Witch

Witch
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action - Attack
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Base
Illustrator(s)	Matthias Catrein
Card text
+2 Cards Each other player gains a Curse.

Witch is an Action-Attack card from the Base set. It is a curser that provides a small amount of terminal draw.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• The Curses come from the Supply and are put into discard piles.
• They are given out in turn order, which can matter when the Curse pile is low.
• When the Curses are gone, you can still play Witch for +2 Cards.

Strategy

Witch is a curser and terminal draw card from the Base set. It can be centralizing in many Kingdoms, especially if trashing Curses is difficult.

Curses in your opponents’ decks serve two primary purposes:

1. Curses are stop cards that reduce the average value of the cards in their deck. Adding more curses to your opponent’s deck makes it harder for them to draw through their deck. Lining up cards that benefit from being drawn together (e.g. Village/Smithy) becomes less likely.
2. Curses give negative   if they are not trashed by the end of the game.

Because of this, Witch often leads to longer games.

In the absence of trashing, an initial priority should be to deal out more Curses than your opponents before the pile is empty. Purchasing an early Witch, ideally as your first card, is a good way to ensure that you “win the Curse split”: dealing out more Curses than your opponents. A second Witch may help you distribute Curses even faster. Games with Witch and no trashing are likely to be slogs.

Even when trashing is available, Witch can still be an efficient way to slow down your opponents’ decks, unless the trashing is very strong (e.g. kingdoms with Chapel). Getting control of your deck becomes more difficult if you need to trash Curses as well as your starting cards. Many trashers, such as Remodel, are bad at trashing Curses and are better at trashing your Estates. These trashers may be too slow to overcome an influx of Curses.

As a terminal draw card, Witch’s +2 Cards can be useful, but it is rarely used primarily for its draw. Early on, the drawing effect can help you afford more expensive cards and draw faster through your shuffle.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		+2 Cards Each other player gains a Curse card.	Dominion	October 2008
		+2 Cards Each other player gains a Curse.	Dominion (Second Edition)	October 2016

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Chinese	女巫 (pron. nǚwū)
Czech	Čarodějnice
Dutch	Heks			+2 Kaarten Iedere andere speler pakt 1 vloekkaart.	Tweede editie (herdruk 2019/2020)
Finnish	Noita
French	Sorcière
German	Hexe			+2 Karten Jeder Mitspieler muss sich eine Fluchkarte nehmen.	(2008)
German	Hexe			+2 Karten Jeder Mitspieler nimmt einen Fluch.	2. Edition (2019)
Hungarian	Boszorkány
Italian	Strega
Japanese	魔女 (pron. majo)			+2 カードを引く 他のプレイヤーは全員、呪い1枚を獲得する。
Korean	마녀 (pron. manyeo)
Norwegian	Heks
Polish	Wiedźma			+2 karty Każdy z pozostałych graczy dodaje kartę Klątwa.	(2015)
Romanian	Vrăjitoare
Russian	Ведьма (pron. vyed'ma)			+2 Карты Каждый другой игрок получает Проклятие.
Spanish	Bruja			+2 Cartas Cada uno de los demás jugadores gana una carta de Maldición.	First Edition (2008)
	Bruja			+2 Cartas Cada uno de los demás jugadores gana una carta de Maldición.	Second Edition (2016, 2021)

Trivia

Official card art.

Secret History

In the very first game of Dominion, this cost but didn't draw you cards. It quickly shot up to 5, then gained the penalty of "pay one ." That's how much people hated Witch. It stayed like that until around when development started. When I started doing more testing of the main set cards (as opposed to expansions), it was obvious that Witch was weak. First it lost the penalty, then gained +1 Card, then +2 Cards. It costs ; there is some tough competition there.

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

2-player vs multiplayer

Yes if you pass on Witch it might be for a trasher, though it may also be for a significant money card. It probably won't be for Lab; a key thing is that when everyone has a lot of Curses fast, the +2 Cards on Witch sucks, and Lab is no better.

To be definitive we'd have to consider each attack and each non-attack you could get over it separately, plus the rest of the board, and time does not permit. For sure there are some non-attacks you will want over some attacks, and with Witch it's specifically because, your extra Curses aren't so many, Witch isn't great in your deck, and the other card you get can make up the difference. You still might get that Witch, there are all the circumstances where you get it. But it's not rare to not want it, once the other players have it (if the other players somehow pass on it, man, get it).

For me the key thing is, that I want Witch less often in multiplayer than in 2-player, and prefer the amount I want it in multiplayer; I wish I'd scaled Curses differently.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Improving play at 3+ players

What I want is to not have to buy Witch; to have it be a reasonable option but not at all mandatory. A decision. Obv. it will vary from game to game and sometimes be the obvious superior move due to the rest of the board. But you know.

In a 5-player game, with the current rules, if the other players buy Witch I do not have to. I like that. Witches are at a better power level in multiplayer. The situation to fix is the two player game. You can't fix that by changing the number of Curses in multiplayer.

The initial idea was to have so many Curses that they would be unlikely to run out (and then balance the cards for that situation); you can only have so many cards though, and only want so much suffering, and no-one (else) needs to experience Witch Golden Decks. So there are fewer Curses, and that makes the card effect vary with the number of players and number of players buying Witch. I tried to balance it around 1 player buying it, but think N-1 buying players would have been better (I have not tried it though). The games I was actually playing were multiplayer and frequently had most players buying Witch; those were the situations I was actually seeing while balancing the card.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Multiplayer house rules?

Curses are scaled so that Witch plays give out Curses 10 times, no matter the number of players (yes not counting all the things that could mess this up). If only one player buys Witch, it's just as good whether there are three opponents or just one. But that wasn't the right way to scale it. I should be guessing that most players buy Witch (if the card were perfectly balanced, you might guess that half of them would buy Witch, but of course some games it will be weaker and some stronger, and I care more about the cases where it's stronger). This is one of those cases where I say, I haven't put in the work here, I haven't playtested anything else, and I would get to, if I were actually changing it. But you know. I bet it could be better. In a 4-player game I don't have to get Witch if multiple other players do. I like that.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Dominion Discord, 2021

I haven't put in the work so I don't know what I would land on. But yes in 4-player Witch seems fine, you can choose not to go for it and do better with something else (if the other players get it). I want to bring that experience to 2-player. With 4 players, if we all get Witch, 30 Curses divide roughly evenly among 4 players - 7-8 Curses each. If you instead don't get Witch, you get 10 Curses, but the other players still get 6-7. With 2 players, you get 5 if you get it, 10 if you don't, and they get 0. And I mean I'm not doing the rest of the work now either. But hopefully that's all clear.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Dominion Discord, 2022