First post on these forums... so hi! Feel free to move or something if I post this incorrectly/it's already been posted somewhere.
Many of the problems surrounding Saboteur relate to it's high variance-- if you hit a province 3x in a row, great. If you hit 3 silvers, you might just be trashing a card that's not even that helpful to your opponent outside of the opening. Highway eliminates that risk entirely if you have decent enough trashing: play one before Saboteur, and you're guaranteed to miss his lowly cantrips and silvers. Play 2 or more, and you've assured yourself of hitting cards that are most likely vital to their engine or important to their BM deck (gold/plat). 4 highways than a saboteur is a guaranteed province-hit in province games, though this may be too difficult to set up for it to be worth it. If you can execute this on a reasonable ratio of the turns (as is done in the below game), your opponent most likely will be unable to catch up quickly enough.
If you play
way too many, you're going to hit nothing (6 highways and province- is @ 2). But if you're doing that consistently anyways, you've most likely won in the next turn or two regardless.
This also works to a lesser extent with bridge, but highway is far easier to set up due to its cantrip abilities.
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120121-172826-f42da6d6.htmlI lost this game by a considerable margin, partially because of poor play, partially because he drew torturer, KC, apprentice, fishing village, lab, saboteur, and highway (which was ironically vetoed by him at the start of the game).
I spent much of the game raging against his BM luck (which was justified) and his Saboteur luck (which obviously wasn't). It wasn't until near the end that I realized that the lack of desirable 4-costs and his order of HWY-Saboteur was guaranteed to take out a bazaar/council room every turn.
