Encampment

Encampment
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Empires
Illustrator(s)	Jessi J
Card text
+2 Cards +2 Actions You may reveal a Gold or Plunder from your hand. If you do not, set this aside, and return it to its pile at the start of Clean-up.

Encampment is an Action card from Empires. It is a cheap variant of Lost City—a village that also increases handsize, a very powerful engine component—but you only get to use it once unless you have a Gold or Plunder in hand. It belongs to a split pile; five copies of Encampment sit on top of five copies of Plunder.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• Revealing a Plunder or Gold is optional.
• When you return Encampment to the Supply, it goes on top of its pile, potentially covering up a Plunder.

Other Rules clarifications

• If you cannot return Encampment to the Supply (e.g. you bought it from the Black Market), then if it is set aside it will stay there but will still count as one of your cards at the end of the game.
• If you somehow play this at the start of Clean-up, and it sets itself aside, it will immediately return to the Supply.

Strategy

Encampment has three defining characteristics:

1. Like Lost City, Encampment combines non-terminal draw and a village into a single card, which is very powerful. Draw and village effects form the backbone of many engines, and combining the two into a single cheap card reduces your odds of dudding and speeds up the building process.
2. If you cannot collide it with a Gold or Plunder, it is a one-shot. In the early game, it can be fine to gain Encampment and play it in this way if you otherwise miss the pricepoint you want, as the early cycling and draw can help you afford and play other important cards in a manner similar to Ride. In games with limited gains, however, it may be wiser to wait until you can retain the Encampment. In some Kingdoms, it may be possible to play your Encampments using Ways in order to get some value out of your early Encampments. Later in the game, you usually have more deck control and retaining Encampments is more feasible, and doing so means less wasted resources regaining them. Because Encampment is collision-dependent, you’ll usually want to get some deck control before adding a Gold or Plunder to your deck, usually by thinning your starting cards. Otherwise, you’ll add an expensive stop card to your deck without much guarantee of keeping your Encampments. Effects such as Save and Tracker, or duration draw such as Wharf, can also help ensure these collisions early in the game. Because It’s difficult to uncover Plunders without retaining Encampments (except with Battle Plan), Gold is typically used initially to retain Encampments. As such, effects such as Skulk’s on-buy ability and Gold-gainers such as Governor are worth considering in Kingdoms with Encampment, as they lower the cost of acquiring a Gold, as is spiking for an early Gold if you can thin quickly. In cases where you do not collide Encampment with the required Treasures, it’s usually better to play the Encampment than not, as there’s a chance you could draw the required cards, and drawing now in order to have a full turn is usually better than passing a turn to hoard an Encampment. Rarely, it can be tactically wise to return Encampments by choosing not to reveal a Gold or Plunder. This might be done to avoid a pileout or slow down your opponent in gaining Plunders.
3. It is very cheap at . This has two repercussions:
   • It is easy to pick up with an extra Buy and , or with gainers, especially Workshop variants. Encampment’s value vastly exceeds its pricepoint (assuming you can keep it), and as such it makes cards like Hermit far more valuable than usual, both because such effects give you more control over the Encampment split and because you’re adding stronger-than-usual cards to your deck.
   • It is an exceptionally strong target for Command variants such as Band of Misfits, Captain, Inheritance, and Way of the Mouse. In these cases, you get the benefit of playing Encampment but without having to set anything aside or return anything to the supply no matter what, allowing the card playing Encampment to effectively act as a Lost City with no downsides.

In games where Encampments are desirable and retained, Plunder is likely to be uncovered. This is usually the case in Kingdoms with sources of gains or +Buy, and decent thinning. Plunder offers a theoretically unbounded but slowly accumulating source of alt-VP, bottlenecked by both the number of copies you possess and how consistently you can play them all. As with all stop card payload, playing all of your Plunders consistently is usually dependent on a strong engine, particularly one with good draw. In Kingdoms that offer a megaturn or a fast pileout, Plunder is often too slow to matter.

