the penalty of also junking your deck with extra Copper.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• You can do this even if the Copper pile is empty.

Strategy

Banquet is a mediocre event, but in the right kingdoms it can be insanely good. Any games where you want cards early in the game (and don't mind the Copper), Banquet is good, especially if the kingdom includes a trasher like Donate or Chapel, or something like Trader, to avoid gaining the Coppers in the first place. However, for Banquet to really shine, you need cards that like the Copper.

Counting House

The Counting House-Banquet combo is one of the best in the game. Virtually unbeatable, it's an extremely fast strategy, winning over Goons, Minion, and even (barely) Chapel in about 15 turns. The strategy itself is quite simple. All you have to do is gain Counting House with Banquet every turn unless you have or more, in which case you should buy a Province (if you have less than , just buy a Copper). When you have enough Coppers in your discard pile to buy a Province, you will be able to buy one every turn that you have Counting House until you reshuffle. Cursers have very little effect, as your opponent will only get to play their Witch or Swindler 6-7 times at best, barely making a dent in your 40 +. Also, Curses don't bog you down very much: all you need to buy a Province is eight Coppers in your discard pile and a Counting House in your hand. Any discard down to X attacks such as Militia will have no effect, as long as you keep your Counting House in hand. (Multiple Torturers may put a stop to you, however.) Most other strategies will take too long to get started, as Big Money will only get about 2 Provinces in a 15-turn game.

Coppersmith

The Coppersmith and Banquet strategy works the same way as the Counting House-Banquet, except you gain Coppersmith with the Banquet instead of Counting House. This strategy is by no means as good as Counting House-Banquet, however. The main problem with this strategy is that you need four Coppers and a Coppersmith in your hand to buy a Province. Discard attacks and cursers can hurt you quite a bit by lowering your handsize and cluttering your deck, making it hard to get four Coppers in your hand. Even Cutpurse could easily cost you a Province. This strategy may get you a few Provinces, but will rarely split them 4-4 in a 2-player game. Duchies may seem like a good alternative to Provinces, but even this strategy has it's drawbacks, such as:

• Cluttered deck:

Buying a lot of Duchies equals a lot of green cards.

• Few victory points:

In a 2-player game, if you empty the Duchy pile, you'd get ~ 24 points. Your opponent could buy eight Provinces and get ~ 48 points. Even though you would most likely buy all the Duchies before your opponent emptied the Provinces out, four or five Estates isn't going to propel you to victory. (Even if Tunnel or Island is in the game, you'd find it hard to catch up. You would, however, have a chance to end the game before the Provinces are gone, and Islands could help un-clutter your deck, but you probably wouldn't Island enough Victory cards to make a difference.)

• You need to run down a third pile before your opponent buys his sixth Province. (Again, Tunnel or something similar could potentially work)

One solution to all three of these problem is the Harem:

• If you buy Harem first, then Duchies, you'll have more to spend.

• Eight Harems plus eight Duchies equals 40 points. Still not enough to beat eight Provinces, but you could potentially buy a Province or two this way, elevating your chances of winning.

• Harem is your third pile.

This still wouldn't work very well. However, if you went for Harems, Provinces, and Duchies (Duchies only late in the game), you would have a much better chance. Overall, the Coppersmith-Banquet is a fairly bad strategy, not nearly as good as the Counting House-Banquet.

Gardens or Philosopher's Stone

The Gardens with Banquet is better than you may think, even though you can't gain a Gardens with banquet. The basic strategy is:

• Less than : Buy a Copper.

• to : Buy Banquet and gain a Silver, or buy a Gardens.

• : If you have +Buy, buy two Banquets, and gain two Silvers.

• : If you have +Buy, buy Banquet and a Gardens.

• +: Buy Province or Gardens, depending on how many cards you have in your deck.

Cards such as Festival, Charm, Nomad Camp, Woodcutter, or Horse Traders make a good alternative to Silver, as they all offer at least and +1 Buy. Festival and Charm, however are better than the others, because they aren't terminal.

One card that is extremely good with Gardens is the Cache. If you gain a Cache with Banquet, you're getting five cards in one turn (half a   for each Gardens you have). To truly unlock Cache's power, however, you need and +1 Buy. This way, you can buy two Banquets, gain two Caches, and eight Coppers, which is ten cards, or one   per Gardens you have. This is hard to beat, but you do need an extra Buy to make this happen.

As for Philosopher's Stone, well, it's pretty self-explanatory: Philosopher's Stone likes lots of cards, and Banquet gives you lots of cards. Opening / and buying two Banquets and gaining two Potions will allow you to get the Philosopher's Stone pretty early, and after that, all you need to do is keep buying Banquets and expanding your deck.

Ill-Gotten Gains

If you open / you can buy two Banquets, gain two Ill-Gotten Gains and dish out two curses to each other player while giving yourself a bunch of Coppers, which will come in handy in a Duchy rush. As it is much easier to have than , the IGG rush becomes that much easier, and the Curse and IGG pile is depleted much faster. Once this happens, just go like crazy for Duchies and try to end the game as quickly as possible. However, since your opponents' decks are full of Curses, there isn't as much urgency as usual to end the game (if your opponent is going heavy on Ambassadors, you might have some trouble).

Spices

If you open / you can buy two Banquets, gain two Spices and gain 4 Coffers. Then, on the subsequent shuffle, you can use the +Buy from Spices to further accumulate Coffers by buying Banquet for Spices twice if you lose less than 2 Coffers to do so, or just buying Spices without a Banquet if you have 5 Coppers in hand. This strategy allows you to accumulate Coffers extremely fast while maintaining a money density of around 1 dollar per card. This can allow you to buy at least 4 Provinces extremely quickly, usually around turn 9, though buying all 8 even if the Spices pile is uncontested is difficult. But as you can then buy Duchies for a decent time period after, this is still an extremely strong Rush.

Apothecary

Apothecary likes Coppers, and Banquet is only too happy to provide them. Similarly to Philosopher's Stone, if you get two Potions early on with Banquet, you shouldn't have too much trouble buying Apothecaries. If Golem is in the game, it can help by digging out your Apothecaries from amidst all the Coppers, then playing them and drawing 5-10 Coppers, almost guaranteeing you a Province.

Synergies/Combos

• Gardens games, especially with other enablers

• Cards that stop you from gaining the Coppers, such as Trader or Watchtower

• Cards that like the Copper, such as Counting House, Coppersmith, Apothecary, Philosopher's Stone, or Fountain

Antisynergies

• Games where the Coppers are harmful

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		Gain 2 Coppers and a non-Victory card costing up to .	Empires	June 2016

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text
Dutch	Banket
Finnish	Juomingit (lit. bacchanal)
French	Banquet
German	Bankett			Nimm 2 Kupfer sowie eine Nicht-Punktekarte, die bis zu kostet.
Japanese	宴会 (pron. enkai)			銅貨2枚とコスト以下の勝利点以外のカード1枚を獲得する。
Polish	Bankiet
Russian	Банкет (pron. bankyet)

Trivia

Official card art.

Secret History

This started as a Treasure for that was worth and came with a Copper and a (then, a Copper and a non-VP ). I liked it like that, but changing it to an Event saved a slot and made it less fast at running out piles.

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

Donald X.'s opinion

It's fun to gain Coppers when it's the move. Banquet tantalizes you with a turn one you couldn't otherwise have, but of course it asks a lot in exchange.

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