Paddock

Paddock
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Menagerie
Illustrator(s)	Elisa Cella
Card text
+ Gain 2 Horses. +1 Action per empty Supply pile.

Paddock is an Action card from Menagerie. It is a terminal silver that gains Horses and can become non-terminal or even a village as Supply piles empty.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• This only checks how many piles are empty when you play it; how many +Actions you got does not change if a pile becomes empty later in the turn (or non-empty, such as due to Ambassador from Seaside).
• This only counts Supply piles, not non-Supply piles like Horse.

Other rules clarifications

• If gaining the Horses empties a Supply pile (e.g. you exchange them for a Changeling, which then empties the Changeling pile), you will get +1 Action for that pile.

Strategy

Paddock is a strong payload card with the potential to scale well into the late game. Since it gains you 2 Horses, it can also be helpful to think of it as a draw card that says, “+2 Cards, +, +1 Action per empty supply pile”, even though the draw effect doesn’t occur immediately. In this way, once piles begin to empty, Paddock evolves from being a terminal silver with draw into being like a Laboratory or Lost City with +.

In the early game, it can often be helpful to buy one or two Paddocks. Having Horses can increase your deck’s reliability and help you hit price points that you might not otherwise have hit. However, Paddock is a terminal card in the early game, so buying too many will cause your deck to stall.

Since Paddock’s draw is delayed, it is weaker in faster Kingdoms where piles will empty quickly. Paddock is strongest when 1-2 piles are likely to be emptied quickly, but the game won’t end soon afterwards. Magpie tends to increase the strength of Paddock, since it empties its own pile. Also, cursers such as Familiar or Witch can place pressure on the Curse pile without threatening a rapid pileout due to junkier and therefore slower decks. In each of these cases, Paddock quickly becomes non-terminal while there are still plenty of turns left in the game.

As a (non-)terminal silver, Paddock can be a good source of late-game payload, but may not succeed in a Kingdom that lacks +Buy and thinning. For example, if the Kingdom provides no Copper trashing and no +Buy, your deck will need 7 Horses per shuffle to draw all of the Coppers, which requires 4 Paddocks. This deck produces at least , far more than the cost of a single Province. In this case, the deck that took less payload and began scoring sooner may be ahead of the Paddock deck. However, if your deck contained a Market, it would be reliably capable of buying two Provinces per turn.

As with City and Animal Fair, consider the consequences of lowering piles when Paddock is in the kingdom. Emptying a pile may benefit your opponents significantly, and possibly more than it benefits you: for instance, if you empty a pile after your Action phase, your opponents can take advantage of Paddock’s newly-activated ability before you can. This can lead to a game state in which no player is willing to gain the last card of a pile, often Paddock itself.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		+ Gain 2 Horses. +1 Action per empty Supply pile.	Menagerie	March 2020

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Dutch	Omheind Veld			+ Pak 2 paarden. +1 Actie per lege voorraadstapel.	(2020)
German	Koppel			+ Nimm 2 Pferde. +1 Aktion pro leerem Vorratsstapel.	(2020)
Japanese	パドック (pron. padokku)
Polish	Padok				Although Polish version is not released, this name is referred to in Polish Dominion 2E rulebook.

Trivia

Official card art.

Paddock is the closest existing card to terminal +2 Cards + at , an outtake that Donald X. considered early in development but eventually considered too uninteresting to publish.

Secret History

The first version was +, gain 2 Horses. A variant on "+, +2 Cards," an ancient card that never seemed worth doing. For a while it filled its slot, looking like I might add a dividing line and some other ability, but being simple and inoffensive. Finally in the later days I was worried about having enough player interaction, and tried out the +1 Action per empty pile here.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of Dominion: Menagerie