Ironmonger

Ironmonger
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Dark Ages
Illustrator(s)	Dennis Lohausen
Card text
+1 Card +1 Action Reveal the top card of your deck; you may discard it. Either way, if it is an... Action card, +1 Action Treasure card, + Victory card, +1 Card

Ironmonger is an Action card from Dark Ages. It is always a cantrip, but it lets you reveal the top card of your deck and get a bonus depending on what card you revealed. Ironmonger can be a village, non-terminal draw, or a Peddler variant depending on what is revealed.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• First you draw a card, then you reveal the top card of your deck, then you either discard that card or put it back on top of your deck.
• Then you get bonuses based on the types of the card you revealed.
• A card with multiple types gives you all relevant bonuses; if you revealed Harem (from Intrigue), you would both draw a card and get +.

Strategy

Ironmonger is a strong cantrip that offers some deck inspection and sifting, while usually also acting as a Peddler variant, a village, or non-terminal draw, depending on the card that it reveals. Unless you have a way to manipulate the second card in your deck before playing Ironmonger (e.g. Cartographer), you cannot choose which secondary ability will be activated, so it's normally best to use Ironmonger as a supplement to dedicated villages or draw cards if possible, rather than relying on it for one specific effect. However, Ironmonger will almost always do something useful for you and can be critical if you lack access to a dedicated village. It is less able to fill the gap if the Kingdom provides no other source of draw, but can occasionally add some amount of reliable draw if you can set it up to reveal a Victory card consistently (e.g., with Secret Passage).

A particularly useful characteristic of Ironmonger is its tendency to provide the effects you are most likely to need for a particular stage of the game or deck composition. Notably, it is more likely to provide draw or if you have few Action cards in your deck, which is a situation in which you are also unlikely to benefit from extra terminal space. This deck composition is most likely to occur in the early game, which enhances Ironmonger's attractiveness as an opening buy: in addition to the extra cycling, which is often particularly beneficial in accelerating your progress through your first couple of shuffles, it's likely to supply a small amount of payload via its bonus effect, as there's a very good chance it will either reveal Copper (generating ) or reveal Estate and allow you to draw a Copper (also worth ). Subsequently, as you add more Action cards and are more likely to need a village effect, Ironmonger becomes increasingly likely to act as a village that is conveniently already in your deck. During greening in the late game, when your deck may start to struggle to draw due to the influx of stop cards, Ironmonger is correspondingly more likely to reveal one of your Victory cards and therefore provide some extra draw. Overall, Ironmonger is therefore generally a useful card throughout the game and in a variety of deck types, and it's common to want several copies. This is particularly true in the presence of Workshop variants, which reduce the opportunity cost of gaining it.

It's usually best to play your Ironmongers as early in the turn as possible, even if you don't need the village effect in order to play terminal draw: first, so that you can take advantage of the sifting; and second, because the information about which bonuses you receive may influence your decisions later in the turn. A common case where this matters is when you're using Ironmonger as your primary village in a deck that contains at least some non-Action cards: especially as you add Victory cards, the amount of terminal space you generate may vary somewhat between turns, so you may need to make choices about which terminals to play. Since Ironmonger's extra effect is dependent on revealing a card, it would also be suboptimal to play it with only one card left to draw and an empty discard pile; however, if you are triggering a shuffle consisting of known cards, this does provide another potential way to exercise some control over which bonus you receive.

Ironmonger may lose some of its appeal if it's likely to reveal cards with no type that can activate a bonus effect (Action, Treasure, or Victory). This is most likely to be the case in a deck with many Curses or Night cards; however, Ironmonger's sifting can still be of some value if it reveals one of these cards. Conversely, Ironmonger can function well alongside certain dual-type cards that provide multiple bonuses if revealed. While the potential for an extra Ironmonger bonus is not generally significant enough to make weak ones like Harem much more attractive than usual, it may somewhat increase the appeal of an otherwise medium-strength card like Mill.

External strategy articles

Note: Article(s) below are by individual authors and may not represent the community's current views on cards, but may provide more in-depth information or give historical perspective. Caveat emptor.

• 2012 article by mischiefmaker and DrFlux

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		+1 Card +1 Action Reveal the top card of your deck; you may discard it. Either way, if it is an… Action card, +1 Action Treasure card, + Victory card, +1 Card	Dark Ages 1st Edition	August 2012
		+1 Card +1 Action Reveal the top card of your deck; you may discard it. Either way, if it is an…  Action card, +1 Action Treasure card, +  Victory card, +1 Card	Dark Ages 2nd Edition	September 2017

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Czech	Železářství (lit. hardware store)
Dutch	Metaalhandelaar (lit. metal dealer)
Finnish	Reppuryssä (Note: historical derogatory term for Russian merchants, similar to carpetbagger)
French	Ferronnier
German	Eisenhändler			+1 Karte +1 Aktion Decke die oberste Karte von deinem Nachziehstapel auf. Ist es eine … Aktionskarte: +1 Aktion Geldkarte: + Punktekarte: +1 Karte Lege die aufgedeckte Karte ab oder zurück auf deinen Nachziehstapel.	translation error - timing of optional discard instruction (2012)
German	Eisenhändler			+1 Karte +1 Aktion Decke die oberste Karte deines Nachziehstapels auf, lege sie ab oder zurück auf deinen Nachziehstapel. Ist die aufgedeckte Karte eine… Aktionskarte: +1 Aktion Geldkarte: + Punktekarte: +1 Karte	(2019)
Japanese	金物商 (pron. kanamonoshō)			+1 カードを引く +1 アクション 山札の一番上のカードを公開する。それを捨て札にしてもよい。捨て札にしてもしなくても、公開したカードが… アクションカードの場合、+1 アクション 財宝カードの場合、+ 勝利点カードの場合、+1 カードを引く (複数該当する場合、順に実行する)
Korean	철물상 (pron. cheolmulsang)
Polish	Kupiec żelazny				Although Polish version is not released, this card is referred to in the Polish version of Empires rulebook
Russian	Скобянщик (pron. skobyanshshik)
Spanish	Ferretero

Trivia

Official card art.

Secret History

This was briefly in Hinterlands long ago. I forget why I dropped it. When I put it here, initially you always discarded the card. Some people hate flipping over their good cards though, so I tried a version where you could keep the card if you wanted, and as you can see that worked out.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of the Dark Ages Cards