Haggler

Haggler
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Hinterlands
Illustrator(s)	Claus Stephan
Card text
+ This turn, when you gain a card, if you bought it, gain a cheaper non-Victory card.

Haggler is an Action card from Hinterlands. Haggler allows you to, whenever you buy a card, gain a cheaper non-Victory card.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• For the rest of the turn, whenever you gain a card that you bought, you gain a card that is cheaper than that card you bought, but not a Victory card. For example, you could buy a Province, gain that Province, and gain a Gold via Haggler.
• Gaining a card is not optional.
• The gained card comes from the Supply and is put into your discard pile.
• Haggler only gives you an extra card when you gain a card you bought, not when you gain a card some other way (such as with Haggler itself).
• If there is no cheaper card available in the Supply (for example, if you buy Copper), you do not gain a card.
• The bonus is cumulative; if you play a Haggler, and Throne Room another Haggler, you will gain three cards for each card you buy.

Other rules clarification

• An amount of and and/or is only larger than another if both amounts are larger, or one is larger and one the same. This means that if you have a Haggler in play and then buy a Fortune, you can gain an Overlord, but not a Possession.
• Haggler gains you a card after you gain the card you bought. So if you buy and gain a card from a split pile, that may reveal a different card from the pile, and if it's cheaper (e.g. you gained a Distant Shore and revealed an Old Map), you can gain it.

Deprecated official FAQ (2016)

While this is in play, whenever you buy a card, you gain a card that is cheaper than the card you bought, but not a Victory card. For example, you could buy a Province, and gain a Gold via Haggler. Gaining a card is not optional. The gained card comes from the Supply and is put into your discard pile. Haggler only gives you an extra card when you buy a card, not when you gain a card some other way (such as with Haggler itself). If there is no cheaper card available in the Supply (for example, if you buy Copper), you do not gain a card. Using Throne Room on Haggler will not gain you two cards per card bought, as there is still only one copy of Haggler in play. The bonus is cumulative though; if you have three Hagglers in play, you will gain three more cards for each card you buy.

Deprecated rules clarifications (2011 2016 2020)

Haggler still retains its ability to gain an extra card when it is played with a Way. An amount of and and/or is only larger than another if both amounts are larger, or one is larger and one the same. This means that if you have a Haggler in play and then buy a Fortune, you can gain an Overlord, but not a Possession. Haggler gains you a card before you gain the card you actually bought. This means that if you buy Dame Anna, you can't use Haggler to gain Sir Martin, because it hasn't been revealed yet at that point.

Strategy

Haggler is a terminal payload card that functions as a gainer whose efficiency scales with your purchasing power. Its relevance is highly dependent on the relative prices of the available Kingdom cards, and its role is usually to assist you in gaining additional engine pieces when you buy more expensive cards. For example, Haggler is likely strong in a Kingdom with a terminal draw card (such as Wharf) and a village (such as Wandering Minstrel), as each terminal draw card that you buy can come with a supporting village. However, unlike with other gainers, it is difficult to gain-and-play cards with Haggler as its gains usually come in the Buy phase, without a relevant set of price points its payload is only equivalent to that of a terminal silver, and it cannot be used to gain Victory cards. As such, Haggler may be skippable if stronger terminals (e.g. Bridge Troll) are available, or another gainer (e.g. Artisan or Horn of Plenty) can be used to build more quickly or play an important role in greening.

Haggler’s role varies over the course of the game:

• In the early game, Haggler is relatively less useful. As the strength of its effect is somewhat dependent on your ability to hit particular price points, it is usually better to add Haggler once you can consistently hit those price points. Because the gaining effect is mandatory, it can be a liability if you miss that higher price point and instead have to buy the cheaper card directly: for example, if you buy a card, you may be forced to take a Silver or other junk card if Haggler is in play. Conversely, if a cheap but strong card such as Lackeys is available to gain, Haggler may be more usable in the early game.
• In the midgame, you’ll usually be using a Haggler or two to gain cheap supplemental cards alongside the more expensive cards that you are buying. Most often, these are villages, cantrips, or sifters which can shore up the more important cards in your deck. If these are available, it can be a good idea to get a Haggler relatively early in the midgame, as it will both gain you cards and help you hit . Sometimes, it may be worth buying a Gold to gain multiple cards costing . As your generation increases, +Buy becomes even more important than usual, as each additional expensive card bought means another useful card gained per Haggler.
• In the endgame, Haggler can help you either in continuing to build while greening, or in threatening a pileout. In the former case, because buying Province allows you to gain almost any Kingdom card, you can often start greening earlier than usual, and expect to maintain better deck control. In the latter, multiple Hagglers can create significant pile pressure, as each of your Buys is effectively multiplied by their gaining effects.

