Bishop
Bishop | |
---|---|
Cost | 4 |
Type | Action |
Set/Expansion | Prosperity |
Illustrator | Rom |
+ +1 Trash a card from your hand. + equal to half its cost in coins, rounded down. Each other player may trash a card from his hand. |
Bishop is an Action card from Prosperity. It is one of three cards which utilize VP tokens, along with Goons and Monument. Bishop allows you to trash a card and gain points proportional to its cost, but allows your opponents to trash a card as well, which can potentially be highly valuable to them in setting up a strong engine quickly.
Contents |
FAQ
Official FAQ
- Trashing a card is optional for the other players but mandatory for you.
- If players care about the order things happen for this, you trash a card first, then each other player may trash a card, in turn order.
- Only the player who played Bishop can get tokens from it.
- Template:Potion in costs is ignored, for example if you trash Golem (from Dominion: Alchemy), which costs Template:Potion, you get 3 total (counting the 1 you always get from Bishop).
- If you have no cards left in hand to trash, you still get the and 1 .
Other Rules clarifications
Strategy Article
Original article by theory
There’s two ways to view Bishop. The first is by lumping it with Salvager and Remodel, as a 4-cost, single-card trasher that provides some kind of benefit. (In this sense, Island is a bit like a one-time version of Bishop: it provides 2 + the value of the Island card, but Bishop’s ability scales upward and can be used multiple times.) From this vantage, Bishop is just another deck-trimmer that isn’t quite as fast as Chapel but provides a little ancillary benefit while trashing. Its + is more useful than one might think; the worst possible opening draw with Salvager is 4 Coppers and 1 Salvager, especially if there are key cards to buy. Bishop doesn’t have this problem.
The alternative is to view Bishop with Goons and/or Monument as a different strategy altogether. This approach eschews Victory cards, instead focusing on buying crappy cards with Goons for VP tokens, then trashing them with Bishop for more VP tokens. If your opponent can’t end the game, you can happily collect in perpetuity. This approach depends heavily on +Actions and some way to get through your deck.
Alternatively, with Talisman or Hoard, you can gain a ton of fuel for your Bishops. Trashing Estates and Duchies with Bishop is usually a win-win—you (mostly) break even on VP, while trimming your deck. Trashing Provinces is a little risky, though perhaps worth it if you can do it early enough.
Bishop is worst when you have weighed down your opponents with Curses and Coppers, since they derive more benefit than you out of the trashing. Similarly, in the early game, there’s often a tension over who has to buy Bishop. This is because if there are other useful cards (or other, more important terminal Actions of any cost), then neither side wants to be the one who buys the Bishop, letting the other player trim his deck for free. It’s a bit of a prisoner’s dilemma.
Bishop is also central to a class of strategies called the Golden Deck. In a Golden Deck, the goal is to trash your hand down to the point where you can guarantee that you'll be able to trash a Province or Colony each turn while buying a new one to replace it, thus netting 5 or 6 points per turn while draining the respective VP pile very quickly. The trashing from Bishop is too slow to achieve this on its own, but when paired with another strong trasher like Chapel, it can be done very quickly.
Synergies/Combos
- Chapel
- Goons, as part of an overall strategy
- Bridge / Peddler / Quarry, because of the cost differential (buy a Peddler for , trash it for 4 VP)
- Hoard (sample game) or Talisman, for Bishop fodder
- Loan, which can clear out Coppers for the Bishop (see sample game)
Antisynergies
- Opponents’ handsize-reduction attacks (e.g., Militia)
- Your own Curse-giving attacks
- Odd-cost cards
Trivia
Secret History