Lately I've seen a number of posts about engines that were successfully constructed on boards where I would never have thought an engine could succeed. (Examples:
Geronimoo's DS post on an engine in the First Game setup and
Fabian's sample game analysis) What I'd like to do is revisit, at a higher level, what engine builders look for when determining if an engine is viable.
Obviously, there are the components of an engine:
- +Actions (including obvious sources like Villages and odd sources like Throne Room/cantrip or Golem/cantrip/cantrip)
- +Cards (although not all are created equal; Embassy is definitely a BM drawer because it filters and only gives net +2 cards)
- +Buy
There are also engine enablers:
- Attacks
- Trashing
- Cards that smooth out your shuffle luck (e.g., Scheme, durations)
- TR/KC
- (Potentially) alt-VP that can extend the game length (as long as there's no rush strategy and your engine can sustain Garden/Duke dancing)
- Gains (Ironworks, Mint, and Possession are all different examples from this class)
So, for the advanced engine builders: are there other elements that you look for when deciding to build an engine? When can a really strong board in one area overcome a deficiency in another area?
Some of the answers to the above question, collected from the posts below:
- Whether the engine needs to get to double Province/Colony or whether it can get to single Province faster than a BM deck.
- Whether the engine builds itself faster as it gets going. An accelerating engine building phase results in a more explosive engine; conversely, an engine that just adds a Conspirator each turn is going to need to slow down the BM player much more.
- Whether the engine allows you to control the endgame. An engine with tons of +Buy, cost reduction, or megaturns (like Horn of Plenty) makes it feasible for the engine player to dictate when the game ends.
- Whether there are cards that do more than one function. Develop on a good board serves as both trashing and gaining; it's not great at either, but the combo function compensates if you can take advantage of it (as Marin does here).
- Whether the attacks are engine-friendly. Engines can handle hand-size reduction much better than BM; sans trashing/filtering, cursing is more devastating for engines than BM.
NB: Some engines work as simple stacks: Minion and Hunting Party-terminal Silver are the canonical examples of this genre. Because that engine is built around a single card, you often don't need to evaluate the engine components in the same way as you would in a fit-all-the-parts-together engine type. For instance, Hunting Party gives you +Actions and +Cards, as well as virtual trashing (by skipping repeated cards), but adding a +Buy is generally not worth it unless the +Buy is your terminal Silver (Woodcutter, Nomad Camp) or the +Buy is a cantrip (like Market), lest you break the HP chain.
