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[Trogdor the Burninator]

This is a combo that a friend of mine played on us, and after he played this combo on me and my other friends, we decided to always veto having both of them in the game at once because it's such a powerful combo.
As (most) of you know Poor house is a card in Dark Ages that costs $1. It's function is:+$4
"Reveal your hand. -$1 per Treasure card in your hand, to a minimum of $0." Not too special. When played with Chapel ("Trash up to four cards in your hand"), this card can work wonders. There are a few things that make this combo tick, and when it ticks it's incredibly powerful as I've already stated before:
1) Chapel and Poor House cost $2 and $1 respectively, making this a super easy combo to get started (note: you only need ONE Chapel)
2) Trashing ALL of your starting copper and estates, making Poor House give you +$4
3) Maybe get a Village/cantrip or a source of +Buy (not absolutely necessary)
4) Lots of Poor House
And what you have is a combo that's immune to Knights and is capable of gaining Provinces ridiculously fast (like turns 3-5, I can't quite remember). The main downside of this combo is that in colony games it's not going to be as good, but I could see it benefiting a rush strategy immensely in these sorts of scenarios.
Thoughts? 

[RTT]

well it needs at least a village or throne room to get provinces.
but of course poor house with a no money deck can be pretty powerfull.

[hsiale]

what you have is a combo that's immune to Knights and is capable of gaining Provinces ridiculously fast (like turns 3-5, I can't quite remember)

No idea how he was doing this so fast.

The perfect setup for Poor House combo is having Workers' Village available. Even then, if you open Chapel/WV, then trash 4 Copper turn 3, use WV to buy 2 Poor Houses turn 4, you need a bit of shuffle luck to gain a Province turn 5 (as you end up drawing one leftover card and five cards from the deck shuffled after Poor House buys and you need to have WV, both PHs and no Copper among those).

Poor House + strong trashing + extra actions is decent, but rarely so powerful that it is clearly the dominant strategy.

[Kirian]

Yeah, with no Villages, this nets you $4 on any turn.  That's not getting you Provinces.

I had a fun game a while back that was Forager, Fortress, and PH.

[Qvist]

The perfect setup for Poor House combo is having Workers' Village available.

I think the optimal village is Hamlet because you don't care about hand size and can discard a superfluos copper to get from $7 to $8 and still can get the buy if needed to get more Hamlets and Poor Houses.

[markusin]

The perfect setup for Poor House combo is having Workers' Village available.

I think the optimal village is Hamlet because you don't care about hand size and can discard a superfluos copper to get from $7 to $8 and still can get the buy if needed to get more Hamlets and Poor Houses.

Have any of you tried a Hamlet/Poor House/Gardens rush? It will make your head spin.

[eHalcyon]

The perfect setup for Poor House combo is having Workers' Village available.

I think the optimal village is Hamlet because you don't care about hand size and can discard a superfluos copper to get from $7 to $8 and still can get the buy if needed to get more Hamlets and Poor Houses.

I still contend that the best village is TR because you only need two cards to line up instead of three.




But yeah, Chapel-PH is not bad, but NOT 3-5 turns fast.  You don't even get to start trashing with Chapel until turn 3, and you won't be able to clear out all the Copper until turn 5 at the earliest (barring some edge edge cases).  A village (or TR) is essential or else you are only making $4 a turn.  It's cool when it works out, but there are enough moving pieces that it isn't OP at all.  It has nothing on NV-Bridge or Hermit-Market Square.

[blueblimp]

Maybe OP doesn't realize Poor House is terminal? Otherwise, how can Village be said to be "not absolutely necessary"?

[Ozle]

I do love how you can follow the evolution of Trogdor!

First post
'Coppersmith is pretty poor, but I want to try and use it so can you help me out with strategies please'

Second Post
'Poor House + no coppers is awesome!'

We should have tried harder to give him Coppersmith Strategies guys, I feel we have let him down!


Either way, I missed him first time round, so Hello Trogdor! Welcome aboard!

[KingZog3]

Maybe OP doesn't realize Poor House is terminal? Otherwise, how can Village be said to be "not absolutely necessary"?

That might be possible IRL. For the longest time my group didn't see that Graverobber topdecked the gained card.

[eliegel34]

I'm with Qvist, TR is such a strong enabler for this. I think someone ran a sim that opening Chapel/Chapel was pretty good as an opening, with TR/Poor House.

I ran a TR/Poor House deck against Knights once. It worked real well untill all the TRs in the game got trashed, I was kinda stuck after that.

[eHalcyon]

I'm with Qvist, TR is such a strong enabler for this. I think someone ran a sim that opening Chapel/Chapel was pretty good as an opening, with TR/Poor House.

I ran a TR/Poor House deck against Knights once. It worked real well untill all the TRs in the game got trashed, I was kinda stuck after that.

You mean me, right?

[KingZog3]

I'm with Qvist, TR is such a strong enabler for this. I think someone ran a sim that opening Chapel/Chapel was pretty good as an opening, with TR/Poor House.

