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[AdamH]

EDIT: I've made a couple of clarifications and added a section at the end since posting this originally; with the intent of making this more like an "article" and trying to make it more valuable seeking article-ness from this post (even though that wasn't originally my intention). Hopefully this helps.

Let's talk about Golem.

First of all, "Gollum" is not a Dominion card; it is a character from a book/movie series. That is not what I would like to talk about.

Second of all, I don't think I'm all that great with Golem. I don't really think it's a very good card and many other people do. Frequently I am beat by someone who goes for it when I didn't think it was worth it. Frequently I go for it and am beat by the guy who didn't because I'm just too slow. I'm starting to come around but I'm hoping to generate some discussion about the card so I can understand it better.

And now to kick things off, here are some thoughts about Golem.

What is Golem?

1. Golem is expensive!! This thing costs $4P, which means it's "more expensive" than $6. Not only does it compete with Gold for price, but it's even worse than that because of the potion. There's such a large opportunity cost for getting this card, you really want to be sure that it's going to pay off for you. Going for Golem can easily be the most difficult strategic decision you make on a certain board, so it's a good thing to know what goes into making that decision.

2. Golem is kinda like Herald. Sure, it's WAY more expensive, but you use them sort of similarly. When they work out they are very close to "+2 Cards, +2 Actions" except Herald guarantees that at least one of your actions is like a cantrip, and then sometimes you just don't get the second one. I think Herald is way better than Golem, myself, and it's always puzzled me why Golem costs SO MUCH MORE than Herald.

3. Golem is "+2 Cards, +2 Actions". Well, let's be honest, I'd probably be more inclined to pay $4P for "+2 Cards, +2 Actions" than I would for Golem. Sure, this is the obvious comparison to make, right? But it's the differences between Golem and "+2 Cards, +2 Actions" that make it so difficult to judge. In a nutshell, you give up flexibility for when you want to play your actions in exchange for not having to (being able to) have your actions in hand when you play Golem. Golem isn't really a village. Golem isn't really draw. Hey, wait, this is the "What is Golem?" section, I should do this right quick:

What is Golem not?

1. Whew, I feel better now. Don't you? Golem is not a village. I mean, Golem can allow you to play multiple terminal actions in a turn, so there is that, but you can't draw your deck with Golem+Smithy. Using Golem as a village works a lot differently than buying and playing a card that says "+2 Actions" on it somewhere.

2. Golem is not draw. When I say "draw" I'm talking about a way to increase the number of cards in your hand. So technically Golem can be used as draw, because it can have the same effect as putting two action cards from your deck into your hand and then playing them. But you aren't really going to draw your deck using a Village+Golem engine. You need something else.

You need something else

Well of course you do, silly. BM+Golem is something I make fun of Banker Bot for playing, you know? But what is it that you need? Well, I'm going to make my best attempt at this...

1. Other action cards. Let's start with the low-hanging fruit here. Without action cards not named Golem in your deck, there's no point. Progress!

2. Non-terminal actions. It's a little bit silly if you have a bunch of Golems in your deck so that you can play two terminals and then not do anything else. What could those two terminals possibly be that's just so great that you went for Golem? Maybe two Possessions? Goons+Masquerade? Scavenger and Counting House? Maybe Golem+Possession is a thing, but this other stuff, man I just feel like Big Money beats the pants off of it. Maybe I'm off-base here, but I think you need a pretty explosive payload to justify the huge opportunity cost of going for Golem and two terminals just isn't going to cut it. You need to have non-terminals for your Golem to hit.

How much non-terminal actions?

3. ALL the non-terminal actions! OK well maybe not ALL of them but A LOT of them for-sure-sies. There is nothing that makes me more mad than my Golem hitting two terminals and now my turn is over. That's no fun, man. Since You Make Your Own Shuffle Luck™, it stands to reason that if you want to play a lot of action cards and Golems and do lots of stuff, you're going to want a LOT more non-terminals in your deck than terminals, so they need to be available, preferrably cheap, and there needs to be +Buy or a gainer or some way to get a million billion billion of them in your deck. Another way to look at this is that Golem makes you give up flexibility on when you play your actions, and when a bunch of your actions are non-terminal (cantrips especially), you're less likely to care about the order you play them in. EDIT: This section is not universally agreed upon

So what's Golem good for, again?

