Functionally, therefore, the +Buy is useful primarily while you still have junk to trash in order to use it to gain multiple Victory cards later in the game, youвЂ™re likely to need other gainers to provide fodder for it to trash, which severely limits its power. Although +Buy is often a very powerful effect for building that can be enough to make an otherwise weak card worth gaining, Trade Route is not a source of net gains due to the mandatory trashing effect. On top of its thinning problems, Trade Route is also a weak option for terminal payload. Trade Route can sometimes be useful as a supplementary thinner (e.g., alongside a more restricted but powerful thinner such as Counterfeit ), but itвЂ™s usually inefficient to spend resources to gain and play it to thin one or two Estates. However, Trade Route is weak enough that itвЂ™s usually not worth trashing in this manner for example, you may be better off investing in very strong draw as a more effective way to achieve deck control. Trade Route is undesirable as a primary method of thinning, although it can occasionally be worthwhile if the payoff for getting rid of junk is very high (e.g., thereвЂ™s an extremely strong draw-to-X engine available). As a terminal stop card that trashes only one card at a time and usually generates very little (if any), Trade Route is very slow to improve your deck, and the best case scenarios for each of its abilities are somewhat at odds with one another, making for a generally low-value card. Trade Route offers an additional Buy alongside both weak thinning in the early game and a weak payload effect later. So if you trash a Hunting Grounds and gain the first Duchy, that will increase the + you get from this. If you gain a Victory card from the trash, you still move a Coin token from its Supply pile to the mat.The Trade Route token on a pile will not move if the top card of a pile is removed without gaining it, such as when you trash it with Salt the Earth, or exile it with Way of the Worm or Enclave.However Castles are a Victory Card pile.Certain Victory cards come from split piles that are not themselves Victory card piles, such as Dame Josephine and Territory gaining them does not add a token to the Trade Route mat.If you are using the promotional card Black Market, and Trade Route is in the Black Market deck, you do the setup for Trade Route.

So if no Victory cards have been gained this game, the mat has no tokens and Trade Route makes + if four Provinces and one Estate have been gained, the mat has two tokens and Trade Route makes +.Whenever any player gains the first card from a Victory card pile - whether by buying it or otherwise gaining it - the Coin token is moved to the mat.In the rare cases where there are more than 8 Victory piles, the tokens are not counter-limited use a replacement.This card has setup at the start of games using it, you put a Coin token on each Victory card pile being used (including Kingdom card piles such as Gardens, and Colonies if used).Then you get + per Coin token on the Trade Route mat.You get +1 Buy, and trash a card from your hand if you can.4.3 Donald X.'s thoughts on Trade Route being weak.

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