Last night my in-person group did a 4-player game where everyone fell into Noble Brigand groupthink and bought out the pile, and then the game got paralyzed. In short, all the Noble Brigands prevented anyone from holding onto a Silver long enough to get to 5 coin. We couldn't figure out an alternative strategy to counter the Noble Brigands and wanted to see if anyone here could recommend an alternative:
Crossroads, Develop, Oracle, JoaT, Noble Brigand, Trader, Cartographer, Inn, Stables, Mandarin.
The obvious choice seemed to be JoaT, but we found that a single player doing even double Jack couldn't generate Silver quickly enough to overcoming getting hit by Brigands three times each turn. Develop allowed you to at least get a Silver in your next hand because it put the Silver on top of the deck, but it usually ended up being a one-shot Silver that required drawing the right two card together (Develop + either a Crossroads or NB/Jack/Trader) and wasn't sustainable. I thought about using Stables (to take advantage of the NB's Copper attack) or Mandarin (for non-Silver money), but couldn't hit $5 frequently enough to develop those decks.
Any thoughts on how to counter a group rushing NBs in this set? Or how to overcome the stall when everyone is stealing Silvers back and forth but doesn't get to keep them long enough to play them?