Individual analyses of Hinterlands cards are linked below and also collected here.
| Crossroads | Action | $2 | Reveal your hand. +1 Card per Victory card revealed. If this is the first time you played a Crossroads this turn, +3 Actions. |
| Duchess | Action | $2 | +$2 Each player (including you) looks at the top card of their deck and may discard it. ———- If Duchess is in the Supply, you may gain one when you gain a Duchy. |
| Fool’s Gold | Treasure – Reaction | $2 | Worth $1 if it’s the first time you played a Fool’s Gold this turn, otherwise worth $4. ———- When another player gains a Province, you may trash this from your hand, to gain a Gold onto your deck. |
| Develop | Action | $3 | Trash a card from your hand. Gain two cards onto your deck, with one costing exactly $1 more than it, and one costing exactly $1 less than it, in either order. |
| Oasis | Action | $3 | +1 Card +1 Action +$1 Discard a card. |
| Oracle | Action – Attack | $3 | Each player (including you) reveals the top 2 cards of their deck, and discards them or puts them back, your choice. They choose the order to return them. Afterwards, you draw 2 cards. |
| Scheme | Action | $3 | +1 Card +1 Action This turn, you may put one of your Action cards onto your deck when you discard it from play. |
| Tunnel | Victory – Reaction | $3 | 2 Victory Points ———- When you discard this other than during Clean-up, you may reveal it to gain a Gold. |
| Jack of All Trades | Action | $4 | Gain a Silver. Look at the top card of your deck; you may discard it. Draw until you have 5 cards in hand. You may trash a non-Treasure card from your hand. |
| Noble Brigand | Action – Attack | $4 | +$1 When you buy or play this, each other player reveals the top 2 cards of their deck, trashes a revealed Silver or Gold you choose, discards the rest, and gains a Copper if they didn’t reveal a Treasure. You gain the trashed cards. |
| Nomad Camp |
Action | $4 | +1 Buy +$2 ———- This is gained onto your deck (instead of to your discard pile). |
| Silk Road | Victory | $4 | Worth 1 Victory Point per 4 Victory cards you have (round down). |
| Spice Merchant | Action | $4 | You may trash a Treasure from your hand. If you do, choose one: +2 Cards and +1 Action; or +1 Buy and $2. |
| Trader | Action – Reaction | $4 | Trash a card from your hand. Gain a Silver per $1 it costs. ———- When you would gain a card, you may reveal this from your hand, to instead gain a Silver. |
| Cache | Treasure | $5 | Worth $3 — When you gain this, gain 2 Coppers. |
| Cartographer | Action | $5 | +1 Card +1 Action Look at the top 4 cards of your deck. Discard any number of them, then put the rest back in any order. |
| Embassy | Action | $5 | +5 Cards Discard 3 cards. —— When you gain this, each other player gains a Silver. |
| Haggler | Action | $5 | +$2 ———- While this is in play, when you buy a card, gain a cheaper non-Victory card. |
| Highway | Action | $5 | +1 Card +1 Action ——– While this is in play, cards cost $1 less, but not less than $0. |
| Ill-Gotten Gains | Treasure | $5 | Worth $1 When you play this, you may gain a Copper to your hand. ——— When you gain this, each other player gains a Curse. |
| Inn | Action | $5 | +2 Cards; +2 Actions Discard 2 cards. ———- When you gain this, look through your discard pile, reveal any number of Action cards from it (which can include this), and shuffle them into your deck. |
| Mandarin | Action | $5 | +$3 Put a card from your hand on top of your deck. — When you gain this, put all Treasures you have in play onto your deck in any order. |
| Margrave | Action – Attack | $5 | +3 Cards +1 Buy Each other player draws a card, then discards down to 3 cards in hand. |
| Stables | Action | $5 | You may discard a Treasure, for +3 Cards and +1 Action. |
| Border Village | Action | $6 | +1 Card +2 Actions ———- When you gain this, gain a cheaper card. |
| Farmland | Victory | $6 | 2 VP ———- When you buy this, trash a card from your hand and gain a card costing exactly $2 more than it. /td> |
Dominion Strategy 
Does anyone have any good strategies for the hinterlands only arrangments such as gambits. Introduction and such.
By the way, the link for border village is broken: it should be https://dominionstrategy.com/2011/10/30/hinterlands-border-village/ not https://dominionstrategy.com/2011/10/31/hinterlands-border-village/
Thanks, fixed.
