Black Market
Black Market | |
---|---|
Info | |
Cost | |
Type(s) | Action |
Kingdom card? | Yes |
Set | Promo |
Illustrator(s) | Franz Vohwinkel |
Card text | |
+ Reveal the top 3 cards of the Black Market deck. You may buy one of them immediately. Put the unbought cards on the bottom of the Black Market deck in any order. (Before the game, make a Black Market deck out of one copy of each Kingdom card not in the supply.) |
Black Market is a promotional Action card that allows players to buy Kingdom cards that are not in the supply for the current game. It has a reputation for leading to swingy and unpredictable games because the Black Market deck contains only one copy of each card and they appear in a random order.
As the only card that can allow Treasure cards to be played during the Action phase of a turn, Black Market can enable some exotic combos. The presence of Black Market in a game can also lead to odd consequences such as an eleventh Kingdom card being in the supply without Young Witch, or Ruins being in the supply without Looters, since Young Witch or Looters may be in the Black Market deck.
FAQ
Official FAQ
- Black Market allows you to Buy a card during the Action phase.
- You can use provided by other Action cards played earlier in the Action phase and you can also play Treasure cards from your hand to pay the cost of the bought card.
- The Treasure cards are played to the table in your play area, just as you would during the Buy phase.
- You may play more Treasure cards than are required for the purchase; the extra from Action cards and Treasure cards are available to use during your Buy phase.
- You may even play Treasure cards without Buying a card.
- You may not reuse already spent during a turn. A card bought during the Action phase does not count as a card bought in your Buy phase, so you do not need an action card giving you +1 Buy to still buy a card during your normal Buy phase.
- To use the Black Market Kingdom card, you must create a Black Market deck before starting the game. The Black Market deck is made up of Kingdom cards that are not in the Supply of the current game. The players should agree before the game which cards will be used to create the Black Market deck (for example, you could agree to use one of every Kingdom card you own that is not a part of the Supply).
- It is recommended that the Black Market deck contain at least 15 Kingdom cards, with no duplicates.
- All players can see which cards are placed in the Black Market deck before the game begins.
- Take one of each selected Kingdom card, shuffle them together, and place the deck face down on the table where all players can reach it.
- This deck is not a Supply pile and if it is emptied, it does not count towards the end game conditions.
- If you play Black Market and the Black Market deck is empty, you cannot buy a card but you still get + .
- If you play Black Market and choose not to buy one of the three cards from the Black Market deck, you still get + .
Other Rules clarifications
- Black Market does NOT give you an extra buy phase, so the cost of Peddler stays at 8.
- On Isotropic, only a subset of cards not in the game will be available in the Black Market deck. The strategy may vary depending on how the Black Market deck is set up by your playgroup.
Strategy Article
Black Market was discussed at this forum thread.
Often, Dominion cards can be classified into a certain category. You have trashers like Chapel and Remake, +Cards like Smithy, +Buy from Woodcutter and Herbalist, and +Actions from Villages. Although this is not an exhaustive list, it shows that many Dominion cards can be grouped together into certain general effects.
Black Market throws all of that out the window. It is the only card in the game that allows you to buy cards from outside the game. And because of this, it is one of the most high-variance cards in the game. You can lose a game because one player managed to pick out a power card from the Black Market and you didn't, and there isn't really much you can do about it.
Downsides
Black Market is terminal. Because of this, it must always be judged in comparison to buying a Silver instead of Black Market.
Black Market gives you cards at the wrong time. Let's suppose you buy a Black Market on T1/T2. Then you play it on T3/T4. That means that if you buy Chapel from the Black Market, the earliest you can see that card is on turn 5; that's way too late to start trashing your starting cards. It might give you a Curser when you're already greening, or good Villages before you've bought any terminals, or terminals when you haven't bought enough Villages. It's unpredictable. There is absolutely no guaranteeing that you find the card you want, with the money to pay for it. The most important thing to remember about Black Market is that you should never assume you'll get a specific card. Rather, you should have several cards that you want to buy, and be flexible in building a plan that can accomodate them. Compare to new Dark Ages card Ironmonger.
When to buy Black Market
- A slow game. This is probably the most important point to keep in mind. Black Market is only useful if you actually get the time to play the action card you bought. Against a fast Big Money strategy, like Embassy-BM or Courtyard-BM, I would hesitate at picking up Black Market. The fast pace means you play fewer Black Markets, have a smaller chance of obtaining a good card, and an even smaller chance of having that card have a meaningful impact.
- Villages. Unless you're buying Black Market for variety (see a later point for this), Villages are almost essential to Black Market. Because of how the Black Market deck is created, you are going to primarily be buying actions, often terminals. You need Villages to ensure you can actually play them.