I ran a TR/Poor House deck against Knights once. It worked real well untill all the TRs in the game got trashed, I was kinda stuck after that.

You mean me, right?

Exactly. You're Qvist.

[Awaclus]

I'm with Qvist, TR is such a strong enabler for this. I think someone ran a sim that opening Chapel/Chapel was pretty good as an opening, with TR/Poor House.

I ran a TR/Poor House deck against Knights once. It worked real well untill all the TRs in the game got trashed, I was kinda stuck after that.

You mean me, right?

Exactly. You're Qvist.

Yeah, because we're all WanderingWinder!

[eliegel34]

I'm with eHalcyon, TR is such a strong enabler for this. I think someone ran a sim that opening Chapel/Chapel was pretty good as an opening, with TR/Poor House.

I ran a TR/Poor House deck against Knights once. It worked real well untill all the TRs in the game got trashed, I was kinda stuck after that.

You mean me, right?

Yea, that's what I said  .

[AJD]

Maybe OP doesn't realize Poor House is terminal? Otherwise, how can Village be said to be "not absolutely necessary"?

I once lost to someone who went for a Poor House engine with Necropolis as his only village.

[Trogdor the Burninator]

what you have is a combo that's immune to Knights and is capable of gaining Provinces ridiculously fast (like turns 3-5, I can't quite remember)

No idea how he was doing this so fast.

The perfect setup for Poor House combo is having Workers' Village available. Even then, if you open Chapel/WV, then trash 4 Copper turn 3, use WV to buy 2 Poor Houses turn 4, you need a bit of shuffle luck to gain a Province turn 5 (as you end up drawing one leftover card and five cards from the deck shuffled after Poor House buys and you need to have WV, both PHs and no Copper among those).

The thing that he was probably getting a lot of was Fortress, and I don't remember if their were Knights in that game or not, it was a long time since we played that game and I may be forgetting a thing or two

Poor House + strong trashing + extra actions is decent, but rarely so powerful that it is clearly the dominant strategy.

[KingZog3]

Maybe OP doesn't realize Poor House is terminal? Otherwise, how can Village be said to be "not absolutely necessary"?

I once lost to someone who went for a Poor House engine with Necropolis as his only village.

What did you do? Like if you just bought straight Conspirators I wouldn't be surprised.

[markusin]

Maybe OP doesn't realize Poor House is terminal? Otherwise, how can Village be said to be "not absolutely necessary"?

I once lost to someone who went for a Poor House engine with Necropolis as his only village.

What did you do? Like if you just bought straight Conspirators I wouldn't be surprised.

Maybe the Poor House player had a lot of sifters like Cartographer or Warehouse or something. I would imagine some sort of non-terminal attack would help.

[SCSN]

Maybe OP doesn't realize Poor House is terminal? Otherwise, how can Village be said to be "not absolutely necessary"?

I once lost to someone who went for a Poor House engine with Necropolis as his only village.

I once beat Stef while going for a Poor House engine with Necropolis as my only Village

Edit: Log, and I should add that I'm not at all convinced my strategy was actually best, just thought it would be fun to try.

[AJD]

Maybe OP doesn't realize Poor House is terminal? Otherwise, how can Village be said to be "not absolutely necessary"?

I once lost to someone who went for a Poor House engine with Necropolis as his only village.

What did you do? Like if you just bought straight Conspirators I wouldn't be surprised.

I don't remember; I think I went for Mercenaries but it was too long before I was able to connect my Urchins with each other or any other Attacks. It was a 3- or 4-player game.

[hsiale]

Just played a fun Poor House game. There was only Salvager (and Count, but noone got an early $5 with just one buy) for trashing, but there was not only Workers' Village, but also Workshop, Tactician and King's Court to help. I expected the game ending with some crazy multiple Provinces megaturn, but just after my opponent bought second King's Court (I had none) I had my first Tactician-fueled turn and managed to play 5 Workers' Villages, clear my hand of treasure with two Salvagers and had 4 actions left to get to $16. I wanted to buy two King's Courts that turn, but luckily I noticed that I have 8 buys, 16$ and there are two ples (WV and PH) already empty so I ended the game turn 13.

[Beyond Awesome]

If you are going with Poor House, even with Chapel, it is hard to get to work unless you have some draw. Yah, early on, you might get some Provinces, but later on your deck will slow to a crawl.

[Awaclus]

If you are going with Poor House, even with Chapel, it is hard to get to work unless you have some draw. Yah, early on, you might get some Provinces, but later on your deck will slow to a crawl.

You need two Poor Houses and two actions to buy a Province. Assuming you want 5 Provinces, it shouldn't be too hard even if you have 4 Provinces and a Chapel in your deck to have enough Poor Houses to reliably draw two of them with a village.

[SCSN]

And again I couldn't say no to the awesome combo that is Poor House - Necropolis