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[dondon151]

I was thinking about this a little bit after trying out the Shanty Town / Spice Merchant combo that Mean Mr Mustard suggested in his thread. One of the disadvantages of Spice Merchant is that it doesn't help build your economy when it trashes Coppers, and a deck with fewer Treasures relative to Estates also chokes earlier. Salvager alleviates part of this problem by also trashing your Estates for benefit.

I tested this out solitaire on Isotropic and managed to get 12-15 turns rather consistently:
Game 1 (4 Provinces, 1 Duchy in 14 turns): http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201112/06/game-20111206-123717-d138556a.html
Game 2 (4 Provinces in 14 turns): http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201112/06/game-20111206-122828-eb273b43.html
Game 3 (4 Provinces in 12 turns): http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201112/06/game-20111206-122600-5d8a6714.html
Game 4 (4 Provinces in 13 turns): http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201112/06/game-20111206-125406-a79dc34c.html
Game 5 (4 Provinces in 15 turns): http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201112/06/game-20111206-125124-9d872e91.html
Game 6 (4 Provinces in 14 turns): http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201112/06/game-20111206-124758-f5afeb34.html
Game 7 (4 Provinces in 13 turns): http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201112/06/game-20111206-124549-50d00bdf.html

I can't say that I played this entirely optimally and I'm also terrible at timing Duchy buys. It seems like that Duchy buys really clog this up if bought kind of early (turn 11 or so).

General buy rules:
- Open Spice Merchant / Silver on 4 / 3 (don't think 5 / 2 bodes well for this combo)
- Pick up Salvager / Silver on turns 3 and 4, using Spice Merchant to trash Copper for +2 cards if possible
- Pick up second Spice Merchant after second reshuffle
- Buy Silver with $3, Gold with $6
- If get $9 or more early on (turn 8 or so) with 2 buys, buy Silver and Gold
- Buy Province with $8
- Buy Duchy with $5

General play rules:
- Trash Copper with Spice Merchant for +2 cards on turns 3 and 4, unless you know you can't draw enough for Silver + Salvager over 2 turns otherwise
- Trash Copper with Spice Merchant for +2 cards unless +$2 gives enough to buy Gold
- Trash Estate with Salvager
- Trash Spice Merchant with Salvager if Spice Merchant is drawn "dead" (i.e. no Coppers) or if it gets to $8
- Trash Silver / Gold with Salvager later on (turn 10 or so) if it gets to $8

[Octo]

One of salvagers key attributes (when I play it anyway) is to trash provinces for provinces to speed it up if you're ahead - that +buy is absolutely awesome, and without any seriously conflicting cards in this setup that certainly seems a very present option here which would help even more.

[dondon151]

Yes, I had thought of that. If you're ahead, it's great for pushing towards the end of the game, but I didn't think 14 turns was particularly fast by any means. But you're definitely right in that it puts pressure on opponents who may have slightly slower engines.

Also, I can imagine Apprentice working pretty well in lieu of Salvager.

[guided]

Bit of a nombo IMO. The whole is equal to the sum of its parts.

[dondon151]

I don't really want to degenerate into an argument of what is a combo vs. what is not really a combo, but my personal opinion is that these cards mitigate each others' weaknesses to an appreciable extent (Salvager doesn't like to be drawn with Coppers, Spice Merchant hurts Treasure density by trashing Coppers but not getting rid of Estates). Then once you start drawing your Spice Merchants with no Coppers, Salvager trashes them for $4.

But whatever, fine, maybe it's more correct to call them 2 cards that will get you to 4 Provinces in around 14 turns if played correctly.

[Tables]

Doing a little testing in Geronimoo's simulator, it looks like the win rate is about 52/45 against BMU (opt), which is... well, it's a win, but it's hardly convincing. I think that the combo on it's own is lacking something, and yet I can't find anything that really helps it when compared to that something + big money (e.g. it loses about 65/30ish to all of single Wharf, single Merchant Ship, single Margrave, and a few other random things lead to either very small wins or losses e.g. Stables (in retrospect, unsurprisingly), Treasury). And as far as I can see, the simulator plays the pair pretty sensibly.

In short, this combo doesn't seem to be particularly impressive. A little better than straight BMU, but probably rarely if ever the dominant strategy on the board.

Edit: The average time to hit 4 provinces (with no Duchy buys) looks to be about ~15 turns.

[Mean Mr Mustard]

There are eight other Kingdom cards on the board.  Combos like this can be part of a larger strategy and may make the difference in a close game.

[Anon79]

Doing a little testing in Geronimoo's simulator, it looks like the win rate is about 52/45 against BMU (opt), which is... well, it's a win, but it's hardly convincing. I think that the combo on it's own is lacking something, and yet I can't find anything that really helps it when compared to that something + big money (e.g. it loses about 65/30ish to all of single Wharf, single Merchant Ship, single Margrave, and a few other random things lead to either very small wins or losses e.g. Stables (in retrospect, unsurprisingly), Treasury). And as far as I can see, the simulator plays the pair pretty sensibly.

In short, this combo doesn't seem to be particularly impressive. A little better than straight BMU, but probably rarely if ever the dominant strategy on the board.

Edit: The average time to hit 4 provinces (with no Duchy buys) looks to be about ~15 turns.

The baseline here isn't BMU, it's Salvager-BM.

[Tables]

True. Or Spice Merchant-BM.

Running vs. Salvager-BM, this loses 49-46.5 over 100,000 games, when it buys the Salvager first. Buying Spice Merchant first lowers the percentage to 50.5-45, again, over 100,000 games.

[painted_cow]

Is it suprising that 2 trashers, which are good together (one for coppers, other for estates and Spice Merchant) are nice? Imo not. Spice (pun intended) this up with some nice engine cards and you will win versus some BigMoney stuff.

Only because this isnt superior to BigMoney-X doenst mean, that it is bad at all. Even Chapel-BigMoney isnt really good, but you dont say anyhing versus Chapel. All in all I like the idea of combining these cards, its a bit like Moneylender/Outlook.

[Mean Mr Mustard]

I agree, they work well together.

<a href=http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201112/25/game-20111225-110956-ba931201.html>Governor/Caravan</a>

[mee]

I think the computer doesn't know which one to chose with spice merchant
also if there are nice cantrips like market and laboratory and caravan they go extremely well with salveger

[iguanaiguana]

Man, you guys sure were having some interesting conversations four years ago.

[SCSN]

4 Provinces in 14 turns is the hallmark of greatness.

[Titandrake]

I think analysis has shifted away from the "4 Provinces in x turns assuming no help" benchmark, once people realized that other cards do affect this speed a lot. It's certainly still helpful, but not as much as it used to be with the rise of engines.

This reminds me of a fun SM/Butcher game I played a long time ago, http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=11273.msg386110#msg386110. Although, that also involved some villages for support and other things.