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[amalloy]

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Herbalist, Fishing Village, Philosopher's Stone, Coppersmith, Nomad Camp, Rats, Trader, Merchant Ship, Possession, King's Court
On this board I wasn't sure if KC would be much good: with no draw at all, I thought it would be rare to connect it with important actions, and so spending the time to build up to $7 might not be worth it. Also, I'm a sucker for Rats (who isn't?), and when I saw what looked like a novel combo for them, I had to go for it: Rats/Trader/Philosopher's Stone just sounded like such fun.

My opponent built up to King's Court and beat me, using Merchant Ship and Nomad Camp as his payload actions; he had enough of them all that he seemed to connect very often. Was my combo no good, or did I just mess it up? After playing through the game once, I now think opening Trader was a big mistake: I had far too few Rats to hit with my Traders; maybe if I had ordered things differently I would have outpaced the King's Court plan.

[DG]

Without any drawing power you were never going to match your traders up to the rats, especially if you're trying to make an ever expanding deck. The philosopher's stones were always going to arrive in your deck too late to be competitive. If you're putting a sizable amount of silver into the deck with traders then just use that silver to buy provinces.

Herbalist and philosopher's stone is a known two card combo that would be competitive here against merchant ships, so you can search back through the forums for that if you're interested.

[KingZog3]

Herbalist and philosopher's stone is a known two card combo that would be competitive here against merchant ships, so you can search back through the forums for that if you're interested.

Herbalist+PStone is not even that strong. I think that because of Duration cards, KC is a good option here. I didn't look at the log, maybe your opponent hit KC with a card very often, but Fishing Village, KC and Merchant Ship seems to be pretty good. Maybe a Trader to get rid of some coppers, but not even.

[Warfreak2]

If you want to fill your deck with Rats, you have to open Rats. They grow exponentially in your deck, starting one shuffle earlier means twice as many Rats.

If you want to play sensibly with Rats, you should probably still open Rats, but stop playing them when 1/5 of your deck is already Rats.

[Davio]

Well, if you neither play the Rats in your hand nor trash them, they're just Curses, so maybe another plan is better in those cases.

Would building up to Possession pay off here? Maybe as you could potentially use some of your opponent's KC turns, either a regular or a post-KC-duration turn.

Opening Trader/Silver for some economy and transitioning into KC's, FV's and Possessions might pay off, but it's all just so slow with zero draw and only Trader for trashing.

So it might end up as a regular Trader/money game with some additional Merchant Ships and Fishing Villages as you can easily get and play them.

[WanderingWinder]

Herbalist-PStone IS pretty strong. Of course, so is Fishing Village/Merchant Ship (totally ignore gold, I don't think trader is any good either), probably not preferring KC to Province ever. Herbalist/PStone also potentially has access to possession here. I'd guess it's got to be one of these two strategies, though.

Rats/Trader seems like a really bad plan - it mostly just seems very slow, as it's turns to get the rats, then turns to turn them into silvers, and then you get the silvers and can buy stuff. I actually suspect straight BM is better.

[Mic Qsenoch]

I agree that Rats/Trader looks bad, but the synergy isn't just to trash the Rats with your Trader so much, it's to gain Silvers instead of Rats while still being able to trash Coppers/Estates. So instead of swapping Copper for Rats, you swap Copper for Silver.

[KingZog3]

I agree that Rats/Trader looks bad, but the synergy isn't to trash the Rats with your Trader so much, it's to gain Silvers instead of Rats while still being able to trash Coppers/Estates. So instead of swapping Copper for Rats, you swap Copper for Silver.

But that's worse than Mine, and takes Rats and Trader to be in the same hand.

[Mic Qsenoch]

I agree that Rats/Trader looks bad, but the synergy isn't to trash the Rats with your Trader so much, it's to gain Silvers instead of Rats while still being able to trash Coppers/Estates. So instead of swapping Copper for Rats, you swap Copper for Silver.

But that's worse than Mine, and takes Rats and Trader to be in the same hand.

You can go Estate -> Silver also, not to mention it does not take a terminal action, so it's not worse than Mine. It is not great though, I agree.

[AndrewisFTTW]

Rats/Trader sounds to me like slowly building a deck of rats, silver, and... oh the game ended. I understand though, I always want rats to work.

[Robz888]