Theory wrote an article back in 2010 on watchtower, before Cornucopia and Hinterlands. Jorbles revised it in 2012 with those expansions. Now, in 2014, I'm going to rewrite it with my own ideas and the knowledge of Dark Ages and Guilds. You can find the articles of Theory and Jorbles
here and
here. I'm writing this article as my 1000th post here because watchtower is my favorite card, which is also why it's my avatar on this forum. Most of the things here are common knowledge, but hopefully even the most veteran players will find something that they hadn't really considered before here. Many of the ideas voiced here are just from my own experience, so feedback from players with different experiences are certainly welcome.
Watchtower is one of, if not the most versatile card in Dominion. Watchtower does three different things: Draw up to 6 cards in hand, topdeck a gained card, or trash a gained card. Each of these things are not very strong by themselves, nor even in combination. Without support, Watchtower is a very weak card. All it does is either draw two cards, or topdeck the card that you buy this turn. This is certainly not worth $3, and so Watchtower-BM is an extremely ill-advised strategy. Watchtower, however, is the dominion card which interacts positively with the most other dominion cards. All three of it's abilities can be made much better by another card. I wrote a post
here listing all (except for the ones that I forgot) cards that it combos with. Here are what I think the top ten kingdom cards that combo with watchtower are. I chose cards for this list largely because they combo with watchtower in more than one way. If two cards combo in a similar way (e.g., merchant guild and goons), I only included the stronger one (goons). I am interpreting "combo" as making watchtower stronger, so if watchtower counters the card, I could it as combo-ing.
liopoil's Top 10 Cards that Combo with Watchtower:
10. Soothsayer: On play, Soothsayer decreases handsize and also lets you topdeck a gold. When played against you, watchtower trashes the incoming curse, while still getting to draw a card!
9. Hamlet: Watchtower loves +actions and +buys, and hamlet gives you both while decreasing handsize by discarding your two worst cards in hand. With a little payload, it is pretty easy to build an engine with hamlet and watchtower. Their cheap cost makes them easy to get lots of as well.
8. Stonemason: When you overpay for stonemason, you can topdeck the other two gained cards and optionally trash or topdeck the stonemason. When you play stonemason, your handsize is not only decreased, but you can do whatever you want with the two gained cards. If they are good cards, topdeck them. Alternatively, you can safely stonemason an estate and trash the two gained coppers or curses with watchtower.
7. Black market: Black market can decrease your handsize tremendously for a later watchtower play while not losing the benefit of the treasure cards by playing them in your action phase. You can also topdeck the card bought from the black market deck. Plus, chances are there are lots of cards in the black market deck which combo with watchtower!
6. Tournament: When your tournament is blocked, it's okay that you didn't get to draw a card, watchtower can do it instead! When you collide tournament and province with watchtower in hand, it decreases handsize too. But maybe watchtower's best use with tournament is to help them collide. With 12 and two buys, you can topdeck them both, or if you know that one is in your next hand, you can topdeck the other. Watchtower also works with prizes nicely. Followers, arguably the best prize, is hard-countered by watchtower. Watchtower nullifies the discard attack, and can trash the curses (or estates). With trusty steed you can take actions and coins to help your watchtower draw, and princess and bag of gold decrease handsize too.
5. Governor: If you choose the remodeling or the gaining a gold, governor decreases handsize. What's more, you can topdeck the gained gold or other card. If your opponent plays governor, watchtower is still useful. When you upgrade a card off of an opponent's governor, you can topdeck the gained card while decreasing handsize. If your opponent gains a gold, you can do whatever you like with the silver (sometimes it will be better to topdeck, sometimes to let go to the discard, sometimes to trash). The only trouble is that when the +3 cards option is taken by you or your opponent, the on-play ability of watchtower is weakened.
4. University: When you have university and watchtower in hand, you can count on a good turn. Play the university first. This does three things for you: It gives you two actions so that you can play the watchtower and be able to play any action cards you draw, it decreases your handsize so that you draw one more card when you play the watchtower, and it gains an action card costing up to $5, which you can topdeck with watchtower to then draw with watchtower along with at least two other cards and play. If there are lots of action cards you want to play with watchtower and university on the board, going for both will be a good idea. You can open with potion and watchtower on a 3/4 opening even, and hope to topdeck a university on turn 3 or 4. If your potion and watchtower don't collide, it is a still a fine opening.