This is where I start asking questions that I'm not quite sure I'm on the right track towards answering. It seems to me that most of the time Golem is good is when there are already the components to make your engine without Golem. If there's an engine and I can make it without Golem, wouldn't I be better off just ignoring Golem and being more focused on my engine?

Sure, if Golem is the only way to play multiple terminals in a turn and/or increase hand size and there are a bunch of non-terminals around, and the whole point of the engine is to play a Militia, a Haggler, and a couple of Bridges every turn, then yes Golem is the star of the show. But where's the middle ground? I'm having trouble coming up with anything but the extreme case like this where Golem is worth going for.

What's Golem not good for?

This is easy, just look up all of the game logs with me playing and Golem in the kingdom; you'll find lots of examples! OK, more seriously, I've screwed up a lot trying to play with Golem so I can tell you lots of stuff that doesn't work, and I like to sum it up like this:

Golem is not good for nasty surprises.

You know how you leave for the weekend or for a long vacation and you forget to take out the kitchen trash before you left? Then you come back home and you're so glad to be back until you take your first big breath? That's what it's like when you play a Golem and all of a sudden you're faced with the unpleasant reality that Golem is terrible.

Golem+Tactician is not a thing. SURPRISE! Your turn is over now! Hope you had fun! You'll get 'em next time, cap'n! I know you can do it! But for now, have a big whiff of those meat scraps that have been rotting in your house for a week! Mmm, mmm, good!

You don't want your Golem to uncover an action that makes you do something you don't want to do: forced trashers and forced discarders are the big offenders here; and why did you want to trash so badly in a Golem deck anyways? I thought that was the good part about Golem.

But having too many terminals in your deck has the same effect: Golem reveals two Moats. SURPRISE! Tell him what he's won, Johnny! You're the lucky winner of FOUR DEAD ACTION CARDS!!!! Dead Action Cards™: The Best Type of Action Cards!™ The Action Cards the Professionals use!™ Guess what you have to spend with your hand full of dead action cards: $1 and a potion?! WOW! Your friends must be jealous!

Is Golem better than this?

I admitted up-front that Golem is a card I don't like, and that I'm not very good with. Most people see Golem in a more optimistic light than I do, so please help me shine some light on this.

Some pearls from the ensuing discussion

After talking about this for a bit and trying to ask some helpful questions and get advice from smart people, I'd like to post a list of short quotes that have helped me personally in my understanding of some of the questions raised here.

I feel that when attackers are on the board and your opponent has a Golem and you don't, it always feels like you're getting hit by the attack a lot more often.time.

One 'unseen' benefit of Golem is its cycling power--sometimes it can skip 20 cards and get you back to playing Golem or another key card faster.

In some cases, especially if you want to use Golem as a splitter in a tight engine, you do want cheap non-terminals for the net +action. In these cases, it doesn't matter what Golem finds; it only matters that Golem finds things.

In other cases where you just want to play a subset of Action cards, then having cheap Actions is bad because Golem will play those instead.

That's why deck tracking is important. Not only deck composition, but which cards you've seen this turn and how many Actions are remaining in your deck, need to be monitored.

I should add that Golem is one of my least favorite cards. Buying it is swingy, its effect on deck cycling is swingy, and the quality of turns that it yields is swingy, especially if you made a mistake in deck tracking.

If the engine is so fragile that it doesn't survive without Golem... it will still be pretty fragile when you have Golem.

I don't know. I know it's not a truly bad card, since it does a lot of good for you when you have it. But the cost is crazy.

I'd like to add here something I think I've learned about Golem recently: if Golem isn't going to be really good in your deck, then you're probably better off without it.

Question: Is there any card that you would want to play every turn so badly that you'd build a Golem+Scheme+X deck?

The only thing I can think of is possession...

