Colony

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Colony
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Victory
Kingdom card?	No
Set	Prosperity
Illustrator(s)	Martin Hoffmann
Card text
10

Colony is a basic Victory card from Prosperity. It and Platinum may be added to the supply for games using Kingdom cards from Prosperity.

At , Colony is the most expensive card in Dominion, and at 10  is almost always worth the most victory points—even powerful alt-VP cards like Vineyard can have a hard time getting up to 10.

Colony plays roughly the same role in Prosperity games that Province plays in other games—since it is the most valuable Victory card, and depleting its supply pile ends the game, most games fundamentally boil down to a race to see who can get the most Colonies soonest. Due to Colony's higher cost Silver is typically less important in Colony games than in Province games; and since it takes longer to build up a deck that can regularly produce than , slow-building engine strategies are somewhat improved relative to Big Money in Colony games.

Additional rules

The rules for playing with Colony are described in the Dominion: Prosperity rulebook and are reproduced here.

Preparation

• If only Kingdom cards from Prosperity are being used this game, then the Platinum and Colony piles are added to the Basic cards in the Supply for the game.
• If a mix of Kingdom cards from Prosperity and other sets are being used, then the inclusion of Platinum and Colony in the Supply should be determined randomly, based on the proportion of Prosperity and non-Prosperity cards in use. For example, choose a random Kingdom card being used - such as the first card dealt out from the Randomizer deck - and if it is from Prosperity, add Platinum and Colony to the Supply.
• Platinum and Colony are not Kingdom cards; when those are included, there are 10 Kingdom cards, plus Copper, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Estate, Duchy, Province, Colony, and Curse, in the Supply.
• Use 8 Colonies for a 2-player game, or 12 Colonies for a game with 3 or more players.

Game end

In games using Platinum and Colony, there is an additional way the game can end. At the end of each turn, the game ends if one of these three conditions is met:

• the Supply pile of Province cards is empty
• OR any 3 Supply piles are empty (4 piles in a 5-6 player game)
• OR the Supply pile of Colony cards is empty.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• This is not a Kingdom card. You do not use it every game; see the Preparation section. It is a Victory card worth 10 VP.

Strategy Article

There is no article for Colony! Perhaps there should be! There will be sometime, since the differences between Colony and Province games are pretty drastic.

In general, Colony games will favor engine play and weaken Big Money-like strategies.

Trivia

In other languages

• French: Colonie
• German: Kolonie

Secret History

This always cost . Originally it made 8 VP. At the time Province was worth 5 VP. When Province went up to 6 VP, I changed this to 9 VP. It stayed like that for a while. 9 VP seemed like a good spot for making both Colony and Province viable in Colony games. In development, Valerie and Dale really wanted it to be worth 10 VP. 1 - 3 - 6 - 10! Except, the 1 and 3 there really don't mean much; Estate and Duchy are not bargains. For a while I said, sure, maybe 9 VP isn't the right value, but you know, it sure has seemed good in testing so far. And it had. It had seemed just fine. I finally tested it at 10 VP anyway though. And well, it usually didn't make a difference in who won, and it made counting scores easier, and it looks prettier. And attacks and rush strategies already push you away from Colony; it's fine if some games you really don't want to stop at Provinces. So 10 VP it is.

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