Doctor

Doctor
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Guilds
Illustrator(s)	Lorraine Schleter
Card text
Name a card. Reveal the top 3 cards of your deck. Trash the matches. Put the rest back on top in any order. When you buy this, you may overpay for it. For each you overpaid, look at the top card of your deck; trash it, discard it, or put it back.

Doctor is an Action card from Guilds. At first look, it appears to be a quite powerful trasher because it trashes from your deck rather than your hand, and therefore you can thin your deck without losing the opportunity to use the other cards in your hand. It is an overpaying card, and allows the player to inspect and trash or discard a number of cards from their deck equal to the amount they overpaid.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• When you play this, you name a card, reveal the top three cards of your deck, trash each of those cards that has that name, and put the other cards back on your deck in any order.
• You do not have to name a card being used this game.
• If there are fewer than three cards left in your deck, reveal the remaining cards, and shuffle your discard pile (which does not include those cards) to get the remainder needed to reveal. If there are still not enough cards, just reveal as many as you can.
• When you buy this, for each extra you pay over the cost, you look at the top card of your deck, and either trash it, discard it, or put it back on top. If there are no cards left in your deck, shuffle your discard pile into your deck (including any cards already discarded to this overpay ability this turn), and if there still are no cards in it, you do not look at one.
• If you overpay more than , you may do different things for each card you look at, and you will look at the same card again if you put it back on top. For example if you bought Doctor for , you would look at the top card four times; you might end up first trashing a Copper, then discarding a Province, then putting a Silver back on top, then putting that Silver back on top again.

Strategy Article

There is no strategy article yet for Doctor. Feel free to add your thoughts!

One trick is available if you have a / opening (not /): on your first turn, buy Doctor and overpay . The overpay effect will reveal a copper (60%) or an estate (40%), trashing either of which is generally desirable. The second turn will most likely be C/C/C/E/E, and Doctor is guaranteed to appear in either the second (17%) or third turn (83%) or rarely both. While this substantially reduces the expected cash value of the third turn as compared with a Silver/Silver opening, it affords very rapid trashing. In addition, this opening usually provides on turns 2 and 3 which, if used to buy silver, will substantially increase your average buying power thereafter.

Doctor is a reasonably powerful trasher even aside from its overpay effect. The main thing that sets Doctor apart from other Trashers is that it trashes specific cards in your deck, not your hand. Unlike Chapel, you don't have to neuter your current turn, and unlike Lookout, you're only going to be trashing cards that you want to get rid of. In most sets, Doctor is best used in the early game to trash Coppers. With careful deck tracking, you can also use it to get rid of an Estate or two, though ideally you try and hit those Estates when you overpay for Doctor.

Doctor is a good enough card that it's sometimes worth buying even when you can only overpay or even . It has its greatest utility in the early game when your deck is relatively homogeneous, which is generally before you can overpay substantial amounts for Doctor. Cards that let you get a lot of money very quickly, like Baron, Death Cart (to an extent), or Fool's Gold work particularly well for picking up an early Doctor, allowing you to prune your deck of Copper or Shelters, connecting to Estates or Ruins more reliably.

Synergies

• Fool's Gold, which produces big money turns early and benefits strongly from early Trashing.
• Baron, or to some extent, Death Cart
• Deck tracking cards such as Cartographer, Navigator, or Spy
• Opponents' Ghost Ship, Sea Hag, or other top-of-deck attacks.

Anti-Synergies

• Terminal draw Big Money
• Discard attacks
• The presence of more reliable trashers, such as Chapel

Trivia

Official card art.

In other languages

• Dutch: Arts
• Finnish: Lääkäri
• French: Médecin
• German: Arzt
• Japanese: 医者 (pron. isha)

Preview

Casimir III's father, Vladislaus the Elbow-High, lived to be 72. During Casimir's long reign, the Black Death hit Europe, and yet the Kingdom of Poland was largely spared. What was their secret? Careful rat management? Good health care? Probably being away from trade routes was a factor, but I like to consider all the angles. We had Rats in the last expansion, so it must be time for a Doctor.

The second main theme of Guilds is overpay. These are cards you can pay extra for to get more out of them. The amount you pay determines how much you get; you don't just get to overpay a certain specific amount. With Doctor, each you overpay lets you look at another card. Overpay by and you will look at the top card, trash it or discard it or put it back, then look at the top card again and make another choice, then a 3rd time, then a 4th time. Get it? If you put the card back you will get it again the next time, so that's not a great option until you are about out of overpays.

Doctor also does something when you play it. You can get rid of something you anticipate not wanting in your next 3 cards. It's exciting enough that you might actually buy one for , although you will prefer to buy one for or or something.

Overpay can be fed by coin tokens, just look at that synergy. And your options increase even further. Let's say you have and a coin token, as with yesterday's example. In addition to whatever else, you could get a Doctor and overpay , or cash in the coin token and get a Doctor overpaying .

Overpay is something that happens when you buy a card. Didn't we have that already in Hinterlands? Well yes, but it doesn't feel especially similar. As the little "+" next to the "3" reminds you, overpay cards don't have a fixed cost (except when you trash them to an Apprentice or something; then Doctor costs no matter what you actually paid). They increase the number of purchase options you have.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Guilds Previews

Secret History

Again as recounted in the Hinterlands secret history, I tried several "when gain" trashers for that set, and was not happy with any of them. The main problem was that you would buy the card just for the trashing, and end up with whatever other effect in your deck randomly. The solution was to make that other effect also trashing. Doctor gives you three options per card you see on the overpay in order to make sure you're as happy as possible with the outcome. The when-play part gets in the name-a-card thing I mentioned.

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