Earlier this evening I played a board with the following cards: Lookout, Workshop, Mining Village, Bishop, Gardens, Haggler, Tactician, Farmlands (and one more, either $4 or $5, that I can't remember).
I opened Lookout/Silver, my opponent opened Silver/Bishop. My plan (especially after he went for a Bishop) was to thin the deck and get to Goons ASAP, then use Mining Village+Goons to get tokens and win on piles. For some reason, though, the deck never took off. I trashed most of my starting cards, got 2 Goons, then a Mining Village and eventually another Goons, but then stalled. My opponent, meanwhile, bought a Tactician and lots of Gold, and eventually was consistently trashing Golds for +4 net VP, in addition to buying Province/Gold.
After a couple of shuffles of not making it to $6 and only getting one multi-Goons turn, I switched gears to Gardens, Estates, and Coppers when at least 1 Goons was in play. I managed to squeak out a victory only because my opponent didn't buy a single Gardens.
My question is: was it just bad shuffle luck that Mining Village + 2 Goons did not come together? I knew the board didn't have great drawing (with the exception of Tactician), but I thought my quick deck-thinning with Lookout and his Bishop would make that more or less irrelevant. Would this deck have benefited from a Tactician, or should I have done something else entirely?