3. Squire: With squire and watchtower in the kingdom, attack cards are cheaper! To get any attack card you want, all you need is two coins and a watchtower in hand. Buy a squire, trash it, gain an attack card, topdeck the attack card. This attack card can even be scrying pool or familiar, two very powerful potion-cost cards. Don't get a potion there, get a watchtower or two! Squire also is useful with watchtower on-play, if there aren't any attack cards you want in the kingdom. Squire can give you two actions and a coin, all while decreasing handsize so your watchtower draws more cards. If you have enough actions, topdecking a silver or getting two extra buys can be nice. The extra buys can be used to topdeck more cards in your buy phase or to trash curses to lower the pile.
2. Rats: My favorite combo in dominion. A rats with a watchtower in hand reads: "+1 action, +2 cards, trash a card from your hand", which is usually better than a laboratory. Not only that, but Rats can gain more rats (if you don't have watchtower in hand or if you do, you can choose to topdeck the rats or let it go to the discard) for you to play with watchtower in hand later. Rats and watchtower can draw lots of cards non-terminally while trashing all of your bad cards. The only risk is that once you run out of cards to trash your rats become dead cards. Make sure you have either another way to trash rats or a way to gain lots more junk cards for rats to trash.
1. Goons: With watchtower in hand, you can use your extra buys to buy curses or coppers and trash them right away with watchtower, while still getting VPs for them. This can lead to getting a lot of VPs while not slowing down the engine at all. You can also topdeck any good cards you might buy that turn. When hit by a goons attack, you can use watchtower to draw back up to 6 cards in hand as well. In a kingdom with goons and watchtower in it, if goons is a good buy, you can bet that watchtower is a good buy (and goons is almost always a good buy).
These are the combos which can make getting watchtower useful all by themselves. If you see any of these cards with watchtower, strongly consider building a deck centered around that combo. Watchtower combos with many other cards too, but not quite as well. Other cards that make watchtower better include:
Cards that decrease handsize (on play, not attack cards), while also doing something else good: festival
fishing village
native village
inn
plaza
shanty town
forager
minion
mystic
warehouse
cellar
oasis
candlestick maker
outpost
island
moneylender
horse traders
vault
storeroom
remake
baron
salvager
forge
transmute
developThese are the sorts of card which would be useful to using watchtower as the main source of draw in an engine. To use watchtower as the main source of draw you will need a lot of villages for sure. You also will need a way to get treasures and victory cards either out of your deck or out of your hand, which the +1 action and terminals do. In all draw-to-X engines, it is super-important to get lots of villages. Even if you are not using Watchtower just for the draw, it is important to remember that if you are ever going to be playing the watchtower (and sometimes you may want to get the watchtower even if you don't plan on playing it), you need villages.
Cards which interact positively with the reaction (may also decrease handsize, still not including things watchtower counters):remodel
trade route (buy and trash estate/duchy)
mint
hoard (buy and trash estate/duchy)
cache
market square
death cart
feodum (3 silvers on the deck for 4 coins!)
fortress (get in hand mid-turn)
bandit camp
count (trash gained copper)
hunting grounds (pile estates without needing as many +buy)
doctor
masterpiece
merchant guild
workshop
wishing well (topdeck two cards mid-turn?)
ironworks
upgrade
smugglers
treasure map (help collide)
expand
trader
haggler
border village
farmland (if you don't want the farmland)
hermit
procession
catacombs ("exactly 5 coins, huh?")
graverobber (only for trashing action, not gaining from trash)
altar
butcher
talisman
These cards are mostly cards that, when combined with watchtower, let you gain and play a card mid-turn without needing to draw your whole deck. However it also includes cards which make you gain more cards in your buy phase, and cards with an overpay ability or on-trash ability. Usually you don't build decks around these combos, they are more cute tricks you can do with watchtower.
Cards countered by watchtower:embargo
ill-gotten gains
bureaucrat
militia
witch
swindler
torturer
ambassador
cutpurse
sea hag
ghost ship
mountebank
familiar
young witch
jester (when it gives you cards you don't want)
margrave
marauder
cultist
taxman
urchinThese are all either cards that junk you or make you discard cards. Watchtower stops them all dead in their tracks, sometimes even benefiting the attacked player.
Each card that combos with watchtower is in exactly one category (top 10, reducing handsize, reaction, counter). Many would fit in multiple (or even all), but I only put each in the one that made the most sense. It is hard to decide where exactly to draw the line at what makes the lists and what doesn't, hopefully I am not too inconsistent.
