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[AJD]

What about combining Stash, Hunting Parties, and terminal draw?

1.  Clump your Stashes at the bottom of your deck.
2.  Play Hunting Parties.  Dig through your deck (getting your terminal draw en route) until you hit your first Stash.
3.  Play your terminal draw, which you know is going to grab you the rest of your Stashes, rather than drawing green or dead actions.
4.  And then after your turn ends, you reshuffle, put your Stashes at the bottom, and do it all again.

For this to work, you'd want to buy exactly X+1 Stashes, where X is the number of cards your terminal draws (so, if you use Smithy, buy 4 Stashes, no more). 

The strength of the combo will depend (1) the quality of your terminal draw card, and (2) an opening that can help you hit $5 consistently to fund multiple Stash/HP buys early on.  Ideal case is #1 and #2 being the same card (e.g., Smithy on a 4/3 opening) so you can get by with fewer HPs. 

This can even work in Colony games as long as your terminal draw is +3 cards or more (Stash x4 + Silver + Copper = Colony).  In fact, a +3 or more draw card is probably better in a Colony game than in a Province Game, unless you also have +buy (Margrave, Council Room) to make use of leftover extra Stash money, either to buy more Hunting Parties (with Council Room, Stash x5 + Silver + Copper = Province + HP) or, of all things, Estates (with Margrave, Stash x4 + Silver + Copper = Province + Estate), given that your HPs are already skipping merrily past your starting three Estates.

Problem: if your first Stash gets picked up as the first of two cards drawn by HP, you will skip the rest and trigger a reshuffle.

But you'll also know if that's going to happen, so you can just play a Great Hall or something instead of that HP.

[tlloyd]

What about combining Stash, Hunting Parties, and terminal draw?

1.  Clump your Stashes at the bottom of your deck.
2.  Play Hunting Parties.  Dig through your deck (getting your terminal draw en route) until you hit your first Stash.
3.  Play your terminal draw, which you know is going to grab you the rest of your Stashes, rather than drawing green or dead actions.
4.  And then after your turn ends, you reshuffle, put your Stashes at the bottom, and do it all again.

For this to work, you'd want to buy exactly X+1 Stashes, where X is the number of cards your terminal draws (so, if you use Smithy, buy 4 Stashes, no more). 

The strength of the combo will depend (1) the quality of your terminal draw card, and (2) an opening that can help you hit $5 consistently to fund multiple Stash/HP buys early on.  Ideal case is #1 and #2 being the same card (e.g., Smithy on a 4/3 opening) so you can get by with fewer HPs. 

This can even work in Colony games as long as your terminal draw is +3 cards or more (Stash x4 + Silver + Copper = Colony).  In fact, a +3 or more draw card is probably better in a Colony game than in a Province Game, unless you also have +buy (Margrave, Council Room) to make use of leftover extra Stash money, either to buy more Hunting Parties (with Council Room, Stash x5 + Silver + Copper = Province + HP) or, of all things, Estates (with Margrave, Stash x4 + Silver + Copper = Province + Estate), given that your HPs are already skipping merrily past your starting three Estates.

Problem: if your first Stash gets picked up as the first of two cards drawn by HP, you will skip the rest and trigger a reshuffle.

But you'll also know if that's going to happen, so you can just play a Great Hall or something instead of that HP.

You can tell how long it's been since I played with Stash IRL. I forgot about the unique back.

[WanderingWinder]

What about combining Stash, Hunting Parties, and terminal draw?

1.  Clump your Stashes at the bottom of your deck.
2.  Play Hunting Parties.  Dig through your deck (getting your terminal draw en route) until you hit your first Stash.
3.  Play your terminal draw, which you know is going to grab you the rest of your Stashes, rather than drawing green or dead actions.
4.  And then after your turn ends, you reshuffle, put your Stashes at the bottom, and do it all again.

