Venture is a card most often associated with powerful money-based decks. In such decks, it's guaranteed to be at least a Silver, and if you have a high enough concentration of Silver/Gold/Platinum, it may often be a better purchase than Gold.
However, Venture has another unique trait: in a deck without any other treasures at all, Ventures cascade off one another. In a deck with 8 Ventures and no other treasures, all that is needed to guarantee a Province is a single Venture in hand.
But such a deck is going to take a little while to develop. How can we slow down our opponents, without slowing down our own deck development? Enter Embargo.
Many, if not most, strategies rely on Gold in one way or another. However, our Venture Cascade can do perfectly well without any Golds at all. So, we buy Embargoes to embargo the Golds. We can double- or triple-embargo the Gold so that our opponents' money-based decks cannot pan out as planned.
But now, what is the fastest way to trash all of our starting coppers? If we're not buying any silvers, traditional trashers (Chapel, Remake, etc.) will destroy our economy before we can invest in Ventures. Enter Spice Merchant.
Spice Merchant is a quick, non-terminal way to get rid of our coppers. But it needs some +Coin in order for us to hit that crucial $5. Guess what? We already have Embargo to do that for us! Spice a Copper, draw an Embargo, embargo the Gold, buy a Venture.
Okay, great! We have a cool combo that even has some nice thematic flavor. But does it actually work?
To the SimulatorsFirst, I want to preface this by saying that I searched Council Room, and I could not find a game in which this strategy was played in pure.* I also have never to my knowledge played a game in which this combo was available. So, my stats will be coming from the simulators.
For reference, here is an XML of the Embargoed Spice Venture compatible with Geronimoo's Dominion Simulator:
http://pastebin.com/BJK9BU0cFirst test: The Embargoed Spice Venture obliterates BMU, with a win rate of 94.2%. Check.
Second test: BMU was modified to also buy Ventures. Embargoed Spice Venture still wins, this time with 83.3%. Check.
Third test: BMU was modified to also buy an Embargo in order to embargo the Ventures. While the margin is closer, Embargoed Spice Venture wins with 62.9%.
I have also run dozens of additional tests, and here is the general trend. Embargoed Spice Venture obliterates any discard-based attack engine, like Fishing Village/Ghost Ship. In most money-based strategies that ignore it, Embargoed Spice Venture wins. However, it loses by about 10% to DoubleJack. The big thing that makes other strategies hold up against Embargoed Spice Venture is when they buy an early Embargo themselves and embargo the Ventures: this approximately doubles the opponent's win rate. Nevertheless, in a real game, it is likely that the opponent would not catch onto the whole Venture thing until it's too late to for the opponent to embargo the Ventures for any good.
* My search did turn up a few close matches (kudos to the players who performed the combo): Link (no Embargo used) | Link (no Embargo used) | Link (no Embargo used; player with least treasure at end of game wins) | Link (included for completeness; both players embargo the Golds)Additional Commentary:Spice Merchant's closest relative is Moneylender. Could Moneylender replace Spice Merchant in this combo? Well, the answer is that Moneylender is indeed a substitute, although it performs about 10% worse in the simulators. The reason is probably two-fold: first, Moneylender risks a terminal collision with Embargo (or your alternative terminal silver), and second, Spice Merchant cycles your deck faster, allowing you to play it more often.
Additionally, if Embargo is not available, this strategy still works, although not nearly as well, with a decent $2 or $3 terminal silver. For example, with Fortune Teller or Swindler, the win rate against BMU falls to about 55%. With only Woodcutter, we lose to BMU, which is never a good thing. It seems that Steward would be a decent choice as it helps in both early game and in late game, but I can't get any stats on it because the simulator plays Steward suboptimally for this particular strategy (it trashes when it should be giving +$2).
In Colony games, Embargoed Spice Venture still obliterates BMU, though it needs a single Platinum in order to hit $11 fast enough against other strategies. Depending on the kingdom, the simulators seem to indicate that Embargoed Spice Venture does best in Province games.
Disclaimer: I came up with this card combo because I was looking for a quick way to achieve a Venture cascade. It is very possible that there is still a faster way to get to a pure Venture deck. This is my first article on Dominion Strategy, so I hope it is appropriate to write about a manufactured card combo that hasn't really been used before.
