The winning strategy here is an engine. Catacombs/workers village provide draw and forager provides good trashing. You should also start digging into the saboteur pile; simply put, unless your opponent can end the game very quickly, you constantly sab-ing them is going to act basically as a pin. Rats might provide some defense against this, but by far not enough to overcome playing 3+ sabs a turn. For this reason, non-engine strategies become utterly unviable, and workers villages become very important.
As for the starting buys, you have two real options; either forager/silver or forager/forager. Death cart is not a good idea (even with rats); it sets you two junk cards behind, and the extra economy is probably not worth it, especially with the presence of hoard, if you need to jump-start your economy (which you probably won't need to because of platinums), you can always buys a hoard to gain a few golds with (and trash it later with forager once you have enough golds).