This is the second 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.

Feodum is the victory card that counts treasures that you always knew I’d make. What you didn’t know is that it would only count Silvers. If Coppers count, man, that’s like a Gardens deck, we built that one already. I mean it’s different but whatever. If Golds count, man, I already wanted a deck with a lot of Gold. So it only counts Silvers. And to help that out, it’s a Silver piñata. You might even buy one just to crack it open, with no plan of really going for Feodums.

Feodum does something when you trash it. There are a bunch of cards like that in this set. There’s really only so much you can do with the trash directly, like Graverobber, but you can do tons of things based on cards getting trashed. And if you are the kind of person who likes card combos, these cards are for you. For example you can just Remodel a Feodum into a Feodum, for the 3 Silvers. Look at that.

Cultist also does something when you trash it. Those of you who were waiting for a Dominion expansion that let you sacrifice Cultists, finally, here it is. And hey you get three cards when you do it. When you play Cultist, you give people a Ruins, that sounds bad, and you draw two cards, and hey you can play another Cultist. These guys stick together. In fact if your deck’s only actions are Cultists, you can just string them together, like a line of hurtful Laboratories.

Ruinses, it turns out, are a pile of cards like Curses, with three ways to get them, besides just buying them or something. They only show up in games with a Looter, which is a word you may have been wondering about on Cultist. There are five different ones (ten copies each) and they’re shuffled together, I’m not making this up. As with Curses you only use ten total per opponent. Not two of each per opponent, just whatever random mix you got. So when you play Cultist, your opponent will get one of these five cards. You will know which one is on top of the Ruins pile, but not what’s under it. You won’t really care; even though some are worse than others, they’re all bad.

Ruined Market for example just gives +1 Buy. It’s as simple as Smithy! I am betting you can guess what three of the other Ruinses do. The last one will remain a small mystery until next week. Looking at the art, it appears that that Ruined Market was once Grand. It’s hard times for all of us.

Once you get given a Ruined Market, well, it’s pretty bad, but it does do something. You don’t usually want it – though it has a certain charm in a Fairgrounds deck – but who knows, maybe that +1 Buy will come in handy. So it’s like a Curse but more interesting. And really that’s the whole point to them.