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1. Mine useless here? Really?? I can see why you'd avoid it when there's stronger trashing, but this board only has Mine and Expand - meaning there's no way to get those ten starter cards out for good. Between the two I always go with Mine, since it gives immediate benefit and is killer when paired with KC or KC/Bridge. Plus, since as I said there's no way to get rid of the starting ten, I'd rather be able to get some good use out of those coppers than leave them lying around.
One of the organizing concepts of Dominion strategy is
payload. Payload is the thing that gets you points. In a typical smithy/money deck, treasure is the payload, and smithy helps you get your payload cards in hand. The reason this concept is so useful is that it helps you pick which cards you want in your deck. Here, your payload is KC/bridge. Your only goal should be to put KC and bridge together. Mine doesn't really help you with that.
Your 10 starting cards are junk, and anything you can do to get rid of them is great, and Mine is kinda-sorta doing that, but why are you getting rid of them? What's your goal? Here, your goal should be to connect KC and Bridge, and for that purpose, platinum is hardly better than copper. Mine doesn't thin, it improves treasures, but you don't care about treasure, so Mine is irrelevant.
So you have to keep the payload in mind when you're evaluating what cards you want in your deck. Here's how I'd evaluate this board.
Adam's rubrick is pretty good. Look for attacks. no attacks. Trashing? no trashing (Mine doesn't count!). Village? Yes, you've got FV and KC (which counts as a village). Draw? yes, smithy. Buys and gains? Bridge and IW. So there's definitely an engine here.
Given plenty of buys and gains, plenty of +actions, plenty of draw, there's enough for an engine, although it might not be fast enough to beat money without a good payload. Well, colonies kind of rule out BM as an option, but still, there's the question of payload.
Platinum is good, and Mine helps you get there. But, hoo boy, KC-Bridge. If you can put KC/KC/Br/Br/Br together, you're pretty much assured of winning, and probably you can end the game with a win on the turn where you make that connection (
end-game control is another organizing concept). KC/Mine into platinum can be strong, but KC-Bridge just blows it out of the water.
So you know where you want your deck to go (connecting KC and bridge). Now you want to see how best to get there. Putting key cards together means thinning and/or drawing so that you're holding most of your deck together all at once. There's no thinning here (Mine is not a trasher!), so getting your draw up is really important. But drawing isn't the only thing you need. I mean, you need KC, and that's expensive, so you need some source of economy. However, Smithy puts copper in your hand, and FV by itself produces nearly as much coin as silver, so you shouldn't have too much trouble getting to $7.
So, you want to get your draw up, what gets you there the fastest? To obtain multiple cheap components, typically you want money and buys. If you play one bridge and buy two cards, the bridge is effectively a terminal gold with a buy. Ironworks, however, is effectively non-terminal $4 with a buy, so that's way better, although multiple bridge plays change that calculus considerably. You might even want two IW.
So the basic progression is IW/FV opener, aiming for Smithies and a few FV, then KC's and bridges (probably don't get bridges until after you've got a KC).
Let's consider Mine how mine would fit in. Your payload is KC-bridge, and Mine does improve your economy, which helps you get your components. But IW gets you those components directly. I talked above about how Mine's effect is cumulative, but, yno, it's a deck builder, so all gainers are cumulative. The smithies and stuff you gain from IW will have a much more dramatic cumulative effect than the slow increase in treasure value Mine provides.
Mine improves your treasures, but that never helps you. Your early economy and late economy will never rely on treasure, so Mine is right out.
To get you thinking about payload, here are some other examples: in the "First Game" engine (
http://dominionstrategy.com/2012/07/30/building-the-first-game-engine/ ), treasure is the payload with remodel providing a supplemental payload (remodeling gold). You can also build a deck around Horn of Plenty as a payload (aiming for one explosive turn where you draw all/most of your deck, play many horns, gaining provinces). Bishop is a non-standard payload because you gain points by means other than gaining victory cards. Usually, your payload will also help you build your deck up before greening, with Bishop being an exception.
2. This might be the fear of dead draw talking, but I don't see the point of loading up on Smithies before other things, especially FVs. I might consider it if there were stronger trashing on the board, but once again, no opportunity to ditch the starting ten.
FV is just amazing in helping your terminal draw. You really don't need that many in order to get your draw up and running early, and later, KC provides +action. The FV split can be important in many games, especially terminal draw engines with poor trashing, but when there are multiple sources of +action, the village split becomes less important, and you should start to think of KC as a source of +action.
One of the observations about throne room is that it hides a +action in there. It serves not only as a copy of the doubled card, but it provides the action to play the copy. I mean, TR+smithy is a lot like village+smithy+smithy. By the same token KC effectively provides +2 actions.
So you need villages early, before you've got KC's, but if you have one FV held over from last turn, KC+Smithy in your starting hand pretty much guarantees you won't run out of actions.
Smithy is super important to this deck, way more than the FV because KC provides the functionality of +action later on.
