Raze
| Raze | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Info | |
| Cost |
 |
| Type(s) | Action |
| Kingdom card? | Yes |
| Set |
Adventures |
| Illustrator(s) | RC Torres |
| Card text | |
|
+1 Action Trash this or a card from your hand. Look at one card from the top of your deck per  the trashed card costs. Put one of them into your hand and discard the rest. | |
Raze is an Action card from Adventures. It is a trash-for-benefit sifter, turning the cost in 
of the trashed card into cards from your deck to select from. Unlike most trashers it's able to trash itself once it stops being useful.
FAQ
Official FAQ
- If you trash a card costing
with this, you do not get any cards. - If you trash a card costing or more, you look at a number of cards from the top of your deck equal to the cost in of the trashed card, take one into your hand, and discard the rest.
- For example if you trash an Estate, you look at the top two cards of your deck, put one into your hand, and discard the other one.
- You can trash the Raze itself; normally it costs , so you would look at two cards.
- Costs may be affected by cards like Bridge Troll.
- Raze is unaffected by the -1 Card token; if it is on top of your deck, replace it after resolving Raze.
Other Rules clarifications
- You may make either choice—trash the played card or trash a card from your hand—even if the played card is not in play anymore (e.g. from playing it twice with Throne Room) or you have no cards in your hand. You won't look at any cards if the choice you made causes you to not trash a card.
Strategy
Raze is a cheap non-terminal trasher that functions as a cantrip when you use it to trash a card costing at least , with a small amount of additional sifting that becomes slightly stronger as the target's value increases. These features make it a fairly strong way to trash Estates in the early game as it provides good cycling, can be opened alongside an early terminal such as Militia, and reduces your hand size less than comparable cards such as Forager.
Raze is significantly weaker when used to trash junk costing as it will not draw a card. This has three primary consequences:
- In the early game, it’s often best paired with a stronger option for this purpose if one is available, such as Moneylender for Coppers. However, if you simply fail to collide your Estates with Raze in the early game, trashing a Copper is typically preferable to trashing your Raze.
- Later in the game, Raze is much less likely to function as a cantrip as you run out of Estates to trash. Oftentimes, this means that you will want to consider trashing Raze itself in order to continue your turn. While you can continue to thin by trashing your Coppers, doing so can be expensive in terms of draw, and it may be better to build in other ways.
- Unlike many other trash-for-benefit cards, Raze is relatively unaffected by cost reduction, as long as your intended target (most notably Raze itself) still costs at least to ensure you draw a card.
Because Raze’s self-trashing ability allows it to default to acting as a cheap one-shot cantrip, adding excess Razes to your deck has very little downside, as they can remove themselves once you no longer need them. Therefore, if the opportunity cost is low (for example, if you have and a Buy to spare), getting an extra copy that you may not need is usually mildly helpful, as you can simply trash it and draw a card if you draw it without a suitable target.
Unlike the majority of trash-for-benefit cards, Raze offers only marginally more value in exchange for trashing more expensive, non-junk cards (in the form of increased cycling and a wider choice of cards from which to draw), so the extra benefit of doing so is almost never worth losing a card you would otherwise want. Very rarely, trashing something expensive might be reasonable in the endgame if you can sacrifice an unneeded card to ensure you find a critical card that will enable you to secure the win.
Versions
English versions
| Digital | Text | Release | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
 |
+1 Action Trash this or a card from your hand. Look at a number of cards from the top of your deck equal to the cost in of the trashed card. Put one into your hand and discard the rest. |
Adventures 1st Edition | April 2015 |
|
 |
+1 Action Trash this or a card from your hand. Look at one card from the top of your deck per the trashed card costs. Put one of them into your hand and discard the rest. |
Adventures 2nd Edition | August 2017 |
Other language versions
| Language | Name | Digital | Text | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dutch | Afbraak (lit. demolition) | +1 Actie Vernietig deze kaart of een kaart uit je hand. Bekijk zoveel kaarten van je gedekte stapel (trek steeds de bovenste} als de kosten in van de vernie-tigde kaart. Neem er 1 in je hand en leg de rest af. |
(2015) | ||
| Finnish | Hävitys (lit. destruction) | ||||
| French | Démolition (lit. demolition) | ||||
| German | Zerstörung (lit. destruction) |
 |
 |
+1 Aktion Entsorge diese Karte oder eine Handkarte. Schau dir so viele Karten oben von deinem Nachziehstapel an, wie die entsorgte Karte  gekostet hat. Nimm eine davon auf die Hand und lege den Rest ab. |
(2015) |
| German | Zerstörung (lit. destruction) |
+1 Aktion Entsorge diese Karte oder eine deiner Handkarten. Sieh dir pro , das die entsorgte Karte kostet, eine Karte oben von deinem Nachziehstapel an. Nimm eine davon auf deine Hand und lege den Rest ab. |
(Nachdruck 2021) | ||
| Japanese | 倒壊 (pron. tōkai) |
+1 アクション このカードか手札1枚を廃棄する。廃棄したカードのコスト につき山札の上からカード1枚を見る。見たカードの中の1枚を手札に加え、残りを捨て札にする。 |
|||
| Russian | Разрушение (pron. razrushyeniye, lit. destruction) |
Trivia
Secret History
Further thoughts by Donald X.
In the Secret History, Donald X. described a trash-for-benefit card that Raze replaced, and later explained why that outtake was problematic.
, trash this or a card from your hand, per the trashed card cost, your choice of +1 Action +1 Buy +1 Card +.
It did everything for you - it got rid of junk, drew your deck, gave you the +Actions and +Buys you needed, made . There would be games where you had a way to get cards to feed it and you would have all these crazy turns, where you sat working out, okay I trash this Gold and take +1 Action +1 Buy +4 Cards. Other cards got in on the act and did their own broken things and got fixed or taken out, and this card kept trying to survive and acted like the other cards were the problem. They were not though.
On the surface it seemed reasonable because you are down a card or action compared to Apprentice. But the flexibility was huge. And as LF notes the +Buys were surprisingly powerful; there kept being combos where you cashed in on that one way or another. Like at one point Quest didn't require discarding, just having the cards. You could gain a giant pile of Gold and then burn through it next turn to draw your deck and make lots of and Buys. There was the duration card that gained you a Gold if you bought the named type (applying to everyone else too but to you on two turns); same deck, takes a lot of +Buys one turn, gain infinite Gold and explode.
The card was fun, that was part of why it hung around so long. It's great getting that immense flexibility. It's fun trashing good cards and having it be the move. The decks where you gained lots of Golds and ate them were high skill.
I then tried weakened versions and they were also too strong. I tried a card that just gave you +1 Action and +1 Buy per the trashed card cost; those were the two things not covered by previous cards. And I had another version that was just +Buys but a different size/shape. It turned out that with no broken combos, the +Buys were still a problem. Just +Actions didn't seem compelling but I tried that too, just in case we liked it.
It's possible there's some doable thing along these lines - drop the +Buys, make it expensive, no self-trashing. Trader's "gain a Silver" can try to get in there. There is also the issue though of how it compares to other cards - it doesn't want to just look awful next to Salvager and Apprentice. The flexibility doesn't look great next to always getting an extra Buy or Action.
Anyway we gave the concept endless chances.
