| “ | Gold is power. Anyone who disagrees possesses neither. | ” |
Bounty serves as the win condition for most gold ramp decks. Vintner can turn gold into food at a 2-for-1 ratio, but this is ally-dependent and inefficient. Bounty has a moderate intro cost, and then turns all of your gold into attacks on play thereafter, which tends to be less expensive and less vulnerable to steal-on-spend effects like Cutpurse or Midden.
It works best supported by a robust gold engine, using cards like Banker, Usury, Tithe, or Patron, which are cards in themselves that require a strong defense, as they don't offer any board control. Bring strong defensive cards from War like Soldier or Rampart to cover your more vulnerable allies while they give you the gold you need to fuel Bounty. Synod also aids the explosive ramp process; the more cards and allies you can buy, the faster the ramp and the harder Bounty hits once it takes off.
However, because it spends all your gold, Bounty struggles very hard early game as it can wipe out your progress towards buying a key card; drawing Bounty when you just need that last coin is a heartbreaker, so make sure to purchase it once your combo components are already in place. It's also worth noting that using it after playing Loan, or being targeted by Usury, is likely to catapult the player into negative gold and hold them there, which is counterproductive unless you kill the enemy player that turn. Pick your moment wisely.
Sybilline Scrolls gets a special mention here: not only does it make it easier to draw Bounty when you need it, it also allows you to skip it, should you need to conserve your gold hoard for the moment, or if enemy retaliation would be overly problematic.
Trivia[]
• Theodox is featured on the bounty sign inside of the picture.