Edit: and with mountebank, I'd prefer to just buy more mountebanks or schemes rather than get a Golem

[Witherweaver]

I feel that when attackers are on the board and your opponent has a Golem and you don't, it always feels like you're getting hit by the attack a lot more often.  In actuality I'm not so sure, since the Golem player has to lose some initial ground by getting Golem in the first place.  It might follow that for a Curser, Golem doesn't end up affecting the Curse split on average.  But it's so annoying watching them cycle so much and picking out the annoying attacker in their deck all the time.

[jsh357]

I tend to think of Golem like a Throne Room that works on a card not in my hand. It's amazing in most of the same decks that would benefit from Throne Room. It's also one of Scheme's best combos. The ability to play actions you don't have much chance of drawing due to lack of trashing and such isn't to be underestimated either. One 'unseen' benefit of Golem is its cycling power--sometimes it can skip 20 cards and get you back to playing Golem or another key card faster. To be honest, I don't know how people set up Golem decks knowingly, but it's gone up a lot in my estimation. I don't even think it's overpriced--4 and a Potion is fair for a card with the potential of Golem.

I am not an expert on the card, but it is my wife's favorite and she demands I put it in every kingdom.  Often, I find myself surprised by how effective it can be on really simple boards--she'll even open Potion for it and luck in to some unforeseen synergy. 

Offhand, I would say that Golem seems to work best (outside combo decks) on boards with +Card and at least a + 1 Action but preferably more.  Any form of it, really.  Goleming in to a nonterminal card seems to be better than just playing one a lot of the time, maybe because you're getting the cantrip + some other effect.  I guess it's a waste if you're capable of drawing the entire deck and playing the other cards anyway, but sometimes you're not.

Also, I wouldn't entirely count out Golem/Tactician.  While it's dangerous if you play it blindly, say you draw a hand with junk/junk/junk/junk/Golem.  You're very happy to hit Tactician then, and there's a good chance Golem can cycle you to a point where you'll draw the Golem once again.  Basically, if your Tactician'd turns are the only truly valuable turns you're getting, Tactician/Golem is a useful combo.  Golem has plenty of nombos, though.  Trading Post... ugh.

One powerful strategy to use in IRL games is to stall out your opponent.  Just keep playing massive Golem turns and reveal each card slowly, then shuffle the deck 10 times whenever you need to, never buying Provinces or emptying piles.  They'll usually pass out from boredom or scurvy by the time the game's closing in.  Add in Hunting Parties, Possession, and Philosopher's Stone for maximum efficiency.

[ehunt]

1. Golem hates cheap actions. A deck with just two torturers is an awesome golem deck (assuming there are no villages, else you will be tortured to smithereens before you can pull it off.) Or just a council room and a militia. Don't make the mistake of filling your deck with shitty actions. Golem is much less sad about that silver than that vagrant (since it doesn't care if you draw actions together and in some it decks actively wants you not to).

But even with two pearl divers, a golem is a lot better than +2 cards, +2 actions, so I don't get your comparison.

2. It would be interesting to switch the prices of King's Court and Golem.

[AdamH]

A deck with just two torturers is an awesome golem deck (assuming there are no villages, else you will be tortured to smithereens before you can pull it off.)

Is this really true? How many Golems do you get? When do you get your potion? This sounds like something that could be easily simulated: BM+Torturer vs. Golem and two Torturers...

[ehunt]

A deck with just two torturers is an awesome golem deck (assuming there are no villages, else you will be tortured to smithereens before you can pull it off.)

Is this really true? How many Golems do you get? When do you get your potion? This sounds like something that could be easily simulated: BM+Torturer vs. Golem and two Torturers...

I used to do this on isotropic bunches (yes, I played so many games on isotropic that there were bunches with golem + torturer + no village; no, I don't have a girlfriend). It's not too slow although before you get your second golem there is a terrible shuffle. Once it gets going the opponent is slowed down dramatically. I think potion between first two shuffles. Buy Golem over gold always but never province. If opponent tortures you and you have golem and torturer in hand, drop torturer (obv but will a sim do it?)

[Jimmmmm]

Is it worth getting a third Torturer?

