This is the first of several previews by Donald X. Vaccarino, introducing the next Dominion expansion: Guilds. The community is discussing these new cards in the Guilds Preview subforum.

Casimir III, greatest of the Polish kings, came into power in 1333. He took a country in ruins, and brought prosperity to it, while doubling its size, in part by claiming the Duchy of Halicz. Since I am previewing Dominion cards though, that’s all pretty irrelevant.

Guilds is the 8th Dominion expansion. Man. That’s a bunch of expansions. People always ask about a 9th expansion, and I always say, well who knows, but there are good reasons for stopping. You can go read them in some other thread, I am busy previewing a card here, I will get to it any second now. Guilds itself only exists because I needed a small expansion to go in-between Hinterlands and Dark Ages. Base Cards ended up showing up there instead, but I’d already made Guilds, so why not release it.

Guilds has two main mechanics, as you can see in the terse sentences that accompany the flavor paragraph. One of them is coin tokens. And here today is a card that uses them.

The coin tokens are those metal things in Seaside and Prosperity. Guilds has cards that give you some, and then they’re yours, they don’t belong to some Pirates or anything. The significance of a coin token is, in your buy phase, before buying cards, you can cash in any number of coin tokens for +$1 each. That’s it, that’s all there is to know. They’re money you can spend later. The turn you play Baker, you get a coin token; you can cash it in that turn, but you can also hold onto it.

Guilds is the most skill-based expansion, and coin tokens are a big part of that. There you are with $5 some turn; you could buy a card for $5, or maybe a cheaper one. There are a certain number of options. Coin tokens increase your options; with just one coin token, you can now consider cashing it in and getting a card for $6 instead.

Baker has another special twist, which is, it gives players a coin token at the start of the game. You only get one coin token then, not one per Baker in the pile, why is anyone even asking that. You get the coin token even though no-one has a Baker yet and possibly no-one will end up buying one. It’s a free sample.

That starting coin token drastically shakes up the opening two turns. You can get a $3 and a $5 no matter what your starting draw is. If you got $2/$5, you also have the option of $2/$6; if you got $3/$4, you have the option of $4/$4. You can also save that coin token for later and live with your draw.

That’s the preview, I’m here all week.