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« on: March 20, 2018, 12:58:24 am »
Variant 2:
Non-Reaction card: Island
Kingdom:
Shelters: Yes. Colonies: Yes. Events: Donate, Alms. Kingdom Cards: Secret Chamber, Watchtower, Caravan Guard, Market Square, Villa, Cultist, Island, Faithful Hound
The setup is nigh identical. Using Alms to gain these cards, Donate to trash the non-reactions, and the gained Guards to pay back Debt,we grow to a deck of 10xCaravan Guard, 9xMarket Square(we don't need 10 buys, but why not?), Watchtower, Secret Chamber, Hovel. Note that this means that after playing all of our cantrips, we will always have only Watchtower, Secret Chamber, and Hovel in our hand. (Now secretly we could have bought the first 7 Colony/(Alms for) Island pairs had we not gained Watchtower, but why not gain them all the fancy way?). Note too that we are specifically playing all of our Caravan Guards in one turn, leading to a current monetary total alternating between $0 and $10. We still don't have quite enough money for what we need yet (a way to gain and then set aside the final colony within a singular turn), as such, we turn to our favorite blue dog to walk, Faithful Hound, and boy is are they going to need some walking. For our next 9 gains (whether they be using our dollars or our ever present friend, Alms), we're going to buy a Faithful Hound in our buy phase, and then in our next action phase (post-cantrips, when we have a hand of Watchtower, Secret Chamber, Hovel, and Hounds) use Secret Chamber to discard all of our Faithful Hounds, slowly adding them to all successive starting hands. Now with a guaranteed $20 (every other turn) and as many buys as we could desire, we're ready to begin gaining colonies. The final turn cycle, which we repeat 8 times, is as follows:
Setup turn:
Hand Consisting of 9xFaithful Hound, and at least two cantrips, with no more than 3 non-cantrips in deck
Use Market Square and Caravan Guard until no more remain in hand, leaving a hand of:
9xFaithful Hound, Watchtower, Secret Chamber, Hovel
Secret Chamber the Hounds, setting all of them aside
Cleanup, Draw 5 cards, then put 9xFaithful Hound in your hand
Colony Turn:
All 10 Caravan Guard give you $1 ($10 so far)
Play Market Square until no more remain in hand, leaving a hand of:
9xFaithful Hand, Watchtower, Secret Chamber, Hovel
Secret Chamber the Hounds and the Hovel, setting aside the Hounds ($20 total)
Buy Colony, topdecking it ($9 remaining)
Alms Island, topdecking it ($9 remaining)
Buy Cultist, trashing it , drawing Colony and Island ($4 remaining)
Buy Villa, trashing it, giving us +1 Action and returning us to the Action phase ($0 remaining)
Island away the Colony
Cleanup, return 9xFaithful Hounds to hand
Fun notes about this solution:
We could optimize this heavily by not gaining the Watchtower as early as we did, as previously mentioned, allowing us to both Island away the first 7 Colonies faster as well as safely buy multiple Faithful Hounds per turn
Additionally, we can avoid a few Faithful Hound gains by using spare Market Squares instead of Cultist to draw Island + Colony on the Colony turn. Note that with a deck of 3 stop cards and Market Squares, we will always be able to have an empty deck with two cantrips in hand