Philosopher's Stone
From DominionStrategy Wiki
Philosopher's Stone | |
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Info | |
Cost | |
Type(s) | Treasure |
Kingdom card? | Yes |
Set | Alchemy |
Illustrator(s) | Jacob Corn |
Card text | |
When you play this, count your deck and discard pile. Worth per 5 cards total between them (rounded down). |
Philosopher's Stone is a Treasure card from Alchemy. It grows in value as the number of cards in your deck and discard increases, favoring huge, bulky decks. It does not count cards in your hand or in play and so favors a thick-deck, low-drawing strategy, differing from most other Alchemy cards.
Contents |
FAQ
Official FAQ
- This is a Treasure card. It is a Kingdom card; it will only be in games where it is randomly dealt out as one of the 10 Kingdom cards, or otherwise selected to be one of them.
- It is played during your Buy phase, like other Treasure cards. When you play it, count the number of cards in your deck and discard pile combined, divide by 5, and round down. That is how many this produces for you.
- Once played, the amount of you get does not change even if the number of cards changes later in the turn.
- The next time you play it, count again.
- If you play multiple copies, obviously the number will be the same for all of them.
- It does not matter what order your discard pile is in, but the order your deck is in matters. Do not change that order while counting!
- You will get to look through your discard pile as you count it.
- You only count your deck and discard pile, not your hand or cards in play or set aside cards.
- You cannot play more Treasures after buying something in your buy phase; so for example you cannot buy a card, then play Philosopher's Stone, then buy another card.
Other Rules clarifications
- Since the release of Prosperity, it is actually possible to play multiple copies of Philosopher's Stone that give different amounts of , in spite of the official FAQ. For example, if you have 20 cards in your deck and play this, it produces . Then, you could play a Venture, which could reveal and play another copy of this. When you play the second copy, you would only have 19 cards in your deck, so it would only produce .
Strategy Article
There isn't a strategy article for Philosopher's Stone.
It's typically a pretty weak card, with a few exceptions:
- The Combo: Philosopher's Stone and Herbalist
- Familiar lends itself to bloated decks which already have a Potion in them .
Synergies/Combos
- Combo: Philosopher's Stone and Herbalist: Herbalist gives you the +Buy needed to bloat your deck to increase the value of your Philosopher's Stones (as well as to effectively spend all the money produced by high-value Philosopher's Stones). It also allows you to reuse the same Potion to buy Philosopher's Stones for multiple turns, or to reuse the same Philosopher's Stone to buy Victory cards.
- Sifters like Cellar and Warehouse let you find your Philosopher's Stones and increase their value by discarding. Storeroom is especially powerful with its +Buy for more coppers and second discard for coin
- Goons: using up all your extra buys will be rewarded both by increasing the value of your Philosopher's Stones and by Goons giving you victory tokens. (However, this is only viable when there isn't an available engine strategy that can efficiently play multiple Goons per turn; Philosopher's Stone tends to be weak in a deck like that.)
- Beggar
- Scavenger: Playing Scavenger can allow you to consistently top-deck a Philosopher's Stone, which can often be worth enough to virtually guarantee getting a province the following turn.
- Hero can gain Philosopher's Stones without having to get a Potion first.
Antisynergies
- Philosopher's Stone works poorly with engines that involve drawing and playing large numbers of cards on a turn, since cards in hand and in the play area don't contribute to Philosopher's Stone's value. (Ironically, this means Philosopher's Stone works poorly with most Alchemy cards other than Herbalist.)
Alternate versions
Digital version for Dominion Online
German Version by HiG
German Version by ASS
Trivia
Philosopher's Stone is the only
-costing card that gives +.In other languages
- Chinese: 哲人石 (pron. zhérénshí)
- Czech: Kámen mudrců
- Dutch: Steen der wijzen
- Finnish: Viisasten kivi
- French: Pierre philosophale
- German: Stein der Weisen
- Translation error : omitted "When you play this:"
- Italian: Pietra Filosofale
- Japanese: 賢者の石 (pron. kenja no ishi)
- Russian: Философский Камень (pron. filosofoskiy kamen')
- Spanish: Piedra Filosofal
Secret History
This started out as an action, "+1 Buy, + per 4 cards left in your deck." It was in the original Alchemy, but I considered it for the main set at one point (when Gardens moved there). Eventually I brought it back as a treasure. First it counted cards left in your deck. Some people don't like how huge the variance is on that though. I can make a card here and there like that, but not too many. I dropped it, then later brought it back with "put your deck into your discard pile" (and then it counted your discard pile). That still had high variance, a different way; you might draw it immediately after shuffling, which was a lot better than not drawing it immediately. Finally I changed it to how it is now. The random element is completely gone; it still isn't consistent, due to card-drawing and such, but that's your own problem.
Retrospective
I could have swapped Philosopher's Stone with Bank. Bank was originally in this set, and the only reason I took it out was because Alchemy got pushed ahead of Prosperity, and Prosperity introduced treasures where the order of played treasures mattered. Philosopher's Stone did not quite require all of the rules that Bank did. But I could have sucked it up and had Bank anyway. It's a good fit for the set otherwise. And Philosopher's Stone, it is not such a slow card, but people sure think it is.