Gold

Gold
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Treasure
Kingdom card?	No
Set	Base
Illustrator(s)	Ryan Laukat
Card text

Gold is the most valuable of the three basic Treasure cards included in all games of Dominion. It provides when played. Each standalone set comes with 30 Gold cards, and therefore a typical game begins with 30 Golds in the supply.

Gold is one of the largest sources of and one of the most expensive cards that new Dominion players encounter. This often leads less experienced players to overvalue it. Although it does have its place as a compact source of payload, adding too much Gold to your deck can make it harder to build an effective, game-winning engine.

Strategy

When you’re building an engine, Gold is often an actively harmful card, especially early in the game. As a stop card, it makes your deck harder to draw; with an engine, you’ll usually prefer to generate by consistently drawing your deck and playing your Action cards, many of which contribute alongside their other beneficial effects. Most importantly, Gold is very expensive at , so buying it often entails passing up the opportunity to acquire a powerful Action card that would do more for your engine. You should very rarely buy Gold the moment you can afford it, and in many games it will never be worth buying.

Despite its drawbacks, Gold does have an eventual role to play in many engines once they are up and running. The simplest case is when the Kingdom offers strong deck control and fairly good draw (e.g., Sentry, Village and Smithy), but lacks sufficient Action-based payload. In these situations, you’ll need to resort to Treasures to generate enough , and your should ideally be densely concentrated in very few cards to minimise the draw requirements and the risk of a dud starting hand. Gold is therefore a good candidate. In a single-Buy Kingdom that meets these criteria, you’re likely to want just one or two, gained once you can draw your deck reliably; more will be better if +Buy is present, preferably obtained using a Gold-gainer such as Bandit rather than by spending your buys on Gold directly. However, be careful to avoid swamping your deck with more Golds than you can draw.

A Gold-gainer may facilitate a different use for Gold in a broader range of engines, too—one that exploits the fact that it’s an expensive card which you can gain easily. Many trashing cards offer a benefit that scales with the price of the trashed card. For example, in a deck that’s running reliably and has some overdraw, you can acquire a new Gold with your gainer, draw it, and use a remodeler to turn it into a Province every turn. Governor is especially notable in this context, as it’s capable of playing all the component roles of this strategy: Gold-gaining, draw, and Remodelling. Other trash-for-benefit cards can put your excess Golds to different uses, such as draw in the case of Apprentice.

If you’re adopting a money strategy instead of an engine, Gold is usually an important payload card, as it’s often the Treasure that generates the most (Kingdoms with Platinum are one exception). You will probably want to gain two to three Golds when adopting this strategy, although they shouldn’t initially be prioritised over powerful Action cards like Council Room or Witch.

Notable Synergies

• Gold-gainers in conjunction with trash-for-benefit
• Encampment
• Legionary
• Storyteller
• Palace
• Keep

Notable Antisynergies

• Bandit Fort

External strategy articles

Note: Article(s) below are by individual authors and may not represent the community's views on cards, but may provide more in-depth information. Caveat emptor.

• by Polk5440

Cards that interact with Gold

Cards in italics have been removed.

Gold gainers

Since Gold is an expensive card and a dense source of payload, abilities that allow you to gain Gold without buying it are often difficult to activate or come with their own drawbacks.

• Dominion: Bandit
• Intrigue: Courtier
• Seaside: Explorer, Treasure Map
• Alchemy: Transmute
• Prosperity: Hoard
• Hinterlands: Fool's Gold, Tunnel
• Dark Ages: Market Square, Sir Vander
• Cornucopia & Guilds: Bag of Gold, Demesne, Soothsayer
• Adventures: Treasure Trove, Quest
• Empires: Haunted Castle, Fortune, Wedding, Windfall
• Nocturne: Leprechaun, Devil's Workshop, Skulk, The Sky's Gift
• Renaissance: Treasure Chest
• Menagerie: Commerce, Reap, Enclave, Alliance
  • A similar effect although Exiling is not technically gaining: Camel Train, Way of the Camel
• Allies: Acolyte, Territory
• Plunder: Doubloons
• Rising Sun: Gold Mine
• Promo: Dismantle, Governor

Other interactions

• Seaside: Corsair
• Hinterlands: Noble Brigand
• Empires: Encampment, Legionary, Aqueduct, Bandit Fort, Palace
• Nocturne: Envious
• Rising Sun: Kintsugi

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
			Dominion 1st Edition	October 2008
	never implemented		Base Cards 1st Edition	June 2012
			Dominion 2nd Edition	October 2016
	never implemented		Base Cards 2nd Edition	June 2018

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Chinese	金幣 (pron. jīnbì)
Czech	Zlaťák
Dutch	Goud				Eerste editie (2008)
	Goud				Tweede editie (2017)
Finnish	Kultaraha (lit. gold coin)
French	Or
German	Gold				(2008)
	Gold				(2019)
Greek	Χρυσό (pron. khryso)
Hungarian	Arany
Italian	Oro
Japanese	金貨 (pron. kinka, lit. gold coin)
Korean	금 (pron. geum)
Norwegian	Gull
Polish	Złocisz				(2009)
	Złoto				(2016)
	Złoto				II Edycja (2017)
Romanian	Aur
Russian	Золото (pron. zoloto)
Spanish	Oro				First Edition Base (2008)
	Oro				First Edition Intrigue (2009)
	Oro				Second Edition Base (2016)

Trivia

Official card art.

Secret History

These cards are unchanged from day one. You could argue that the actions got tweaked to fit the treasures. The treasure pile sizes changed to match different estimates for the total set size, and ended up generous on all counts. In development the issue of the names for these came up - is it simpler if it's Copper Mine rather than Copper? In the end you can see that Copper won out. It just makes it a lot easier to name action cards if the treasures are treasures rather than mines.

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