Because there are only five copies of each card rather than the usual ten, players will end up with an unequal distribution of copies if the pile empties. In Kingdoms where Encampment or Plunder are important, this may make winning the split more of a consideration than it is with other cards. For example, in a Kingdom where draw or village effects are limited and deck control and terminal space are important, it can be advantageous to win the Encampment split. Doing so may allow you to play one more copy of Bridge than your opponents, enabling you to gain Provinces with Vampire. Similarly, winning the split can be important to consider with Plunder, as if your engine can consistently play three Plunders every turn to your opponent’s two, you’ll outscore them in the long run.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		+2 Cards +2 Actions You may reveal a Gold or Plunder from your hand. If you do not, set this aside, and return it to the Supply at the start of Clean-up.	Empires Empires (2021 printing)	June 2016
		+2 Cards +2 Actions You may reveal a Gold or Plunder from your hand. If you do not, set this aside, and return it to its pile at the start of Clean-up.	Prefer not referring to the Supply	June 29, 2022

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Dutch	Kampement			+2 Kaarten +2 Acties Je mag een goud- of een plunde- renkaart uit je hand tonen. Doe je dat niet, leg deze kaart dan opzij en leg hem aan het begin van je opschoonfase terug in de voorraad.	(2016)
Finnish	Leiri
French	Camp			+2 Cartes +2 Actions Vous pouvez dévoiler un Or ou un Saccage de votre main. Si vous ne le faites pas, mettez cette carte de côté et retournez-la à la réserve au début de la phase d'Ajustement.
German	Feldlager			+2 Karten +2 Aktionen Du darfst ein Gold oder ein Diebesgut aus deiner Hand aufdecken. Wenn du das nicht tust, lege diese Karte zur Seite und lege sie zu Beginn deiner Aufräumphase in den Vorrat zurück.	2. Edition (2021)
	Feldlager			+2 Karten +2 Aktionen Du darfst ein Gold oder ein Diebesgut aus deiner Hand aufdecken. Wenn du das nicht tust, lege diese Karte zur Seite und lege sie zu Beginn deiner Aufräumphase zurück auf ihren Stapel.
Japanese	陣地 (pron. jinchi)			+2 カードを引く +2 アクション 手札から金貨か鹵獲品 を公開してもよい。公開しなかっ た場合、これを脇に置き、クリーンアップフェイズの開始時にサプライに戻す。
Polish	Obozowisko			+2 karty +2 akcje Możesz odkryć z ręki kartę Złota lub Zdobyczy. Jeśli tego nie zrobiłeś, odłóż tę kartę na bok i zwróć ją do Zasobów na początku fazy porządków.	(2017)
Russian	Лагерь (pron. lagyer')

Trivia

Official card art.

Secret History

The idea to Encampment was to go back to the pile, that was the neat part; Plunder can get uncovered but then re-covered. Encampment is a card that's not shabby to play as a one-shot you only paid for. At first you had to have Plunder to keep it; that sometimes worked well, sometimes not so well. To improve the card it changed to also letting you reveal Gold; it flirted with just referring to Treasures costing or more (with a Plunder), but naming the cards is simpler. Later on Encampment changed to being set aside, only going to the pile at the end of the turn, which sometimes stops you from buying it back (but lets you buy the Plunder), but was done as a precaution against recursion that helps you remember you got those extra Actions this turn. Plus it neatly solved the issue of clearly having it be that Overlord as Encampment goes to the Overlord pile, not the Encampment pile.

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

Theme

Encampments move around. And yes your army seriously cares about pay.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Empires Rulebook

Retrospective

[Encampment] might change a lot. The problem is you need to remember the +Actions, so you really want the card sitting there, but you don't want to forget to return the card, so you really want to just return it. Horse / Experiment nail this by normally giving you nothing to remember.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Dominion Discord, 2021