[KingZog3]

Golem  is not like Herald, and they do not play the same at all. Herald wants lots of actions. Cantrips, cheap, expensive. Just lots of them. Golem does not. It wants a few strong actions to play. I feel you want it in a Money deck with a few draw cards, or attack cards.

[dondon151]

Golem greatly improves engine consistency and can really help engines out when there is no trashing or direct +action. And in a deck with many Golems, you want drawing cards so that you can find more Golems, because Golem can't find its friends.

You really have to track your deck carefully when playing Golem with +cards and sifters. Triggering a reshuffle because Golem found one Smithy can leave you with enough junk for 2-3 dead turns.

[AdamH]

Golem  is not like Herald, and they do not play the same at all. Herald wants lots of actions. Cantrips, cheap, expensive. Just lots of them. Golem does not. It wants a few strong actions to play. I feel you want it in a Money deck with a few draw cards, or attack cards.

If I'm using Golem as village or draw, I would think I want lots of actions, particularly non-terminals. Is this viable? I mean I don't really think this is Golem's main purpose in life but sometimes this is why I buy Golem, and in the few cases I've made it work, it was like this.

If I'm using Golem to play some key actions every turn, then sure I can see how one benefits from focusing on just those key actions, but I've never been able to make this viable. Granted, I've never considered Golem for this use and it sounds really nice, but Golem is just so expensive, how do I know when to go for it in this case? When is it just better to buy a few copies of this card and skip Golem? Attacks are great, I got it, but if I see Golem+Attack do I just always go for it rather than just playing the attack?

Golem greatly improves engine consistency [...]

I see where this comes from, but I'm trying to reconcile this with the fact that you give up the ability to choose the order in which you play your actions, which doesn't help engine consistency. Obviously you want to accentuate the positive things and mitigate the negative things but I just don't see how to do that other than to flood your deck with nonterminals, which people are saying is a bad thing. What are other kinds of things that can make Golem shine like this and make it worth the opportunity cost?

[dondon151]

In some cases, especially if you want to use Golem as a splitter in a tight engine, you do want cheap non-terminals for the net +action. In these cases, it doesn't matter what Golem finds; it only matters that Golem finds things.

In other cases where you just want to play a subset of Action cards, then having cheap Actions is bad because Golem will play those instead.

Choosing the order in which you play Actions is largely unimportant in many cases. The worst case scenario is that in a deck full of non-terminals, Golem finds two terminals and ends your Action phase. But Golem itself helps the engine get started more reliably because it digs for Actions.

[AdamH]

So it seems you're saying my "feel" for this kind of thing is off. I'm willing to accept that, it's just that coming into this I can think of so many times my Golem has hit two terminals in my engine when there were plent of non-terminals it could have hit and I can't think of any times it went any other way.

That's why we're talking about Golem!

[dondon151]

That's why deck tracking is important. Not only deck composition, but which cards you've seen this turn and how many Actions are remaining in your deck, need to be monitored.

I should add that Golem is one of my least favorite cards. Buying it is swingy, its effect on deck cycling is swingy, and the quality of turns that it yields is swingy, especially if you made a mistake in deck tracking.

[Witherweaver]

So suppose you know you'll want to go for Golems.  When should you buy your Potion?  Is there any time when Golem is the only Potion card on the board and opening with a Potion is good?

[KingZog3]

So suppose you know you'll want to go for Golems.  When should you buy your Potion?  Is there any time when Golem is the only Potion card on the board and opening with a Potion is good?

I would say never open with Potion to get Golem. Generally I think it's good to get the Potion on the 2nd/3rd shuffle, depending on your deck obviously. Fast cycling really helps Golem because it takes so long to get.

[Qvist]

You can't talk about Golem without mentioning Scheme. Golem+Scheme+Strong Terminal Attack is totally a thing and very strong, especially if the attack has +Buy, like Goons or Margrave.

But I tend to agree that Golem is no strong card. Let's see where it ranks this time in the Potion list, but I think I will only put it above Transmute and PStone on #8. It's often either too slow or to hard to get.

[AdamH]

You can't talk about Golem without mentioning Scheme.

Ah, sir, but I just did!

...but yeah that would have been good to mention. Yeah.

Totally.