- Engine decks. If you can play Black Market every turn, you're bound to find what you want fairly quickly. The problem is that buying Black Market early will probably hurt the speed of your engine deployment. So in these games, you want to do it after you've picked up a few pieces. Throne Rooms and King's Courts are particularly good with Black Market. They allow you to rapidly churn through the Market offering and loot the best cards. The overall deck will become a good match too with many different action cards and some terminal actions +for coins.
- Strong cards in the BM deck, preferably those strong even when bought late. Remember that when buying from a Black Market, you're getting the card turn 5 at the earliest. So although buying trashers from the Black market is tempting, I would hesitate about it. There's a reason you open Chapel, Steward, and Remake on T1/T2, and not on turn 5. Even Ambassador is not an amazing buy from the Black Market. Also, there need to be strong cards. Not one strong card and several weak ones. There should be a couple (at least 3) cards that you really want from the Black Market, as well as some that you would be fine with adding to your deck (generally cantrips).
Other cards on the board that synergize with Black Maret are:
- Fairgrounds. Black Market - Fairgrounds is very strong, and is worth considering even if there are not many Villages in the game. I'm honestly not sure how it compares to the top-tier BM decks, like Masquerade-BM, but you can get very high point-scoring Fairgrounds with Black Market out.
- Vineyard. Vineyard likes slow games as well (ignoring Vineyard rushes with Ironworks and the like.) So Black Market can be useful in picking up lots of actions, and as a source of virtual +Buy. Ideally, the Black Market will have lots of cantrips, or the board or the Black Market deck will have decently strong attacks to slow down the pace of the game.
- Tactician. So Black Market is an amazing way to fuel a Double Tactician deck. Play Black Market, play Tactician, use massive buying power from the Treasure in play. This is discussed at Combo: Black Market and Tactician.
- Treasures with special abilities. Getting treasures played mid-turn uniquely allows advantages from kingdom Treasures, such as Royal Seal, Horn of Plenty, and Quarry to be available before the buy phase.
- Draw-up-to-X engines like Watchtower, Library, Minion can draw after you've played your Treasures. (Menagerie also has a similar effect.)
Cards to watch out for in the Black Market deck are:
- Cursers. Although curse-givers are much stronger early on in the game than later, Curses are still amazingly painful. Still, if there's only one Curser and nothing else, I wouldn't bother unless the board was very slow. The chances of getting it are too slim otherwise.
- Missing engine components. This should be considered more as a bonus than as an active reason to buy it.
- Good engines typically have +Actions, +Cards, and +Buys. If one of those categories is missing from the board, you can try to get it from the Black Market. As mentioned before, trying to get missing +Actions from Black Market is usually not worth it. Trying to get that missing +Buy is alright, but don't neglect Provinces/Colonies. Finally, picking up terminal draw can be quite good, but should be considered more as a side goal.
- Tournament. Yep, Tournament gets its own section. It's that good. I might be overdoing it, but if I see Tournament in the Black Market, I'd buy Black Market about 80% of the time. If you get the only Tournament in the game, you get exclusive access to all the Prizes. And the prizes are really good. Essentially, Tournament can be considered as a potential Curser, +Buy, +Actions...you get the idea. The best part is that because Tournament is most useful after the first Province, it is relevant over almost the entire game.
What can mess up a Black Market deck.
One way to misplay Black Market is to buy too many terminal actions. It is very tempting to take terminals offered from the black market stack, since the opportunity might not come again, but this is the classic way to break your deck. This also needs to factor into your decision whether to buy the Black Market or not.
A second way to misplay Black Market is to have a weak deck, expecting the Black Market to rescue it. If the deck is weak then you might not have enough coins in hand to buy the best cards when they are offered. Get the foundations of the deck right and then bring in the Black Market if you need it.
Synergies/Combos
- Black Market/Tactician is a top-notch combo enabling a powerful double Tactician deck, since Black Market allows you to play your Treasures and then play Tactician.
- Black Market is a strong enabler for Fairgrounds, since Fairgrounds depends on differently-named cards for its value and Black Market greatly increases the number of differently-named cards available in a game.
- Since most cards in the Black Market deck are Actions, Quarry is helpful for buying good cards from the Black Market deck and still having enough money left over to buy another useful card during the Buy phase of the same turn.
- When the Black Market deck contains powerful terminal Actions, villages are helpful to ensure that cards acquired from it can be regularly played.
Antisynergies
- Powerful cards already in the Kingdom make searching the Black Market unnecessary and risky.
- When an engine depends on cards from the Black Market, it is particularly vulnerable to Swindler, Saboteur, and Knights, which can trash key engine pieces with no good way of replacing them.
Trivia
Card Art
Secret History