The Bite-Sized series of articles is meant to take the most powerful cards in Dominion and give a short explanation of what makes them powerful.
Recruiter is a very powerful thinner and a very powerful village. It lets you trash a targeted card from a fairly wide range – one more than the number of cards in your hand when you played it. In most cases, it’s effectively nonterminal, as the villagers usually more than pay for the action cost of the Recruiter itself. It does not actually increase your handsize, since you have to trash a card, but being handsize-neutral is already better than almost all other trashers. If you’re willing to feed it a bit you can use it as a village extraordinaire, sometimes even powering all the remaining terminals in your deck. It’s almost always worth getting one on an early $5 hand, and often it’s worth getting a second. Do note, though, that there are diminishing returns, as can be the case with many trashers.