This is the fourth preview by Donald X. Vaccarino, introducing the next Dominion expansion: Dark Ages. The community is discussing these new cards in the Dark Ages Preview subforum.

Rats is my favorite Dominion card. Now you know that about me. You give your kingdom a rat problem. Sure, you get rid of some garbage, but now you’ve got Rats, and they don’t get rid of themselves. Isn’t the solution worse than the problem? Plus, let’s not forget, there are twenty Rats, rather than the usual ten. That’s right: today, you didn’t get the whole story just looking at the pictures. Twenty Rats, even in two-player games. Just chewing your deck to pieces. Well secretly there’s probably something you can do with them. Looking over the cards spoiled so far, they seem to be a combo with most of them, what’s up with that.

Pillage is a more conventional attack, in that it attacks your opponents. It’s a one-shot. There haven’t been very many but this is one. You make everyone else discard their best card, which is bound to hurt them, and you get two Spoils, which sounds good at least. It’s a pretty rude attack, but at least it only happens once per copy bought, barring Graverobbers or something. The thing being Pillaged in the art is of course a Village. I remember when that was a peaceful place, with a guy on a horse.

Spoils is a one-shot Gold. That makes Pillage a one-shot that gets you two one-shots. You can’t buy Spoils; there are three different ways to get it, and the other two get you them repeatedly. A one-shot Gold is pretty good if you were only drawing it once anyway, or if you didn’t really want Gold in the long run, and if those things aren’t true well hey it’s still something.

There are 15 Spoils. I have seen them run out (temporarily of course) but it’s rare. A little math reveals that there must therefore be only one victory card pile. Dark Ages has 35 kingdom cards, adding up to 352 cards, and 35 randomizers; 50 Ruins; 10 extra Rats; 10 Madmen and 10 of some other card you upgrade into; 15 Spoils; and 18 Shelters.