Please make an article on the spice merchant. Wich should I ask for for christmas Dark ages or intrigue?
It really depends what you already have. I wouldn’t recommend DA as anyone’s first or second expansion; it is too complicated and also has so many Kingdom cards that it’ll dominate all your games if you pick cards randomly. DA is a fantastic expansion though.
The quick and dirty lowdown on Spice Merchant is this. The +2 Cards +1 Action option is the one you use 95% of the time. This brings you back up to a 5-card hand while trashing a Copper. Economically then, buying a Spice Merchant is almost the same as skipping your buy: you’re going to wind up with a standard-issue 5-card hand drawn from the rest of your deck, which is pretty close to the hand you’d have wound up playing if you just didn’t have the Spice Merchant. (Contrast it with Moneylender, which has the economic power of Silver.)
So you don’t buy Spice Merchant unless your deck really wants to be rid of Copper and you’re willing to make a sacrifice to do that. In particular you usually don’t want it in money decks. It’s similar to cards like Loan and Lookout that way: situational. But it’s really good in the right situation. Its cycling power means that it trashes considerably faster than Moneylender, and because it gives you back your 5-card hand and your Action, it generally doesn’t interfere with whatever else you’re trying to do. One Spice Merchant is usually enough unless you are gaining tons of Copper for some reason.
Don’t fall into the trap where you say things like Spice Merchant/Cache or Spice Merchant/Beggar are automatically fantastic synergy. The copper from Cache is still doing just as much damage to your deck as before, because if you drop the Cache and keep the Spice Merchant, you would have less Copper.
In some decks once your Copper is basically gone, you might want to buy a little Copper just so you’ll have something to trash and the Spice Merchant won’t be a dead card. That can be okay sometimes. (hey, Cache turned out to be good after all!). Funny how you buy Spice Merchant to get Copper out of your way, and then you buy Copper to get your Spice Merchant out of the way, but it works. Obviously another solution is to trash it with a TfB card like Bishop or Remodel once it’s outlived its usefulness. But do not build a deck that desperately needs +Buy, and use Spice Merchant as your only source of +Buy, unless you have extra Copper to trash. It sounds basic but remember, you have to have a Treasure for every Spice Merchant you play; so if every Spice Merchant gets you one extra buy, that’s just enough to get you Copper for the next turn.
The other weird thing you can do is trash more valuable Treasures like Silver or Potion or Quarry. This is rare but sometimes your deck has evolved beyond the need for petty Silver, it just wants to chain Highways all day long or whatever. If you know the Silver is bad for your deck, knock yourself out. Occasionally you also say “hey if I don’t buy a Province this turn I’m going to lose for sure, and my hand is silver silver silver SM province, so I better SM this Silver and hope for the best.” In general though, 2 cards in exchange for Silver is pretty weak, so you should be reluctant. (Apprentice would have given you 3 cards for a Silver, and even still, Silver is one of the least exciting Apprentice targets you can name).
Other than that it’s a pretty straightforward card because, like I said, playing SM has minimal effect on the rest of your turn. It doesn’t really have a lot of interactions except the interactions that all other Copper trashers share (engines love it, Coppersmith hates it, etc.). It is not too happy about discard attacks; it would rather have big hands to help it track down the last remaining Coppers. Cursers (other than Mountebank) can make it harder to find Copper to trash; and also sometimes you just don’t want to trash Copper against a Curser. Spice Merchant does provide good cycling though, which means you can play your own Attacks more often, as well as other cards that like to be played often (Monument).
Strategy ive been using is getting “traders” with my first few $4 draws, then whenever I buy a “border village” with a trader in hand, I pick up a “cache,” and instead of getting 2 coppers I pick up 2 silvers. Quick way to pick up 4 solid cards in one hand, and if you can get a couple of these chains early you’ll be set.
Border Village isn’t really necessary here.
Of course, there’s typically no reason NOT to pick a BV up along with whatever $5 card you wanted, which in this case is Cache. But really the best thing that can be said for it here is that it’s a $6 card that you practically get for free, and don’t need. This typically makes it a great target for your Traders, as well as for Bishop/Apprentice/Remodel and the other usual candidates, although here I suppose you’ll usually just play the BV and save your Trader for buying a Cache.
Anybody have any advice on what expansion I should ask for for my Birthday, namely Hinterlands or Dark Ages?
(I have the Base Set, Intrigue, Seaside, and Prosperity)