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I just bought the "Dominion Empires" expansion (German edition) and have a question about the debt mechanics.

According to the rules, when I buy a card with a certain debt value, I need to take the corresponding number of debt markers. The rules then state, that I can repay my debts at any time, including "right away".

How do I repay my debts "right away" after taking the debt markers? Since I had to take the debt markers as part of my buying phase, I can no longer play cards from my hand.

So as far as I understand the repayment of debts "right away" would need to be done with money cards I already played but which I did not use to buy something (so to say the "change left over" from my buy).

Is that assumption correct?

Urs Beeli
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2 Answers2

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It is a common mistake to think of treasure as cards you play in order to buy something. Instead, it is important to remember that playing a Treasure card is almost just like playing an Action card that produces coin when played (such as Market or Legionary). Playing a Silver simply adds $2 to your pool of coins you can spend this turn, just like playing a Market adds $1.

So at the start of your buy phase, you will play all the Treasure cards you want to play this turn (which more often than not is just all of the Treasure cards in your hand). Then you will buy the card or cards that you want, and if you have leftover coin after doing so, you can use it to pay off debt.

This has the practical effect of being able to spend $4 to buy an Engineer just as if it cost $4 instead of 4 debt; but the actual steps you are taking is to first buy Engineer for $0, taking 4 debt, and then spending $4 to pay off that 4 debt.

GendoIkari
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You are correct, let say you want to buy Engineer (cost 4 debt) but only have a gold in your hand. At the beginning of your buy phase you would play your gold for 3 coins and then buy Engineer taking on 4 debt at this point you could pay off 3 of that debt leaving you with 1 debt to pay next round.

Styxsksu
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