Set: Prosperity
$3 Action: +1 Buy; +$1 per token on the Trade Route mat. Trash a card from your hand. Setup: Put a token on each Victory card Supply pile. When a card is gained from that pile, move the token to the Trade Route mat.
Analysis: http://dominionstrategy.com/2010/11/16/prosperity-trade-route/
Trade Route is one of those cards that tends to disappoint me. Those are three nice effects, but the problem is that they're rarely useful at the same time. Early in the game, the trashing is nice, but the +Buy is virtually useless and you may or may not get any money at all. Mid-game, you might get more money, but you still probably don't need +Buy and the trashing is likely to be more hurtful than helpful. End-game, the monetary aspect is finally pretty helpful, but if you've been trashing faithfully throughout the game, more trashing is almost certainly going to hurt you as your deck greens up. Rather than being a card that is useful in different ways throughout the game, it tends to wind up as a card that isn't that good at any point.
Most of the synergy type things are covered in the DS article. It DOES sync particularly well with some of the things mentioned, but otherwise it struggles. Unless given a particular reason to, (Goons, Gardens, Barons, and so forth) people rarely buy Estates, and Duchies similarly usually make it to endgame before they may or may not start selling. It's probably supposed to rock face in the endgame, but there's no guarantee it'll ever be much more than +$1 unless there's something interesting on the board. Early, cheap trashing is always nice, but in the early game it's hard to justify a terminal action that trashes only one card for +Buy and mayyyyybe a buck or two.
It can be pretty nice if there's good synergy with the board, but otherwise it struggles to find a niche and a use. It can be a tempting $3 buy, but oftentimes you're better off just going with Silver.
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~Tommeri Uranius Bombaldi the Fourth, esq.
(aka not Krakenprophet)