Menagerie
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Menagerie | |
---|---|
Info | |
Cost | |
Type(s) | Action |
Kingdom card? | Yes |
Set | Cornucopia |
Illustrator(s) | Matthew Tames |
Card text | |
+1 Action Reveal your hand. If the revealed cards all have different names, +3 Cards. Otherwise, +1 Card. |
- You may be looking for the 13th expansion, Menagerie (expansion)
Menagerie is an Action card from Cornucopia. It is one of the banner cards of Cornucopia's theme of diversity, rewarding you with large non-terminal draw if you have no duplicate cards in your hand. In decks that can manage to reliably construct hands of differently-named cards—whether by discarding or trashing duplicate cards, having a lot of non-terminal Actions that can be played to get them out of your hand, or just by gaining a diverse collection of cards—Menagerie becomes one of the most powerful cards for its price.
Contents |
FAQ
Official FAQ
- If there are any two or more cards in your hand with the same name, you only draw one card; if there are no matches, you draw three cards.
- Only the card names matter for this; Copper and Silver are different cards for example, despite both being Treasures.
- If you have no cards in hand at all after playing Menagerie, then you have no matching cards, and so get +3 Cards.
Other Rules clarifications
Strategy Article
Original Dominion Strategy Article by theory
Menagerie is one of several Cornucopia cards that is very strong – equivalent to two Laboratories, but plays very differently from Laboratory. It is usually not worth opening with, and it cannot be used to set up a mindless deck-drawing chain. Your initial deck of 7 Coppers and 3 Estates is the biggest barrier to Menagerie’s success: early trashing is basically the only way to make Menagerie at all effective before the midgame. Without it, your Menagerie is only going to activate if you have 4 unique cards plus your Menagerie (3 if you have another Menagerie in your hand, since it’ll get counted as unique by the time you play Menagerie), and it’s pretty difficult to get 3 early buys into a hand with a Copper and Estate.
About the only exception to this 4-unique-card requirement are handsize decreasers. Menagerie is a fantastic counter to Militia (assuming you draw it against their Militia, which will happen quite often in multiplayer games), since even in the early game you’d have to be quite unlucky not to draw 2 unique cards with the Menagerie in your (pre-Militia) 5-card hand. You end up with 5 cards after playing the Menagerie, which is the same as if you had not been Militia’d, and more importantly, lets you discard the bad cards to the Militia and hopefully draw better ones.
Voluntarily decreasing your own hand is even better. This is especially important if building an engine around Menagerie, as you will reach the point where you want multiple copies of certain cards, and you need a way of dropping them to activate Menagerie. Warehouse is the easiest approach: with 7 cards, it is usually easy to find 3 uniques, or alternatively simply discard the Menagerie. Outpost is also good, provided you can find some way of drawing your Menagerie in the 3 Outpost cards (like Cartographer). Cards that let you discard for some benefit are even better, especially ones that do not require +Actions, such as Hamlet (probably the best with this card), or Oasis. (Vault and Horse Traders) can be good if you have +Actions to play the Menagerie after discarding. And Haven is a special example: you want to use it to shuffle your repeating cards into the next hand so you can activate your Menagerie, or alternatively shift your Menagerie from hand to hand until you find a good hand for it.
Naturally, Menagerie works well with all those Cornucopia cards that encourage or promote variety. It is a (very) soft counter to Cursing attacks and Swindler, which tend to give you cards you would not have bought.
Finally, otherwise universally good handsize-increasers tend to hurt Menagerie. This is especially true for Durations like Caravan, where the extra card that screws up your Menagerie is probably not worth it.
Synergies/Combos
- Early trashing
- Warehouse or Cellar
- Inn
- Opponent’s Militia, Goons, handsize-decreasers
- Outpost
- Hamlet and Oasis
- Other discard-for-benefit cards, with some +Action (e.g., Horse Traders, Vault)
- Non-terminal Actions that don't draw, such as "disappearing money" and "disappearing villages"
- Haven
- Other Cornucopia cards that reward variety (e.g., Harvest, Fairgrounds)
- Cards that lead to variety (e.g., Black Market, Prizes, opponents’ Cursing attacks)
- Shelters and Heirlooms
Antisynergies
- Caravan, Wharf, other handsize-increasers
- Tactician
- Total lack of trashing, or other way to get rid of Coppers
Versions
English versions
Digital | Text | Release | Date | |
---|---|---|---|---|
+1 Action Reveal your hand. If there are no duplicate cards in it, +3 Cards. Otherwise, +1 Card. |
Cornucopia 1st Edition | June 2011 | ||
+1 Action Reveal your hand. If the revealed cards all have different names, +3 Cards. Otherwise, +1 Card. |
Cornucopia 2nd Edition | March 2018 |
Other language versions
Trivia
Secret History