I was completely lost this game.
I remember opening silver-silver-KC, and being super embarrassed about it
. I was thinking that the key was to get to 3+ KC ASAP and start sabotaging , and then when I got 7 on the first shuffle, I wasn't sure if I could turn it down. I knew it would be bad for one more shuffle, but hoped that after that I'd have enough actions to make it reasonable, and I knew that eventually the key would be to get many as quickly as possible. If I had to make the same choice again (after a silver-silver opening), I'd pick up haggler. What do you guys think about haggler vs. kc vs. counterfeit here? Obviously I prefer to get 2 5s on the first shuffle, but with 7/3 I'm not sure what to do.
Silver/Moat is almost certainly better than silver/silver. I probably just completely didn't consider it. I don't think that workshop is good though: I think getting to the 5s is really the priority.
I don't know if you need festival for the engine most of the time, but this game I needed both +buys and money for buying multiple provinces in order to catch up. Festival was the only way to have a chance there.