Sauna

Sauna
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Promo
Illustrator(s)	Ossi Hiekkala
Card text
+1 Card +1 Action You may play an Avanto from your hand. While this is in play, when you play a Silver, you may trash a card from your hand.

Sauna is a promotional Action card. It's a cantrip that allows you to trash a card when you play a Silver. It is a split pile card, with five copies of Sauna sitting on top of five copies of Avanto.

Trivia

In other languages

• German: Sauna

Secret History

The Finnish publisher wanted a promo, to celebrate a company anniversary I think. We like to be friendly. They wanted something that somehow involved Finland. They suggested Sampo, a magical thing from the Kalevala. No-one would know what that was, and also no-one knows what it is; descriptions of it vary significantly. It could be an axis mundi, a mill, a compass, etc. So what more concrete thing could actually remind people of Finland? I think jsh357 suggested saunas. And the word "sauna" is actually a loanword from Finnish. They are super Finnish. And they had medieval ones.

I tried a couple different concepts, mostly trying to key off of Baths, the Empires Landmark. You know, so stuff where if you didn't do anything you got something. The final concept was instead based on the idea of them being therapeutic.

It seemed nice to try to promote the most recent expansion, something only previously done with Summon. We talked about potential Landmarks, e.g. Northern Lights. I felt like it would be better to have a full pile this time, and it was hard coming up with more Landmarks. A split pile was perfect; it's novel to Empires, it doesn't require anything else, you can just play with it like a regular pile. And there's this thing, where they go back and forth from the sauna to the avanto. That sounded cool to simulate and I mean there it is.

Avanto started as printed but I did try other versions at some point. There were a few versions of the trashing Sauna, trying to be fair and exciting. Towards the end the big thing was, should it trigger multiple times. It will be very slow early on, and then there will be a turn where you can trash a bunch of cards, due to multiple triggers. I felt like it was better to have that.

The card was done in May, but it took a while for the Finns to get the artist going. It was for them so we didn't rush them. It looks like it's coming out at Essen.

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