Anyways, I think that's what is going on here: you and SCSN (and maybe DG? Not sure where he stands on this) seem to have a certain set of priorities here for deck building:
Priority 1: trash ALL the starting cards
Priority 2: make a deck that can be drawn and maybe overdrawn with Menageries
Priority 3: decide on payload, go get that payload.
My priorities are more like this:
Priority 1: Gain a butt-load of good cards that are helpful for drawing deck (Menagerie is a part of this but not the backbone of it -- Bazaar/Smithy enters into this equation (I'm not trying to say my Smithy was right, I'm just saying I got it too soon))
Priority 2: Have Foragers chomping away at starting cards.
Priority 3: Don't lose the Vineyards split, but have a bunch more Action cards than my opponent.
I want to address something here.
The way you order these priorities makes it seem like you have an ordered list of rules you follow. Can I achieve priority 1 by doing this action? If so, do that. If I can't, or if I've already done priority 1, then can I do priority 2 with this action? And so on down the list.
Now, I'm not sure if that's your decision scheme, but if it is it's not a great way to choose what to do. These priorities you're specifying are intertwined. Doing well in one area can make the other naturally follow, and the things you want to do right now are going to change on every turn. On one turn you're going to favor trashing, and on another turn you'll favor buying more engine pieces, and figuring out when to make those switches is pretty much the game.
When you say Stef/SCSN's top priority is to trash all the starting cards, then overdraw their deck, I'd agree with that. It's also how I tend to play. However, these aren't competing goals, they're complimentary goals. As you trash out starting cards, you need fewer actions to draw your deck, because you have fewer cards total. Similarly, if you're drawing your deck every turn, then you can play a trasher every turn, and that lets you get thin fast. So, it's not trash THEN draw deck, it's trash AND draw deck. Heuristically, prioritizing trashing over getting draw cards gets you to that goal faster. When you trash, the actions you get to buy are less expensive, but the amount of cards those actions draw is often similar/only slightly worse, which gets more than made up for by the cards you trashed that shuffle.
So, I disagree with Priority 1 of buying draw cards, and Priority 2 of having Foragers munch away at cards. They're both going to happen at the same time anyways! A lot more often than you'd think, doing a trashing heavy approach lets you blunder into a very well-tuned draw deck. How do you trash quickly? You buy more trashers, or you play your trashers as often as possible. Doing the first isn't always worth it if you already have X Foragers (where X is often at least 2) or X Chapels (where X is almost always 1). So, how do you do the second? You cycle through your deck as fast as you can. How do you do that? Well, by trashing! (Which is why you buy trashers as early as you can afford to) Or, failing that, by buying cards that cycle you faster. In this game, that means Menagerie/Bazaar, or Smithy once you have the actions to support it. I've said this before and I'll say it again, cycling is king. Optimizing cycling is one of the weirdest, subtlest ways to get a deck that seems to always be 0.5-1 turn ahead of your opponent.
See MicQ's comment about the moment you are screwed. Sometimes you luck into cycling, which naturally lucks you into getting good trashing, which means you no longer need luck to get through your deck. It's lucky the first time, but the luck you need is dropping every time that happens because you're getting better probabilities thanks to the thinner deck you're getting along the way. And it's hard to get the 1 lucky snowballing turn if your deck doesn't have that be possible.
That's why I favor Bazaar over 2nd Haggler there
- Bazaar is 1 card more cycling that comes with some economy. The +1 card now gives marginally more trashing since I can draw a little deeper, which can grow to significantly more trashing. It may not always give you a raw #-trashed advantage but it can increase your chances of that happening.
- Haggler is not a cycling card, and I already have a Haggler, and the actions I could potentially gain from the 2nd aren't worth losing the +1 card I can get this shuffle because of the snowball effect. And if they collide I'm super sad.
- Bazaar gives you more of a chance to spike $8. Spiking $8 is HUGE here! Especially because you pretty much only hit $8 if you have Hagglers out, so you're gaining whatever you feel like on top of the Province for Tournament. Since you have no +Actions it's impossible to play 2 Hagglers, thus Bazaar is strictly better than a 2nd Haggler at hitting $8. Better if your Bazaar draws you into Haggler, around the same if it doesn't. That's the justification I'd use in game. In reality it's impossible for your deck to hit $8 that shuffle. But, buying Bazaar gives you more flexibility in setting up a deck that can hit $8 on the shuffle after that, since you can now hope to play 2 Hagglers in 1 turn.
- A 2nd Haggler only sets you up for a better shuffle afterwards if they don't collide and you get good money splits (note you're now forced to hit $5 for Bazaar and you can't do Bazaar gaining Smithy because of your 2nd Haggler terminal.) A Bazaar gives you more flexibility in the actions you want/can support, which is good with Haggler out. Haggler is a weird payload + engine builder hybrid and you've gotten too much payload too fast, you need the cycling support before the payload.
These may be compelling in a different order for you. But to me, the 1st + 2nd are 99% good enough to favor Bazaar over Haggler. The 3rd makes it certain to me, and the 4th is just a bonus.
In short, if I were in that position, my annotated reasoning would be
- Trashing cards fast makes it easier to draw my deck and lets me play my actions more often
- I can trash faster if I play my trashers more often
- I can play my trashers more often if I maximize the # of cards I can see per turn
- The best way I can do that given my current deck is to buy the Bazaar because I will naturally fall into lots of draw from my Menagerie once I Forager away enough things
- A second Haggler is very greedy, is strictly worse at cycling through my deck than the Bazaar, and I need a little more time to activate Menageries anyways
(Edit: WOW that's a wall of text. I'll leave it like that because, well, I'm really not in a mood to edit it down to something nice and succinct right now.)