A few interacting effects can affect Haggler's value or influence the best way to use it in a given Kingdom. Given that its while-in-play effect is by far Haggler’s most important effect, you can sometimes benefit by playing Haggler using a Way (for example Way of the Pig or Way of the Owl) to provide an effect that is more useful or more friendly to deck control than a terminal while still getting the effect of extra gains. Conversely, Haggler can be a liability when buying cards with unusual costs such as City Quarter or Scrying Pool, as it is very likely to force you to gain junk when buying them. Haggler can also be less desirable in Kingdoms with centralizing Events such as Dominate that you need to buy regularly, as its gaining ability is significantly attenuated. To a lesser extent this is also true with Projects such as Academy, but because you only need to buy them once it may make sense to just delay gaining Haggler until after you’ve bought the Projects you need.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		+ While this is in play, when you buy a card, gain a card costing less than it that is not a Victory card.	Hinterlands	October 2011
		+ While this is in play, when you buy a card, gain a cheaper non-Victory card.	Hinterlands (2016 printing)	December 2016
		+ While you have this in play, when you buy a card, gain a cheaper non-Victory card.	Hinterlands (2020 printing)	October 2020
		+ This turn, when you gain a card, if you bought it, gain a cheaper non-Victory card.	Hinterlands (Second Edition)	July 2022

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Czech	Handlíř (lit. trader)
Dutch	Sjacheraar
Finnish	Tinkijä (lit. price cutter)
French	Marchandeur
German	Feilscher			+ Wenn du eine Karte kaufst und der Feilscher im Spiel ist: Nimm dir eine Karte, die weniger kostet als die gerade gekaufte und die keine Punkte­karte ist.	(2011)
	Feilscher			+ Während diese Karte im Spiel ist, wenn du eine Karte kaufst, nimm eine billigere Nicht-Punkte­karte.	(2019)
	Feilscher			+ Wenn du in diesem Zug eine von dir gekaufte Karte nimmst, nimm eine billigere Nicht-Punkte­karte.	2. Edition (2022)
Italian	Contrattazione (lit. bargaining)
Japanese	値切り屋 (pron. negiri-ya, lit. haggling shop)			+ これが場にある間、カード1枚を購入するとき、 勝利点カード以外の、それよりも安いカード1枚を獲得する。
Polish	Przekupień			+ Ilekroć dodajesz w tej turze kartę, jeśli ją kupiłeś, dodaj tańszą kartę, niebędącą kartą Zwycięstwa.	(2024)
Russian	Торгаш (pron. torgash)
Spanish	Regateador

Trivia

Official card art.

Theme

A tight fit; sure I'll pay for that Stables, if you throw in some Fool's Gold.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of the Hinterlands Cards

Secret History

From when Hinterlands was first its own set. Originally it could gain you Victory cards. Buy Province, gain Duchy, you don't need to see that too many times. And hey you can still have that experience with Border Village as an intermediary. Also originally it triggered on gaining cards (other than via Hagglers), not just buying them. So you would sometimes get what we called "Haggler explosions." Play Haggler, buy Border Village, gain a Lab via Haggler, gain a Lab for Border Village, gain a Silver for Haggler for that. Woosh, four cards. Combined with the original Farmland, you could go further. I enjoyed Haggler explosions, but they were too confusing, and the simpler version still gives you plenty of bang.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of the Hinterlands Cards

2E Rewording

Lots and lots of players conflate "when you gain" with "when you buy"; for example they expect to gain two Ports when using Workshop to gain one. People who know the rules well still get tripped up by this sometimes. Then there's, when-buy is timed differently from when-gain - it happens first. This again endlessly is not something people expect, and causes weird things to happen. For example you can buy the last card of a pile with Talisman in play, gain that card with Talisman, and then fail to gain a card due to the buy itself.

It should have been that I only had when-gain from the start. And this has been clear since before Hinterlands came out. I kept when-buy because a few cards needed it to not have some other fix, and I'd already put out Mint with when-buy. I immediately regretted it, then felt for years like, oh well, that damage is done, and made more when-buy cards. Finally I stopped making them and now I'm getting rid of them.

Some people immediately feel like getting rid of when-buy is removing some important nuance or complexity. It isn't! It isn't, you heard it here. The game has so much nuance; no particular instance of it is important. And I mean the last few expansions have no when-buy; I have been on this plan for years now.

Some needed to avoid loops. Haggler can't trigger on itself, and even just ruling that out (e.g. "other than due to a Haggler," which was a version of Haggler when originally playtested) can leave you with loops if there's ever another Haggler-type card (there are!).

Let's be clear: "When you gain a card you bought" is awful. It's not "yeeha, just what I've always wanted"; it's, "this is my least bad option, oh well, I take it." Other things you can do in these cases, e.g. "once per turn," were more of a change; despite how it may look, I was trying to minimize changes.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Why of the Errata

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