Yeah that sounds really good, you know?

Golem+Scheme+Goons, do you think you would try and get multi-Goons turns with something like that?

[markusin]

Golem greatly improves engine consistency and can really help engines out when there is no trashing or direct +action. And in a deck with many Golems, you want drawing cards so that you can find more Golems, because Golem can't find its friends.

You really have to track your deck carefully when playing Golem with +cards and sifters. Triggering a reshuffle because Golem found one Smithy can leave you with enough junk for 2-3 dead turns.

I agree. Golem can turn an engine that can only play one terminal per turn into an engine that can play more than one terminal per turn. Playing an extra Wharf or Goons or Monument each turn sounds mighty appealing. Playing more than 2 terminals per turn with Golem being the only action splitter is rather tricky though. Those decks are much more likely to come together if you have non-terminals that can discard actions (Warehouse, Cellar, Oasis) to give you more control of your discard pile. They also alleviate one of the other big issues with Golem that you didin't even mention: not having any actions left in your discard to play with Golem. That hurts when you're relying on Golem to be able to play multiple terminals per turn.

I'd even go so far as to say that engines with direct +actions (Village, Squire, etc) can benefit from the raw power of Golem if the deck itself is rather bloated, not really drawing itself, and the source of + actions is cheaper than the Golem. After all, playing villages doesn't help all that much if you can't draw 2+ temrinals with them.

It shares Familiar's problem of coming with the risk that you can't afford it on the turn you find your potion. Having cheaper potion cards on the board at the same time helps alleviate this risk. Incidently, Apothecary can work pretty well with Golem, and the reordering of the top of your deck Apothecary gives you helps Golem to discard junk and play actions in the correct order. 

[Joseph2302]

Just gonna throw it out there, Golem+ tunnel = fun, ran the Gold pile out in this game (http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20140210/log.5062f3dc51c3843e7939eb9f.1392067436527.txt), although it would have been the last turn anyway.

[AdamH]

I'd even go so far as to say that engines with direct +actions (Village, Squire, etc) can benefit from the raw power of Golem if the deck itself is rather bloated, not really drawing itself, and the source of + actions is cheaper than the Golem. After all, playing villages doesn't help all that much if you can't draw 2+ temrinals with them.

I agree with this in concept, but if you're buying a Potion just to get Golems, aren't you making the problem of a bloated deck worse when you could just get more engine components to compensate?

Sure, I can see cases where Golem would be worth it, where you're playing something like an engine into a slog, but that feels to me like the exception rather than the rule. Am I just wrong here?

[markusin]

I'd even go so far as to say that engines with direct +actions (Village, Squire, etc) can benefit from the raw power of Golem if the deck itself is rather bloated, not really drawing itself, and the source of + actions is cheaper than the Golem. After all, playing villages doesn't help all that much if you can't draw 2+ temrinals with them.

I agree with this in concept, but if you're buying a Potion just to get Golems, aren't you making the problem of a bloated deck worse when you could just get more engine components to compensate?

Sure, I can see cases where Golem would be worth it, where you're playing something like an engine into a slog, but that feels to me like the exception rather than the rule. Am I just wrong here?

Bloated, but not too bloated? Golem often gets more attractive in these situations when the terminals in question can draw for you. Playing 2 Smithies for the cost of 1 after playing a Village instead of just 1 after playing a Village is just big. It's kind of a balance thing you have to feel. In my experience, you end up more or less where you'd be if you ignored Golem in the situations you mentioned above.

I'd like to take this moment to emphasize the bit about the non-terminal discard-sifters. dondon151 mentioned that Golem becomes much more reliable if you can track your deck, and cards like Warehouse go a long way to helping you know what's in the discard/deck.

I forgot to mention: I don't really like Golem either, and always get it sooner later rather than later sooner.

[DG]

The first thing to mention is this line from the Alchemy rulebook: "You can play Dominion using any number of Kingdom cards from Alchemy, but we especially recommend playing with 3 - 5 Alchemy cards at once.". Those of us with long memories can remember that Isotropic originally created kingdoms with multiple alchemy cards but it was changed later. Goko has never followed this rule and creates random kingdoms. All the potion cost cards look weak if they are the only potion cost card in the kingdom and that goes for golem as much as the others. Often potion is the poor card in the kingdom and this prevents you considering cards like the golem even if they will be strong.

