Horse Traders
Horse Traders | |
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Info | |
Cost | |
Type(s) | Action - Reaction |
Kingdom card? | Yes |
Set | Cornucopia |
Illustrator(s) | Jeff Himmelman |
Card text | |
+1 Buy When another player plays an Attack card, you may set this aside from your hand. If you do, then at the start of your next turn, +1 Card and return this to your hand. |
Horse Traders is an Action–Reaction card from Cornucopia. Played as an action, it gives you and a buy, at the cost of discarding two cards; as a Reaction, it defends against handsize attacks by setting itself aside and drawing an extra card at the start of your next turn.
Contents |
FAQ
Official FAQ
- When you play this, you get +1 Buy and +, and discard 2 cards from your hand.
- If you do not have enough cards to discard, just discard what you can; you still get the +1 Buy and +.
- When another player plays an Attack card, before that card does anything, you may reveal this from your hand. If you do, you set it aside, and at the start of your next turn, you return it to your hand and draw a card.
- While it is set aside, it is not in play or in your hand, and cannot be further revealed to Attacks. Therefore it will only work on one Attack per round of turns.
- You can reveal it for an Attack and still play it on your next turn.
- You can reveal multiple Horse Traders to a single Attack. For example, if another player plays Followers, you could reveal and set aside two Horse Traders from your hand, then gain a Curse but discard no cards, as you would only have three cards in hand at that point. Then on your next turn you would pick up the two Horse Traders and also draw two cards.
Other Rules clarifications
If the game ends while Horse Traders is set aside, it's returned to its owner's deck before scoring; this can matter for alt-VP cards such as Gardens.
Strategy Article
There isn't a strategy article for Horse Traders.
Horse Traders is very good at getting you to . It turns 3 cards from your hand into , so you need to draw either a Silver OR two coppers with the Horse Trader to get to . It's not as good at getting to in Big Money, though. It's great for rush strategies where you'll likely have a lot of Victory cards around to discard, but not so good when you have to discard Coppers. It's also good when you want a way to reliably get to , but aren't worried about getting to reliably.
Its defense against most discard attacks is quite strong. Against other Attacks, it doesn't completely cancel them out—but getting an extra card on your next turn is always nice.
Synergies/Combos
- Combo: Horse Traders and Duke
- Horse Traders both counteracts Minion's attack AND makes it easy to get Minions yourself.
- Other Attacks
- Cute tricks with Menagerie, Watchtower, Library if you have Villages
- engines that can't trash their Estates
Antisynergies
- strong trashing
Trivia
Secret History
I first tried it out in this set on a Village. I changed it to the money/discard thing in order to better fit the expansion theme. When I changed the theme I still liked the card so I kept it.
Prior to making , it made per 2 cards in your hand (no discarding), fitting the dead theme even better. That was too scary with card-drawing combos and lackluster without them.