For this to work, you'd want to buy exactly X+1 Stashes, where X is the number of cards your terminal draws (so, if you use Smithy, buy 4 Stashes, no more). 

The strength of the combo will depend (1) the quality of your terminal draw card, and (2) an opening that can help you hit $5 consistently to fund multiple Stash/HP buys early on.  Ideal case is #1 and #2 being the same card (e.g., Smithy on a 4/3 opening) so you can get by with fewer HPs. 

This can even work in Colony games as long as your terminal draw is +3 cards or more (Stash x4 + Silver + Copper = Colony).  In fact, a +3 or more draw card is probably better in a Colony game than in a Province Game, unless you also have +buy (Margrave, Council Room) to make use of leftover extra Stash money, either to buy more Hunting Parties (with Council Room, Stash x5 + Silver + Copper = Province + HP) or, of all things, Estates (with Margrave, Stash x4 + Silver + Copper = Province + Estate), given that your HPs are already skipping merrily past your starting three Estates.

Problem: if your first Stash gets picked up as the first of two cards drawn by HP, you will skip the rest and trigger a reshuffle.

But you'll also know if that's going to happen, so you can just play a Great Hall or something instead of that HP.

You can tell how long it's been since I played with Stash IRL. I forgot about the unique back.

It's there on isotropic, too.
I also think stash is underrated, and I love finding interesting ways of using its ability.

[jomini]

I'd put stash ahead of BM. BM market is exceptionally fiddly and a crapshoot. Yes BM/Tactician is good, but pretty much everything else is a 2.5 or worse card combo - quarries need mid-turn card gainers to actually do something useful for example.  Further, even with tactician  there are a lot of other options for having strong megaturns every time: (secret chamber, vault, forge, golem/draw, etc.). It is just harder to get to work well.

Stash, on the other hand, will always allow you to clump silvers for a reasonably strong hand most reshuffles at a minimum.

It works well with a lot of combos:
Stash/Chancellor
Stash/Mint
Stash/Wishing Well
Stash/Venture
Stash/Hunting Party/draw
Stash/Loan
Stash/Cross Roads

It also works as a marginal to decent counter to deck inspection attacks, noble brigands, thieves, pirate ships, and jesters.

This is NOT to say that stash is strong, just that I think the order for the promo cards should be:
5. Walled Village
4. BM
3. Stash
2. Envoy
1. Governor

Governor is hard to play well, but it is just so much more versatile than than envoy. You can easily mitigate the +1 card with any hand reducer (and have a +action built in), the point gain on the last turn with the remodel option can be insane (easily offsetting duchy gains) and gain a silver can be an attack on many decks. Not to mention how well this sucker can feed on itself (KC a Governor to gain a gold, draw it, and then remodel it into a province).

[AJD]

es BM/Tactician is good, but pretty much everything else is a 2.5 or worse card combo - quarries need mid-turn card gainers to actually do something useful for example.

I mean, not really—Quarry/BM works in basically the same way Quarry / any +buy works; get a cool action from the Black Market at then still have enough money left over to buy something else useful out of the supply. For this to be valuable there have to be action card in the supply that you want for cheap, but that's a property of Quarry, not a property of its combo with Black Market.

[jomini]

AJD: The big combo potential with quarry/BM is that you can put the quarry(ies) in play and then break out card gainers. For instance village + black market + quarry (goes into play during BM play) + Iron Works allows for you to gain a goons with the IW. Likewise, you could do something like village/BM/Quarry/upgrade to turn an estate into an upgrade or turn a copper into a BM. The synergy is that black market lets you play quarry during the action phrase and bring down the prices of all the actions for the rest of the action phase.

This combo can get really nasty with tricks like village/BM/quarry/swindler - where you can swindle 5 coin actions down into silvers (4/6 into estates, or even something really hilarious like KC -> curse) or village/BM/Quarry/Saboteur - where every sab can only hit VP & cash (it floors people when you play KC/sab and flip past all those engine cards to knock 3 provinces into duchies).

