Event
Events are on-buy effects not attached to cards; players can buy Events during their Buy phase to trigger whatever the effect of the Event is, as an alternative to (or in addition to) buying cards from the Supply. Events first appeared in the expansion Adventures, and were revisited in Empires, Menagerie, Plunder, and Rising Sun.
Events are not Kingdom cards; including one or more Events in a game does not count toward the 10 Kingdom card piles the Supply includes. In fact, Events are not considered "cards" at all; any text referring to a "card" (such as instructions to "name a card", or cost reducers changing the cost of cards) does not apply to Events. However, for reference, the Event effects and costs are printed on cards in a landscape orientation with silver frames.
There are 79 Events, including 1 promo, any number of which may be used in a game of Dominion, though Donald X. recommends not using more than two total Events, Landmarks, Projects, Ways and Traits. When choosing a random Kingdom, the Events may be shuffled into the randomizer deck; any Events that are dealt once 10 Kingdom cards have also been dealt will be included in the game.
List of Events
- Triumph :
- Annex, Continue, Donate :
- Advance, Alms, Borrow, Delay, Desperation, Quest :
- Bury, Save :
- Amass, Asceticism, Avoid, Credit, Deliver, Delve, Foresight, Gamble, Peril, Pursue, Ride, Rush, Scouting Party, Tax, Toil, Travelling Fair :
- Banquet, Bonfire, Enhance, Expedition, Ferry, Foray, Kintsugi, Launch, March, Mirror, Plan, Practice, Prepare, Scrounge, Transport :
- Banish, Bargain, Invest, Journey, Maelstrom, Mission, Pilgrimage, Ritual, Salt the Earth, Sea Trade, Seize the Day :
- Wedding :
- Ball, Commerce, Demand, Raid, Receive Tribute, Seaway, Stampede, Summon, Trade, Windfall :
- Conquest, Looting, Lost Arts, Training :
- Gather, Inheritance, Reap :
- Enclave, Pathfinding :
- Alliance, Invasion, Populate, Prosper :
- Dominate :
Official Rules
In your Buy phase, when you can buy a card, you can buy an Event instead. You pay the cost indicated on the Event and then do its effect.
- Events are not Kingdom cards; they sit on the table and provide an effect you can buy. There is no way for you to gain one or end up with one in your deck.
- Buying an Event uses up a Buy; normally you can either buy a card, or buy an Event. If you have two Buys, such as after playing [Ranger, Villa, Sanctuary, Sack of Loot, or Fishmonger], you can buy two cards, or buy two Events, or buy a card and an Event (in either order).
- The same Event can be bought multiple times in a turn if you have the Buys and available to do it.
- You cannot play further Treasures that turn after buying an Event.
- Buying an Event is not buying a card and so does not trigger cards like [Haggler†, Swamp Hag†, or Charm†].
- Costs of Events are not affected by cards like [Bridge or Flourishing Trade].
Preparation
- Events, Landmarks, and Projects can be shuffled into the randomizer deck (despite having a different back).
- They are not part of the 10 Kingdom cards used in a game; when an Event, Landmark, or Project is turned over, put it on the table but keep turning over cards until you get 10 Kingdom cards. For normal play we recommend using no more than two total of Events, Landmarks, and Projects. Skip any further Event, Landmark, and Project cards turned over.
- Also skip Events, Landmarks, and Projects when using a randomizer card to determine whether or not to use Platinum/Colony (from Prosperity), or Shelters (from Dark Ages) in a game.
- Events, Landmarks, and Projects cannot be Young Witch's bane (from Cornucopia).
- Another approach some people may prefer is to shuffle Events, Landmarks, and Projects separately into their own randomizer deck, and always play with one or two of them.
Card gallery
Trivia
In other languages
- Dutch: Gebeurtenis
- German: Ereignis
- Japanese: イベント (pron. ibento)
- Polish: Zdarzenie
- Russian: Событие (pron. sobytiye)
Preview
Adventures has 30 Kingdom cards. It also has 20 Events. It's high time we looked at some of those. Man, they're sideways.
An Event is something you can buy in your Buy phase that isn't a card. You pay your , you use up a Buy, and something happens. They don't take up Kingdom card slots; you shuffle them into your randomizer deck, but when you deal out cards, keep going until you have 10 Kingdom cards. I recommend stopping at two Events, but it's up to you.
Secret History
The mat worked great, the tokens were exciting, the new duration cards compelling. One day, real-life playtester Kevin White said, man the tokens took a while to get. You buy the one-shot, eventually shuffle it in and draw it, then play it and finally you have the token. Couldn't they be faster? Now they could have just been when-gain one-shots, a concept I tried out previously in Hinterlands. But if you trash a card when you gain it, well, why have the card? It's not doing anything except limiting how many times you can do this. You could just buy the token directly. That immediately sounded awesome. And then, if you can buy tokens directly, why not pay for other things? And thus the set got Events. And I needed new kingdom cards to replace the ones that turned into Events, and I needed more Events so there would be lots of Events.
There are twenty Events. Some people no doubt have already complained that the set has six blanks. Couldn't that have been six more Events? Man. You got twenty. I didn't have a pile of great ones I cut to put in the blanks. You have to stop working on the expansions at some point and let them get released.
Donald X.'s comments on other design issues
One issue is that some optional attacks are political. There's an Event that Militias, in a 4-player game. I could buy it. The player to my right just bought it, so I'd only be attacking Kevin. Well, is he winning? Another issue is, it's not so fun to be attacked every turn. It happens naturally eventually if you have enough players or you can draw your deck, but I don't want to push that, I want to delay it. Raid dodges these issues by having the upside be conditional, and by being bad. It's not like I want bad attacking Events though.
I tried some other attack Events, including a Locusts attack in Adventures. They didn't work, and hey I didn't need them to. It was fine not to have any, and I managed Raid anyway. Attacks are hard, and Events didn't solve any problems they have.