Develop
Develop | |
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Info | |
Cost | |
Type(s) | Action |
Kingdom card? | Yes |
Set | Hinterlands |
Illustrator(s) | Marco Morte |
Card text | |
Trash a card from your hand. Gain a card costing exactly more than it and a card costing exactly less than it, in either order, putting them on top of your deck. |
Develop is an Action card from Hinterlands. As a fairly inflexible terminal remodeler that gains more cards than it trashes, it is often considered a relatively weak and situational card that is hard to use optimally. It benefits from having useful cards in the supply at a variety of costs.
Contents |
FAQ
Official FAQ
- First trash a card from your hand, if you have any cards in hand. Develop itself is no longer in your hand and so cannot trash itself (though it can trash other copies of Develop).
- If you trashed a card, gain two cards, one costing exactly more than the trashed card, and one costing exactly less than the trashed card.
- The gained cards come from the Supply; gain them in either order.
- If there is no card in the Supply at one of the costs, you still gain the other card if you can. Put the gained cards on top of your deck rather than into your discard pile.
- If you trash a Copper with Develop, which costs , you will try and fail to gain a card costing - (and also try to gain a card costing ).
Other Rules clarifications
Strategy Article
Develop is one of the weaker cards, if not the weakest, in the Upgrade/Remodel family; it was ranked #1 on the 2011 Worst Cards List. Develop's usefulness varies highly depending on the board and your deck composition, but it is outright poor in a large majority of situations. It suffers from its inflexibility in what you can gain, and requires cards you want at a variety of price points. In some circumstances, the forced gain can even hurt you. It works poorly as a trasher because it only trashes one card at a time, which is slow and inefficient, and because it tends to increase your deck size. The top-decking also slows down cycling, which can be undesirable. The card does not function well as an early-game accelerator; instead it is more of a highly-specialized gainer.
The best situations for Develop is when the top-decking benefits you, allowing you to top-deck a specific combination. For example, trash a Gold to top-deck a King's Court and a Mountebank to really put the hurt on your opponent. Develop can also trash a card to top-deck an action+card draw combo, like Village/Torturer or Crossroads/Smithy. It also forms a decent combo with Border Village. Trashing a card will net you a and a Border Village, which can immediately gain the trashed card right back. Finally, trashing a card will be able to grab you a Province in the end game, and top-decking it with a Gold won't hurt your buying power next turn all that much.
Cantrips make Develop less likely to harm your deck; even when they aren't part of a combo, they can be gained without clogging up the deck.
Develop tends to be strongest in deck-drawing engines, as these decks benefit more from the gaining of multiple cards, they are more likely to pair up Develop with a good target, and they often are able to draw and play the top-decked cards immediately after they are gained. Develop alone is not good at setting up these engines, since it works poorly as a trasher, and since your starting cards cannot be used to gain anything costing more than .
In the right situation, Develop can enable Alt-VP strategies that want thick decks like Gardens or Vineyard, since it trashes one card but gains two, but these are situational and depend on having useful cards at a variety of costs. Crossroads is especially helpful in these games as top-decking a Crossroads and a Gardens or Silk Road guarantees an extra card next turn, helping offset the downside of top-decking Victory cards.
When considering whether or not to buy Develop, consider not only whether there are good combos to gain with the card, but also, whether there is an optimal strategy that involves a deck with a lot of cards of the right cost to gain this card. King's Court may pair well with the card, but in Minion games, you typically won't be buying much Gold or -cost cards, and in many games, there won't be enough -cost cards to reliably fuel a / combo. It's almost never worth buying a card that you don't otherwise want or need just to feed it to Develop, so if you find yourself thinking about doing this as part of your strategy, it's probably best to ignore this card.
Synergies/Combos
- Useful cards of different costs
- Deck-drawing engines
- King's Court and other cards
- Border Village
Antisynergies
- Small Hands
- Big Money
Trivia
Secret History