Royal seal, quarry, and diadem all work this way - you get more benefits by having they active in the action phase thanks to BM.

When they can work, these combos tend to be quite strong. However in order to work they normally need a good bit of support - e.g. BM/quarry only works with some source of + action, some sort of card gainer, something worth the effort (e.g. KC, goons), and (likely) some way to get good odds of hitting the combo. This support just makes these types of combos unreliable and not as good as simpler stuff with stash.

[rinkworks]

Black Market-Quarry-Gainer is of course a strong combo if it's available and you can manage it, but I think AJD's point, which I agree with, is that Black Market-Quarry is a solid combo all by itself.  The reason is that Quarry-+Buy is itself a combo, and Black Market is roughly like a +Buy in that you get an extra buy during your action phase with it.  Moreover, actions are usually what you buy from the black market, so Quarry is almost always relevant with it.  If you buy an action out of the Black Market and another from the supply, then your Quarry was effectively a Platinum.

[jomini]

The +buy/quarry synergy, though isn't going to sell me on most BM decks unless there is something else out there to make quarry useful. E.g. some honest +buy, some useful 2, some village support so I can avoid massing terminals, etc. Even then, on a lot of boards I'd get better synergy out of most other +buys.

[rinkworks]

The +buy/quarry synergy, though isn't going to sell me on most BM decks unless there is something else out there to make quarry useful. E.g. some honest +buy, some useful 2, some village support so I can avoid massing terminals, etc. Even then, on a lot of boards I'd get better synergy out of most other +buys.

A board that's good for Black Market probably already has some kind of Village in it and likely a good $2-coster.  So two of your three requirements are probably already the case.  As for honest +Buy, I don't think it's necessary.  Obviously it's (often) better if it's there, but Black Market's fake +Buy is more likely to be useful to Quarry than true +Buy, for the simple reason that you're more likely to use Black Market's fake +Buy on Actions, since that's most of what's in the Black Market.

But in fact, you don't even need to make use of Black Market's fake +Buy for Quarry to be great:  since using Black Market means probably buying Actions, that in turn makes Quarry a Gold for $4.  If you do make use of the fake +Buy (or indeed any true +Buy), then it's a Platinum or better.  I've played Black Market + Quarry kind of a lot, and it can be beautiful.

I'd agree you'd probably have to want some other action card out of the proper kingdom, or else Quarry would be a bad card on turns where it doesn't collide with your Black Market(s).  But as I said before, a kingdom good for Black Market in the first place probably has Villages in it, so there's one likely possibility already.

[jomini]

My point is more that tables where black market is a good buy to begin with are rather rare -- rarer than stash in my estimation.

Black Market has four qualities going for it:
1. Its a terminal silver
2. It allows treasure play during the action phase.
3. It allows access to cards not in the kingdom.
4. It comes with a quasi +buy.

Arguing that quarry/BM is good combo on the basis of 1 & 4 is pretty weak. I mean woodcutters can do the same thing and I don't think anyone says that woodcutters + quarry is a good combo. More often this is more of a three card combo e.g. BM/upgrade/quarry is quite strong without other +buy. I just don't see a way see all that many true 2 card combos for BM. Quarry/BM "works" but not much better than things like wood cutters and a lot worse than things like goons.

You can play the lottery to find a card that gives an ability not found outside of the BM deck (cursing, trashing, discard), you can build 2.5ish card combos to take advantage of abilities, 2 &4, or you can buy a silver. Now don't get me wrong when I see good BM combos - like quarry/village/IW or BM/village/library/discard then sure - it can be quite useful but these things are just too rare to make it worth chasing, most of the time.

[Sprocket]

Does anyone else feel like Governor is drastically undercosted?  Of the ~15 games I've played with it, it almost always dominates the game in a sort of broken way where no other strategy even matters.  (generally by: make gold, draw them all, remodel into provinces to end game on turn 12 where opponent doesn't get to use his extra cards).

