Procession

Procession
Cost	4
Type	[[Action]]
Set/Expansion	Dark Ages
Illustrator	Alex Drummond
You may play an action card from your hand twice. Trash it. Gain an Action card costing exactly $1 more than it.

[[Category:Action cards]]

FAQ

Official FAQ

• Playing an Action card from your hand is optional. If you do play one, you then play it a second time, then trash it, then gain an Action card costing exactly more than it (even if somehow you failed to trash it).
• Gaining a card is not optional once you choose to play an Action card, but will fail to happen if no card in the Supply costs the exact amount needed.
• If something happens due to trashing the card - for example drawing 3 cards due to trashing a Cultist - that will resolve before you gain a card.
• The gained card comes from the Supply and is put into your discard pile.
• This does not use up any extra Actions you were allowed to play due to cards like Fortress - Procession itself uses up one Action and that is it.
• You cannot play any other cards in between resolving the Procession-ed Action card multiple times, unless that Action card specifically tells you to (such as Procession itself does).
• If you Procession a Procession, you will play one Action twice, trash it, gain an Action card costing more, then play another Action twice, trash it, gain an Action card costing more, then trash the Procession and gain an Action costing more than it.
• If you Procession a card that gives you +1 Action, such as Vagrant, you will end up with 2 Actions to use afterwards, rather than the one you would have left if you just played two Vagrants.
• If you use Procession on a Duration card (from Seaside), Procession will stay out until your next turn and the Duration card will have its effect twice on your next turn, even though the Duration card is trashed.

Other Rules clarifications

Procession and Island

If you play Procession on an Island, the Island is set aside on its mat and is not trashed by Procession.

Procession can't trash the card it played unless it's still in play.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, from 'Procession + Island' on F.DS

Strategy Article

This is the devil’s card. You will see someone play it wonderfully and empty the provinces in 10 turns. You’ll try it out the next game for yourself and it’ll make a complete mess of your deck. I’ll try to explain how that happens.

The Plus Side

Procession is great because you can play it your wonderful action card twice and then trash it to get an even more wonderful action card to replace it. If you can draw through your deck you might be able to play the gained card the same turn as well. You get the benefits of a throne and the benefits of an upgrade put together. Your deck can power through with action cards and accelerate through higher cost action cards. Wonderful indeed.

The Minus Side

So why is it so bad? How about a hand of {Pearl Diver, Copper, Copper, Grand Market, Procession} where you’ll probably play Procession on the Pearl Diver and trash it for something like a Great Hall. Firstly you’re not getting the double play from the Grand Market and you’re probably wasting time with the Pearl Diver and Great Hall. Secondly, you’re going to get more bad draws with the Procession even than you would with a Throne Room since there are some actions in your deck that you don’t want to process. Let’s remember at this point that Thrones often do draw badly, so get worried about a card that is even more reliant on the draw.

That’s not the end of the problems with Procession. You need a sequence of action cards in the supply at different costs to give yourself card gains. Unfortunately, you actually need a good sequence of action cards in the supply at different costs since you always want to be getting better cards from the trashing rather than just expensive cards. If the action cards are really good though you might also find that your opponents empty a key pile and leave you with nothing useful to gain for processing the Actions already in your deck. This is going to be more of a problem with more players.

Procession can also destroy the balance of your deck if you are repeatedly trashing one card from a combination without taking a similar replacement. A Village/Smithy deck might be working nicely until Procession turns it into a Smithy/Smithy deck. You can buy more Villages but wouldn’t you rather be buying Provinces? Some of the good partners for Procession are likely to be cards that can replace themselves when processed. Bridge, Border Village, Ironworks, and Fortress can do this in different ways. Ironworks in particular gives you some good combinations: open Chapel/Ironworks, gain a second Ironworks, gain two Procession, then play Procession -> Procession -> Ironworks-> Ironworks to grab an Ironworks, another $4 and three $5′s). Graverobber also lets you convert other Graverobbers to Provinces or to restock Graverobbers from the trash. (And of course Graverobber/Rogue lets you reclaim good cards that you previously trashed.)

I should probably also mention the cards that rely on actions being in play, such as Goons, Highways, and Peddlers. These cards all work well (indirectly) with Throne Rooms but have obvious problems with Procession.

Specific Uses

If we get back to the positive, we can find plenty of good situations to trash Action cards. Using Procession to trash Ruins might be worthwhile when you consider the small bonus from the playing the Action twice. You might also be able to tidy up after a Swindler or trash redundant cards like a Chapel, but Procession could easily be the wrong card for the job unless you have controlled/assisted drawing for your deck. You still need a deck that would be suitable for a Throne Room.

Some actions can remove themselves anyway (Island, Mining Village, Death Cart) so Processing them gives the card gain without a trashing penalty. Many Dark Ages cards can give benefits when trashed. Some action cards can provide a lot of benefit from an instant double play but provide less benefit as the game progresses, so it isn’t a disaster for them to be trashed even with no replacement. This is very true for Cursers, especially the $4 Cursers, but it also holds true for Chapel, Ironworks, Moneylender, Mine, and Swindler. If you’re not going to shuffle your deck again you probably don’t mind which action cards you trash in the search for VP.

In Summary

If you put together the plus points and stay clear of the minus points then we roughly have

• action heavy decks with good drawing to give choice of cards to process
• good sequences of cards through cost 4-5-6-7 to give power and acceleration
• actions cards that are flexible, genuinely useful, and disposable
• ability to regain cards that you process
• tricks in gaining/trashing cards to get extra benefit or limit losses.

Trivia

Secret History

There was an ancestor of this card in the original large Alchemy. It was, play an action from your hand, trash it, gain an action costing up to +$2 or +Potion, play it. So you could go, play a Moneylender, trash it, gain a Golem, play the Golem. It was crazy and confusing but had a certain something. Another Throne variant in Dark Ages didn't work out, and I thought of that old card and made this one. It does not go so crazy but can still facilitate a cool transforming engine.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, from the Secret History of the Dark Ages Cards