In General
Any time that watchtower shows up in one of your games, before you decide what to do look at each of the other 9 kingdom cards and consider how that card interacts with watchtower. Watchtower has three general interactions with cards.
- It can redraw up to 6 if your handsize has been decreased in some way, perhaps intentionally by yourself.
- It counters some of the most hated attacks, discard attacks and junking attacks. However in the case of junking, watchtower usually cannot provide complete coverage and you will need to get a trasher or the junker yourself as well.
- It can top deck and trash cards you gain on purpose, even mid-turn, to pull all sorts of fancy tricks with gainers, on-gain effects and on-trash effect. Of course, it can also set up your next turn during your buy phase, but usually this is not enough of a reason to get watchtower by itself.
One really important thing for a deck that is using watchtower for draw is villages, especially ones that don't draw a card or let you discard (fishing village, university, hamlet, plaza, festival, shanty town, native village, inn). In most draw engines you need just 1 village per draw card, on average. In a watchtower deck you will usually want to play other terminals before your watchtower(s) so that you can lower your handsize more first. Playing, for example, a workshop just before a watchtower is a very nice thing to do because you get to gain and play a 4-cost of your choice in one turn, but you need 3 actions to do it.
Draw-to-X engines in general also don't like stop cards, even more than some other engines. Copper (or even silver or gold) often is just taking up space in your hand that is preventing watchtower from drawing more. Cards that let you discard your stop cards that you can't get out of your hand normally (and there are a lot more of these than you might think) are quite nice in a draw-to-X engine. Of course, better still would be to simply trash them.
There are two other miscellaneous things regarding watchtower. When you have extra buys and no coins left with a watchtower in hand, consider buying and trashing curses or ruins. This can either make there fewer curses or ruins to be given out with a junker, or it can accelerate the end of the game. If this would be beneficial to you, do it! Even if it is highly unlikely to matter, for instance if there are 10 curses left and no curser, but you are the only one who bought a watchtower, still do it! If you end up winning by emptying the curse pile as the third pile, which you were only able to do because you lowered the pile previously, it will feel awesome.
Remember that you don't have to reveal watchtower! When you gain a card with watchtower in hand, you have 3 options not 2. You can put it in the trash, on top of your deck, or... you can let it go to the discard as normal. Most commonly you would do this when greening, but it can also sometimes apply to cards you don't want to draw until the end of your turn, like treasure cards in big engines.
A comparison to Moat
Watchtower is a very unique card. If there is a card it is most similar to though, that card has to be moat. Both, when played, draw two cards, unless handsize is altered. In terms of draw, Moat is better when you have a large handsize already, watchtower is better when you have a small handsize. Watchtower can topdeck or trash intentionally gained cards, moat cannot. That is the one big way in which they differ. In terms of reactions to attacks, they are quite similar. Moat simply stops all attacks. Watchtower stops attacks more indirectly. Against junking attacks, watchtower trashes the junk, instead of just not gaining it. This is often better than blocking the attack because now that pile is one card lower, which means one fewer piece of junk that will be given to you. With discard attacks, watchtower just draws however many cards were discarded right back up when played. This is better than moat in most cases, though it certainly varies. Pillage for example is much better against watchtower. Other discard attacks can be better when the watchtower player wasn't planning on playing the watchtower, or will have to play the watchtower without an action remaining. Watchtower can also defend against ill-gotten gains, which moat cannot. Watchtower also cannot protect against trashing attacks such as saboteur, knight, thief, noble brigand, or pirate ship. These are mostly weak attacks though, so watchtower is not much worse off for it. Attacks such as rabble, or other various spy-type attacks are not stopped by watchtower, and these can sometimes be quite severe, especially in the case of rabble. Overall, watchtower is almost always preferable over moat. The vast majority of times I would choose a moat instead would be when I am planning on regularly having large hands, and don't see a way to use the reaction to intentionally gained cards effectively. The relationship between watchtower and moat is similar to the relationship between warehouse and cellar. The price ratios are the same, and in each case the effects are similar. Warehouse is almost always better than cellar, except for in very large handsizes.
By my count at the time of this writing, 88/206 cards kingdom cards combo with watchtower. The chance that none of them show up with watchtower in the kingdom... is less than 1%. There is a 36.1% chance one of the top 10 show up.
Please leave any and all questions, comment, and suggestions.
