Money Lender and Mine
By: Jim Mcaulay
Tags: Dominion Game, Humor, Jim Mcaulay, Imperfect Words, Humour

In this article we looks at money lender and mine two cards from the base set of the deck building game Dominion

You are a monarch, like your parents before you, a ruler of a small pleasant kingdom of rivers and evergreens. Unlike your parents, however, you have hopes and dreams! You want a bigger and more pleasant kingdom, with more rivers and a wider variety of trees. You want a Dominion! In all directions lie fiefs, freeholds, and feodums. All are small bits of land, controlled by petty lords and verging on anarchy. You will bring civilization to these people, uniting them under your banner. But wait! It must be something in the air; several other monarchs have had the exact same idea. You must race to get as much of the unclaimed land as possible, fending them off along the way. To do this you will hire minions, construct buildings, spruce up your castle, and fill the coffers of your treasury. Your parents wouldn’t be proud, but your grandparents, on your mother’s side, would be delighted. This is a game of building a deck of cards. The deck represents your Dominion. It contains your resources, victory points, and the things you can do. It starts out a small sad collection of Estates and Coppers , but you hope that by the end of the game it will be brimming with Gold and provinces. You win by having the most victory points in your deck when the game ends.

source: https://www.riograndegames.com/wpcontent/uploads/2016/09/Dominion-2nd-Edition-Rules.pdf

Moneylender

When you play money lender you trash a copper from your hand and gain a gold.

As with every other card in Dominion, the value of the card is dependant upon the kingdom.

There are many different ways to win at Dominion. One of the ways is to play your money lender trash your coppers and fill your hand with more valuable cards such as gold, action cards, and eventually provinces.

There are other routes to victory for example filling your deck with gardens and as many cards as possible before your opponent is able to buy provinces.

In the early part of the game, money lender works quite well as there are lots of coppers to trash. However, as the game progresses you will fill your deck with other cards and trash your coppers which will make your money lender useless.

When considering buying a money lender look for an appropriate trasher.

If chapel is in the kingdom it is generally more efficient to use it to trash your coppers and your estates and forget about buying money lender.

Buying coppers to feed your money lender is usually not a great idea. However, in a kingdom that generates lots of extra buys, extra actions, and has an appropriate trash for benefit card, such a strategy could work well.

Moneylender makes mountebank a less attractive attack.

Pirate ship on the other hand becomes more attractive if the opponent has a money lender.

Mine

When you play mine you trash a treasure and gain a treasure costing up to 3 more than it.

One of the disadvantages of mine is the cost. there are usually more powerful action cards available that cost 5

Mine is more flexible than money lender especially if there are treasure cards other than copper, silver and gold.

With potions in the kingdom, mine is often very useful.

If platinum and colonies are in the kingdom mine is a great card as it can turn gold into platinum. Moneylender on the other hand is often a very poor choice when there is platinum. If you can not trash your money lender you will have a useless dead card for a longer period of time.

A big advantage of mine is that the gained card goes directly into your hand rather than your discard pile and can be used during your buy phase this turn.

In general, moneylender favors strategies in which getting high-value cards early is important. Mine favors slower strategies. It is often purchased later in the game for turning silver into gold. Turning coppers into silver is okay but there are usually better options available.