Travelling Fair

Travelling Fair
Info
Cost
Type	Event
Set	Adventures
Illustrator(s)	Julien Delval
Event text
+2 Buys When you gain a card this turn, you may put it onto your deck.

Travelling Fair is an Event from Adventures. It is both a source of +Buy, and a means to topdeck gained cards.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• When you buy this, you get +2 Buys (letting you buy more Events or cards afterwards).
• Then for the rest of the turn, whenever you gain a card, you may put it on your deck.
• This works on cards you buy, as well as cards gained other ways, such as gaining cards with Ball.
• It does not work on Travellers exchanged for other cards; exchanging is not gaining.
• Putting the card on your deck is optional each time you gain a card that turn; you could put some on top and let the others go to your discard pile.

Other rules clarification

• Travelling Fair's topdecking happens after the gain happens; the card still visits the discard pile, or whatever location it was gained to.

Strategy

Travelling Fair is a strong and flexible Event that allows you to convert into +Buy and to set up your next turn via its topdecking effect. Generally, the presence of Travelling Fair rewards you for building a strong engine with good payload, since large amounts of can always be converted into extra Buys.

The ability to purchase Buys is particularly useful whenever it’s easier to generate than to generate enough Buys, which occurs in a number of situations:

1. If the Kingdom offers strong payload that doesn’t come packaged with +Buy (such as many Priests or Banks), buying Travelling Fair might be a more efficient way to get your Buys than gaining cards specifically for that purpose.
2. Even if the payload is of more typical strength, Travelling Fair can be crucial if it is the only source of +Buy. Alternatively, if the other +Buy options are weak (e.g. Herbalist) or difficult to use (e.g. terminal space is limited), it might still be easiest to focus on generating extra as a way to get your Buys as needed.
3. Situationally, may sometimes be easier to come by than +Buy in some instances even if the Kingdom offers better primary sources of +Buy, meaning that Travelling Fair can add some highly beneficial flexibility. Notably, its presence means you can sometimes delay adding a source of +Buy to your deck until you can reliably make use of it: instead, you can simply buy extra Buys ad hoc as you can use them, and acquire a more permanent source once your deck control is well established. Similarly, you can use Travelling Fair opportunistically if a partial dud means you can’t find or play all of your +Buy on a particular turn, or use it for extra gains to accomplish a pileout.

The topdecking effect has three primary uses:

1. Topdecking engine pieces (particularly draw) can improve your overall reliability while building. This is most relevant if your deck contains some amount of junk (perhaps due to greening or a lack of thinning) or your engine is sensitive to play order (e.g., needing a village for your terminal draw).
2. If you lack good deck control, the topdecking effect can enable you to play a gained card much earlier, if you can afford the extra for Travelling Fair. The most common and powerful application of this is in the opening: if you have a / or / opening split, the opportunity to play a card like Chapel or a Traveller on turn 2 can accelerate the early game greatly. Similarly, you might consider buying and topdecking an Overlord on turn 1 or 2.
3. Occasionally, Travelling Fair might be useful to guarantee you have a specific Reaction in hand. For example, if you are deck tracking and know you would be unprotected otherwise, it may be a good idea to topdeck a Moat. Similarly, you might be able to threaten your opponents with Black Cat, or block their Tournaments with a Province.

Trivia

Travelling Fair combos powerfully with the removed card Counting House. This involves constructing a very specific type of deck in which you use Buys from Travelling Fair to accumulate large amounts of Copper in your discard pile, draw it all using a topdecked Counting House each turn, and avoid ever shuffling. For more details see Combo: Counting House and Travelling Fair.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		+2 Buys When you gain a card this turn, you may put it on top of your deck.	Adventures	April 2015
		+2 Buys When you gain a card this turn, you may put it onto your deck.	Adventures (2016 printing)	August 2017

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Dutch	Kermis			+2 Aanschaf Als je deze beurt een kaart pakt, mag je deze op je gedekte stapel leggen.	(2015)
Finnish	Kiertelevät markkinat (lit. nomadic markets)
French	Forains (lit. fairground)
German	Wanderzirkus			+2 Käufe Wenn du in diesem Zug eine Karte nimmst, darfst du sie auf deinen Nachziehstapel legen.
Japanese	移動遊園地 (pron. idō yūenchi, lit. travelling circus)			+2 購入 このターン、あなたがカード1枚を獲得するとき、山札の上に置いてもよい。
Russian	Странствующий Балаган (pron. stranstvuyushshiy balagan, lit. wandering theater booth)

Trivia

Official card art.

Secret History

An easy one with no issues.

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

Further thoughts by Donald X.

Super +Buy is scary, but it's less scary with an Event, since we all have it all the time; it's more like a rules change than a normal card is (normal cards are also like rules changes, but). But really it's just down to, I have tried various "+1 Buy per" cards that didn't work out, and Travelling Fair seemed to work out, and there it is, continuing to work out.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Interview with Donald X.