[chwhite]

Does anyone else feel like Governor is drastically undercosted?  Of the ~15 games I've played with it, it almost always dominates the game in a sort of broken way where no other strategy even matters.  (generally by: make gold, draw them all, remodel into provinces to end game on turn 12 where opponent doesn't get to use his extra cards).

Who needs Governor when you can have Bureaucrat instead?

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111215-144059-0d4bc0f0.html

[chwhite]

How I'd rank 'em:

1. Governor- A little dangerous, but often a lot powerful.  The +Cards option is awesome in boards with discard attacks and often useful even without them; the Gold gain is probably the lowest-risk option and great with trashing; the remodel option is more situational, and easier to give your opponent unwanted benefits, but can be quite strong in the endgame.  Not a top $5 card, but above average, and by far the best promo.

2. Envoy- Like Smithy, except it's a bit faster in BM, a little more fragile against attacks, and a lot more annoying on both ends.  I don't like this card very much at all, but the other three promo cards are so weak on average.

3. Black Market- Great swingy fun on isotropic (and a PITA in real life), which leads to it being way overbought and having atrocious CR stats.  Not quite as bad as those stats, but also not actually that good most of the time.  The best part about Black Market is actually not that it gives you exclusive access to cards (that you probably don't want or can't afford), but that it lets you play treasures out of turn, which is great for Library or Tactician combos.  About as strong (okay, about as weak) as Walled Village, BM gets the #3 spot because it's more memorable.

4. Walled Village- An overpriced Village most of the time.  But sometimes you just need that Village, and its effect can be useful if you're running mostly a money deck with just a couple Torturers or something.  Even the worst Village (and it's IMO merely second-worst) is better than Stash. 

5. Stash- One of the weakest $5s: the benefit this provides over Silver is not worth almost doubling its price; the Chancellor combo is cute and it's good defense against Pirates, but otherwise it's only worth buying on truly awful boards where you'd just spend $5 on a Silver anyway.  A dreadful combination of boring and underpowered.

[Tejayes]

The card Walled Village does not have any connection with the mechanics of the game Carcassonne. However, Carcassonne takes its name from a real medieval walled village.

Really? I always thought that the mechanic came from how the Meeples would stay on the board until the road, city, or cloister was completed. Similarly, the Walled Village stays on your deck/in your hand until you complete its task of using two other Actions (at least those that don't trash themselves).

[Sprocket]

Nice game.  Your beaurocrat didn't hit once, but it looks like the extra silver paid off.  He didn't really go for the whole make a ton of gold and remodel them into provinces thing, and remodeling his estates early definitely helped you with yours as well. 

Who needs Governor when you can have Bureaucrat instead?

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111215-144059-0d4bc0f0.html

[rinkworks]

My point is more that tables where black market is a good buy to begin with are rather rare -- rarer than stash in my estimation.

That may be.  I don't necessarily dispute that.

Black Market has four qualities going for it:
1. Its a terminal silver
2. It allows treasure play during the action phase.
3. It allows access to cards not in the kingdom.
4. It comes with a quasi +buy.

Arguing that quarry/BM is good combo on the basis of 1 & 4 is pretty weak. I mean woodcutters can do the same thing and I don't think anyone says that woodcutters + quarry is a good combo.

...but here you're missing the point I keep trying to make:  the fact of item 3 allowing access mostly to action cards, for which Quarry becomes a Gold or Platinum rather than a Copper.  If you're playing Black Market, you're probably buying actions.  If you're playing Woodcutter, that is not necessarily the case at all.  (But if you ARE, then Woodcutter + Quarry is absolutely a good idea, assuming no better source of +Buy.  But it's pretty rare that you want to play Woodcutter anyway -- much more rare than you'd want to play Black Market, in my experience -- let alone with an action-heavy strategy.  Hence why Woodcutter + Quarry isn't never really cited as a good general combo to keep in mind.)