Golem
Golem | |
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Info | |
Cost | |
Type(s) | Action |
Kingdom card? | Yes |
Set | Alchemy |
Illustrator(s) | Franz Vohwinkel |
Card text | |
Reveal cards from your deck until you reveal 2 Action cards other than Golems. Discard the other cards, then play the Action cards in either order. |
Golem is an Action card from Alchemy. When played, Golem digs through your deck for two Action cards (other than Golems) and makes you play them.
Contents |
FAQ
Official FAQ
- Reveal cards from the top of your deck, one at a time, until you have revealed two Action cards that are not Golem.
- Discard all of the revealed cards except for the non-Golem Actions you found. If you did not find any, you are done.
- If you found one, play it. If you found two, play them both, in either order. You cannot choose not to play one of them.
- These Action cards are not in your hand and so are unaffected by things that look for cards in your hand. For example if one of them is Throne Room, you cannot use it on the other one.
Strategy
Golem is an unconventional village and substitute for draw. However, it is expensive and has major drawbacks compared to more typical ways of obtaining these effects:
- Because you have limited control over the Action cards that are found and played, there is a risk that Golem will play two terminals, leaving you with no remaining Actions and ending your Action phase prematurely. Golem can also play an Action with a detrimental effect (such as a mandatory trasher when you have no junk to trash), or play cards in a suboptimal order. Golem can be more manageable with effects that allow you to set up particular targets (e.g. deck inspection effects such as Apothecary, discarding effects such as Warehouse, or topdecking effects such as City Gate), or in decks with many non-terminals.
- Its inability to play other copies of itself makes it difficult to play multiple Golems in a turn, meaning your overall amount of terminal space can be inconsistent and multiple copies of Golem will have diminishing returns. Furthermore, if you reveal and discard other Golems there is a possibility that, by the time you draw back around to them, you will not have any more viable targets remaining in your deck or discard pile.
- Its gainers can help with this and you can usually only afford one copy per reshuffle. This can make ramping up your terminal space difficult if Golem is your primary village. Like other cost cards, gaining additional copies can be accelerated by cards such as Kiln, Disciple, or Camel Train, and sometimes the Potion itself can even be avoided completely, as with Lurker or Transport. cost makes it slow to gain, as very few
One advantage Golem does have over other villages is its sifting. In decks with lots of non-Action cards (most often your starting cards in Kingdoms with little thinning), it can dig through your deck and play powerful Actions more often while skipping junk.
Given how difficult it is to build with Golem as your primary village, you’ll typically only end up using it alongside more reliable villages as pseudo-draw, or when the payoff of playing multiple terminals is extremely high. In both cases, you’ll usually add it to your deck in the late midgame when you are less likely to miss its fairly high price point, gaining a Potion the shuffle before you would like to do so.
External strategy articles
Note: Article(s) below are by individual authors and may not represent the community's current views on cards, but may provide more in-depth information or give historical perspective. Caveat emptor.
Versions
English versions
Digital | Text | Release | Date | |
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Reveal cards from your deck until you reveal 2 Action cards other than Golem cards. Discard the other cards, then play the Action cards in either order. | Alchemy | May 2010 | ||
Reveal cards from your deck until you reveal 2 Action cards other than Golems. Discard the other cards, then play the Action cards in either order. | Alchemy (2018 printing) | December 2018 |
Other language versions
Trivia
Preview
Secret History
Donald X. on "fixing" Golem