Anyway golems are still worthwhile. There isn't an archetypal golem deck, imho. You can let them draw through the whole deck with certain combos. You can craft slick decks with only a few actions for more predictable results. You can put them into decks with assorted actions just to get double plays of anything. You can put them into slogs to pull out your action cards more often. I've even played a game where golems used the elusive scout-great hall combination for extra actions. Anyway some pointers for golem success can be (a) harnessing actions in big junky decks (b) repeated plays of attacks (c) +coin actions providing income. Something like golem+mountebank hits all those marks.

[Robz888]

AdamH, your thinking on Golem really, really mirrors my own. Up until very recently I just sort of passively agreed with the consensus that it's a great card, without it being a card I ever used well.

Now, I'm not so sure. It's really expensive. You usually can't, and shouldn't, go for it early (you can't afford it, and you don't have high quality actions you want to play yet).

Once you've got the engine up and running without it... do you take a turn to buy the Potion, another to buy the Golem, and then go? It definitely lubricates your engine, but so does Lab, or another Village and Smithy, or something else that doesn't have an obscene cost.

If the engine is so fragile that it doesn't survive without Golem... it will still be pretty fragile when you have Golem.

I don't know. I know it's not a truly bad card, since it does a lot of good for you when you have it. But the cost is crazy.

I used to commonly hear people call it one of the best Potion cards. Now I think it's very clearly worse than Scrying Pool, Familiar, Vineyard, and Apothecary. More controversially, I would also say it's worse than Alchemist and University... and even Possession. Its cost really isn't that much less than Possession, since anything over $3P basically means "wait to buy this until your hand produces lots of money + P." (Even $3P itself basically means, "Go for it, but hope you get lucky!"). And its effects are certainly underwhelming, when compared to Possession.

I'm tempted to say, it's best in cases where you buy the Potion early anyway for a cheaper Potion cost card. But that's not even really true with Scrying Pool or Alchemist, really... I'd probably rather have another Pool or another Alchemist.

I'm sure people will disagree. And I may very well be wrong. But I'm just not moved by Golem.

[jomini]

Golem is a slow card, but it can be strong when you have a long game. As such, I find that Golem loves Alt-VP. Vineyards tend to be strong companions (stock up on a bunch of actions, use Golem to link up engine components in a sea of green, buy/gain more Vineyards and actions). Fairgrounds also work fairly nicely, Golem + Pot + all kingdom treasures/VP + fairgrounds is already up to 9 uniques and Golem is pretty decent about a lot of crappy cards - they may not work well, but Golem can dig past the one terrible terminal silver to get back to the villages and draw. I also think Golem really mitigates the downsides of discarders and top deckers. Golem/Mandarin x2 is again slow, but it is extremely reliable. You don't need to many golems until you can just spam duchies while top decking extra Golems; in engines, top decking means throwing some crap on top or moving surplus actions to where Golem can reach them, discarding - particularly non-terminal - means you can dig through a lot of crap for power cards. Golem/Cellar/Draw can churn through a lot of cards to find attacks and big power shots (like Graver robber). Tr/Golem is a very nice combo a lot of the time, hitting four actions makes it pretty easy to hit something with +action and something else with +cards; you also then can leave actions in hand so when Golem hits Tr you can use the double plays; there just is a lot of tactical flexibility with those two both in there (Kc tends to have the problem that Golem slows down the Kc hunt, without needing to dig out 6 actions you'd rather Kc anyways).

Engines in general do better with Golem than simple combos because you can work your potion a huge amount more.  Additionally, Golem engines can deal with more crap (e.g. copper spam from Noble Brigands/Jesters) while still hitting key cards.

[Davio]

I find that Golem's usefulness derives as much from the fact that it always finds actions as well as the increased cycling.

It is not at all uncommon to play a Golem, play 2 action cards it finds, clean-up and shuffle and find the Golem in your next hand.