Gain
Gaining a card adds it to the ones you own, usually by moving it to your discard pile.
Official Rules
- "Gain a card" - Take a card from the Supply and put it into your discard pile.
- Sometimes a card will let you gain a card from a place other than the Supply, but by default gained cards come from the Supply.
- Sometimes a card will let you gain a card to a location other than your discard pile, but by default all gained cards are put into your discard pile.
- You do not play a card when you gain it; it just goes to your discard pile.
Other rules clarifications
- If a card lets you gain a card to a location other than your discard pile, the gained card is put into that location no matter where it would normally go when gained. For example, Artisan lets you gain a Nomad Camp to your hand, even though Nomad Camp is usually gained onto your deck.
Description
Gaining a card is a specific keyword in Dominion. By default, gained cards go onto your discard pile and come from the Supply. The most common way to gain cards is by buying them; they are gained after being bought. Other ways mainly include through gainer cards. Some cards have abilities that trigger when the card is gained (e.g. Border Village) or when another card is gained (e.g. Duplicate).
Ownership
Gaining is not the only way to make a card yours. Any effect that moves a card to a location that is yours makes the card yours as well. You can take ownership of cards without gaining by:
- Being passed them (via Masquerade)
- Exchanging something for them (e.g. Changeling, Vampire, Peasant)
- Exiling a card you don't own (e.g. Camel Train)
- Setting aside a card you don't own (e.g. Inheritance)
Abilities that trigger when a card is gained (or would be) won't trigger in these cases.
Buying a card also causes it to become yours at the moment it is bought (even before it is gained). This matters for older versions of Inheritance, which will trigger "when you buy this" abilities from the card being "inherited". You lose ownership if another ability prevents the card from being gained (such as with Possession or older versions of Trader).
Gain location
By default, a card is gained into your discard pile. Certain cards specify other gain locations, either for themselves or other cards. For example, Develop and Bureaucrat both cause you to gain cards and put them on top of your deck, rather than in your discard pile; Nomad Camp contains an instruction that when you gain Nomad Camp itself, it goes to your deck.
If a card is gained directly into your hand, it may be used like any other card in your hand. For example:
- Any Treasure card gained by Mine or Treasurer
- Any Action card gained by Swap
- Copper gained by Ill-Gotten Gains or Beggar
- Silver gained by Trading Post or Rocks
- Gold or Silver gained by Explorer
- Any card gained by Artisan, Cobbler, Transmogrify, Wish or Sculptor
Some cards gain themselves to your hand:
- Den of Sin, Ghost Town, Guardian, Night Watchman
- Villa technically moves itself to you hand from its gain location, rather than being gained directly to your hand.
Gaining from
By default gained cards come from the Supply. You can't gain a card from somewhere else, such as the trash or a non-Supply pile, unless explicitly instructed either to gain from that location, or to gain a non-Supply card by name. In the absence of an instruction to gain a specific, named non-Supply card, or a card from a specific location, all gains come from the Supply; being instructed to gain “a copy of” a card not named specifically does not count as an exception.
Examples include:
Gain from trash
There are 6 cards able to gain from the trash.
Gain from non-Supply pile
- Tournament
- Urchin
- Leprechaun
- Cards gaining Horse
- Cards gaining Loot
Who gains
Some cards cause others to gain a card instead of the person playing or otherwise activating the card:
- All the Cursers
- Those that trash with replacement: the cards Saboteur, Swindler, Barbarian and the Hex Locusts when other players receive it.
- Noble Brigand
- Embassy
- Marauder
- Cultist
- Messenger