Peddler variant

"Peddler variant", or cantrip money, is a catch-all term for cantrips that give +. They fit very easily into almost any engine, since, as long as they are not drawn dead by a terminal draw card with no actions remaining, they can always be played to increase buying power without obstructing your access to other engine cards.

The simplest possible Peddler variant—a card that simply gives +1 Card, +1 Action, +—does not exist; all Peddler variants carry at least one other bonus, penalty, or quirk aside from the cantrip-money effect. Donald X. Vaccarino has commented that leaving this niche unfilled gives him more flexibility in designing variants. Consensus among analysts is that such a card, if it existed, would be balanced at a cost of .

List of Peddler variants

The Peddler variants, and their differences from the notional "vanilla Peddler", are as follows.

Unconditional Peddlers

These cards always give at least +1 Card, +1 Action, and + (or the equivalent).

• Dominion: Market—gives +Buy
• Seaside: Bazaar—gives +2 Actions instead of +1
• Seaside: Treasury—may be top-decked instead of discarded during cleanup if you do not buy Victory cards
• Prosperity: Grand Market—gives +Buy and + instead of
• Prosperity: Peddler—has a variable cost that enables tricks with +Buy and trash-for-benefit
• Hinterlands: Highway—instead of giving +, reduces costs by
• Hinterlands: Oasis—discards a card from hand
• Dark Ages: Junk Dealer—trashes a card from hand

Conditional Peddlers

These cards have cantrip-money effects that are not always activated.

• Intrigue: Conspirator—is a terminal silver if it is the first or second action played on a turn, but a cantrip later
• Intrigue: Mining Village—is a village with an optional one-shot +
• Cornucopia: Tournament—may have its +Card and + blocked if an opponent has a Province in hand; can gain Prizes
• Dark Ages: Mystic—gives non-terminal + but only draws if you can guess the card it's going to draw

Marginal Peddlers

These cards are not normally thought of as Peddler variants.

• Intrigue: Tribute—can give +2 Cards, +2 Actions, and + under rare circumstances depending on opponent's deck top
• Prosperity: City—acts as combination Village, Laboratory, Market if two supply piles are empty
• Prosperity: Venture—is a Treasure, which is like being a non-terminal Action, and digs for a Treasure and plays it immediately, which is similar to drawing a card
• Dark Ages: Ironmonger—is a cantrip that gives + if your deck top is a Treasure card