First of all: You may have seen me logging on with something called BuyBorg. This is the first implementation of the Dominion AI I'm developing at
http://github.com/rspeer/golem. It's called "BuyBorg" because it only decides what to buy, and needs a human to decide everything else. It's not necessarily that good yet.
Anyway, I'm playing a test game against BuyBorg and it opens Potion/Warehouse. The only Alchemy card on the board is Apothecary. I sigh at the bot's incompetence, assuming it's going to leave itself floundering with ineffective hands full of copper in a colony game. For myself I open Silver/Warehouse.
Second time through its deck, it buys an apothecary and another warehouse.
Third time through, it buys another apothecary and a gold. Fourth time, it buys a platinum. Soon it's drawing enough money to get a platinum or a colony on every turn, and it's got something like three colonies by the time I finally buy a platinum.
So getting my ass handed to me by my own glitchy bot has shown me that Apothecary/Warehouse can apparently be a strong enough combo to open with, something I hadn't thought of before.