Wandering Minstrel

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Wandering Minstrel
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Dark Ages
Illustrator(s)	Guillaume Ducos
Card text
+1 Card +2 Actions Reveal the top 3 cards of your deck. Put the Action cards back in any order and discard the rest.

Wandering Minstrel is an Action card from Dark Ages. It's one of the few villages that doesn't have anything like "Village" in the name. It's also got some filtering ability to make sure your engine keeps drawing Actions.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• First draw a card, then reveal the top 3 cards of your deck, shuffling your discard pile if there are not enough cards in your deck.
• If there still are not enough after shuffling, just reveal what you can.
• Put the revealed Action cards on top of your deck in any order, and discard the other cards.
• If you didn't reveal any Action cards, no cards will be put on top.

Strategy Article

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

It seems like a reasonably straightforward village to use. It discards all your non-actions, finding you your other actions to keep your engine running. Sure, it discards Golds and Platinums and other fancy Treasures, but that's probably okay - if it helps you find more villages and smithies, you'll draw them anyway. It's best when you're aiming to draw your whole deck and really don't mind discarding even your top-notch Treasures.

It is particularly important to manage your reshuffles when using Wandering Minstrels. Once you've drawn all your actions and discarded all your treasures, green cards, and curses make sure not to cause a reshuffle mid-turn unless you can draw everything that's left. Otherwise you may be hit with one or more turns with no actions at all as you wade through all the non-actions that your Minstrels threw out.

Synergies/Combos

• Minion, as Wandering Minstrel will get past your non-Actions to Minions faster
• engines which aim to draw your whole deck

Antisynergies

• lack of a need for villages, such as in Big Money.
• Ruins

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		+1 Card. +2 Actions. Reveal the top 3 cards of your deck. Put the Actions back on top in any order and discard the rest.	Dark Ages 1st Edition	August 2012
		+1 Card. +2 Actions. Reveal the top 3 cards of your deck. Put the Action cards back in any order and discard the rest.	Dark Ages 2nd Edition	September 2017

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Czech	Bard (lit. bard)
Dutch	Reizende Minstreel
Finnish	Trubaduuri (lit. troubadour)
French	Ménestrel errant
German	Barde (lit. bard)			+1 Karte +2 Aktionen Decke die obersten 3 Karten von deinem Nachziehstapel auf. Lege aufgedeckte Aktionskarten in belie- biger Reihenfolge zurück auf den Nachziehstapel. Lege die übrigen aufgedeckten Karten ab.
Japanese	吟遊詩人 (pron. gin'yūshijin, lit. troubadour)			+1 カードを引く。 +2 アクション。 山札の上から3枚を公開する。その中のアクションカードを好きな順番で山札の上に戻し、残りを捨て札にする。
Korean	방랑 시인 (pron. banglang siin, lit. vagabond poet)
Russian	Странствующий Бард (pron. stranstvuyushshiy bard, literally wandering bard)
Spanish	Juglar (lit. minstrel)

Trivia

Official card art.

Theme

Well he's like the pied piper. He gets all the kids to follow him, and then those kids do things for you. It's true that the flavor for "+2 actions" that most such cards use is, there are people doing things for you. Often a whole village of people, but sometimes just some Nobles. Squire and Wandering Minstrel don't fit that. Squire at one point was in part a village that only played attacks, and Wandering Minstrel at one point was a card that made +, and they kept their flavor when those parts changed.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Dark Ages is the most thematic expansion?

Secret History

In Cornucopia I tried out a card that was +, name a type, dig for it, leave the first match on top. It would have been "strictly better" than Chancellor at (since you could name a type that wasn't in your deck), and I didn't want to charge for it or give it an awful condition specifically to make it worse than Chancellor (a card not famous for being strong). So I dropped it. I turned it into a village in Guilds, then moved it to Dark Ages, where I made it always dig for actions, with no choice. That card was a bit too strong and also slowed down games more than an ideal amount. So now it just looks at the top 3 cards and leaves the actions on top.

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