Merchant Guild

Merchant Guild
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Guilds
Illustrator(s)	Eric J Carter
Card text
+1 Buy + At the end of your Buy phase this turn, +1 Coffers per card you gained in it.

Merchant Guild is an Action card from Guilds. It gives an extra Buy, and puts tokens in your Coffers for every card gained during your Buy phase.

FAQ

Official FAQ (2023)

• This counts all cards gained in your Buy phase, whether bought, or gained other ways, such as via Ferryman.
• It does not count cards gained in your Action phase, such as with Butcher.
• This is cumulative; if you play two Merchant Guilds, or play one twice via a card such as Throne Room, you will get +2 Coffers per card gained.
• In rare cases (such as with Villa, from Empires), your Buy phase can end multiple times in a turn; Merchant Guild will happen each time it ends.

Other rules clarifications

With the new rules to Coffers introduced in 2021, you would be able to spend Coffers that you gained from Merchant Guild during the same Buy phase. Because of this, Merchant Guild received errata to give Coffers at the end of your Buy phase. It also lost the dividing line.

• When multiple things are supposed to happen at the end of your buy phase, you can choose the order and spend Coffers between them. So you may acquire the Coffers from Merchant Guild, spend two of them to earn , and use the to discard Wine Merchants from your Tavern mat.
• If you play Merchant Guild after your Buy phase (e.g. you gain it at Night (with e.g. Vampire) or Clean-up (with e.g. Improve) and then play it with Innovation), you won't get any Coffers from it.

Deprecated official FAQ (2017)

When you play this, you get +1 Buy and +. While this is in play, any time you buy a card you also add a token to your Coffers mat. Remember that you may only remove tokens from your Coffers prior to buying anything, so you will not be able to immediately use the added tokens. This ability is cumulative; if you have two Merchant Guilds in play, each card you buy will get you two tokens. However if you play a Merchant Guild multiple times but only have one in play, such as with Throne Room, you will only get one token when you buy a card.

Strategy (Post-Errata)

Merchant Guild is a terminal payload card and source of +Buy that functions well in a somewhat restricted set of circumstances. In the best case, you can use multiple copies to generate large amounts of Coffers, which sometimes even enables a megaturn. However, Merchant Guild has three main weaknesses:

1. A single copy is relatively weak, likely generating only one or two Coffers and providing only as much benefit this turn as an expensive Herbalist. As such, many other cards are likely to serve you better in the early and midgame.
2. As it's a terminal stop card, you need strong deck control and draw alongside abundant terminal space to play multiple copies.
3. Because the Coffers are generated at the end of your Buy phase, you usually need to wait a turn before using them. This can make Merchant Guild relatively slow as payload, as you need one big turn to produce a large amount of Coffers and a second to spend them. This outcome compares unfavorably to that of other similar cards like Bridge, which need only a single big turn.

Even in Kingdoms with better payload or without proper support, Merchant Guild can still occasionally be usable as an expensive source of +Buy, or with synergies that allow you to gain many Coffers with relatively few copies.

In theory, a Merchant Guild megaturn relies on two stages. In the first, you play multiple Merchant Guilds and use all of your Buys. Because each Buy that you use nets you as many Coffers as the number of Merchant Guilds you've played, and each one also provides an additional Buy to use, this scales quadratically, generating a large amount of Coffers. In the second stage, on your next turn, you use all of those Coffers to buy as many Provinces as possible, with your Merchant Guilds providing the Buys to do so. Realistically, however, building up to the point where you can store up enough Coffers to green in a single turn is slow, and you will often be better served by greening over two or three turns, using the Coffers from each to bolster the next. The number of Merchant Guilds you need for this will depend on how reliably you can play them and how many Coffers you are able to carry over, but generally three or four copies will suffice.

While building your deck, it is usually a good idea to utilize the fact that Merchant Guild rewards you for buying more cards. Most often, this simply means using as many of your Buys as you reasonably can. Ideally, you have enough or Coffers available to use these Buys to build up your deck, possibly via useful cheap cards (e.g. Border Guard) or more Merchant Guilds. Sometimes, however, you will not be able to do so, and may want to consider buying junk such as Copper; doing so will harm your deck control and may cause you to dud, but it may also give you enough Coffers to, for example, end the game on your next turn. Buying junk is more likely to be a good option if your deck is highly reliable or if you can trash the junk quickly: Watchtower is particularly notable, as it can prevent the junk from ever entering your deck.

Merchant Guild's efficiency is sometimes greatly enhanced through synergies with a few different effects:

• You can generate more Coffers per Merchant Guild than the number of Buys you have if you can gain additional cards during the Buy phase. There are several ways this can work:
  • Some cards, such as Supplies, Livery, and Haggler, help you gain additional useful cards; the extra Coffers can therefore be regarded as a side benefit of continuing to build.
  • Other effects involve gaining junk, and so may disrupt building, but may gain you so many cards that even a limited number of Merchant Guilds can generate significant Coffers. These include Masterpiece, Banquet, and Alliance.
  • Stampede is a particularly notable synergy, allowing you to quickly bank both a large number of Coffers and plenty of extra draw; this potentially enables rapidly emptying the Province pile.
• Cavalry and Villa allow you to make use of any Coffers generated by Merchant Guild on the same turn by ending your Buy phase and returning you to your Action phase. This can significantly accelerate Merchant Guild's ability to let you green heavily or orchestrate an early pileout.

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.

• Qvist's 2013 article (pre-errata)

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		+1 Buy + While this is in play, when you buy a card, take a Coin token.	Guilds	June 2013
		+1 Buy + While this is in play, when you buy a card, +1 Coffers.	Guilds & Cornucopia (2017 printing)	March 2018
		+1 Buy + At the end of your Buy phase this turn, +1 Coffers per card you gained in it.	Coffers Rules Change Cornucopia & Guilds (Second Edition)	September 17, 2021 March 2024

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Dutch	Koopmansgilde
Finnish	Kilta (lit. guild)
French	Guilde des Marchands			+1 Achat + Lorsque cette carte est en jeu, quand vous achetez une carte, +1 Coffres.
German	Kaufmannsgilde			+1 Kauf + Wenn diese Karte im Spiel ist, nimm für jede Karte, die du kaufst, jeweils eine Münze.	(2013)
	Kaufmannsgilde			+1 Kauf + Während diese Karte im Spiel ist: Wenn du eine Karte kaufst, +1 Taler.	(2019)
	Kaufmannsgilde			+1 Kauf + Am Ende deiner Kaufphase in diesem Zug, +1 Taler pro Karte, die du in ihr genommen hast.
Japanese	商人ギルド (pron. shōnin girudo)			+1 購入 + これが場にある間、カード1枚を購入するとき、コイントークン1枚を得る。
Korean	상인조합 (pron. sang-injohab)
Polish	Gildia kupców				Although Polish version is not released, this name is referred to in Polish Dominion 2E rulebook.
Russian	Купеческая Гильдия (pron. kupyecheskaya gil'diya)

Trivia

Official card art.

Secret History

This started out thinking it could cost , like Bridge. As it turned out, it could not.

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

Errata

The fix to Merchant Guild preserves its existing functionality, as well as possible. The intention of the Coffers change was not to make cards turn into different cards; Merchant Guild would still like to be Merchant Guild.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Coffers Rules Change

I changed the rules for Coffers, so that you can spend them whenever. This is way better. It had two casualties: Patron and Merchant Guild. So I changed both cards. While I was changing Merchant Guild, I switched it to when-gain, since I was changing it anyway, and this is what I would be printing today. Casual players often don't distinguish between gains and buys.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Interview with Donald X.