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[DG]

Game 4: Kingdom | Log | starting at 48:40
Tournament, Golem and Bridge. I start off for an early lead winning the first price until he gets a huge quad Bridge turn while I don't have a Province in hand to block his Tournaments. Also, I get Expand very late and he's got the extra Golem which helps as well. Maybe I took too many Tournaments here...

I've just noticed this interesting kingdom from a couple of weeks ago and I'm guessing it is a very hard kingdom to play, so I'll say something about it. Or rather I'll say something about building with golems which is a pretty difficult topic in itself.  Some decks can suit messy golem play but this needs clearer planning to draw through the deck, increase the hand size, generate +actions, and bring the strongest action cards into play. Firstly, In a golem deck any poor action cards are a handicap. If the poor action card wasn't there then the golem would find a better card to play. Secondly, the quality of a card can change if it must be played by a golem immediately rather than played at best time. In this kingdom  the shanty town, tournament, moneylender, and expand can be worse when played immediately (we could even include feast/workshop played before any bridges as well). Similarly, it might be hard to expand a fortress if the golems repeatedly put the fortress into play. Thirdly, you need a solid income to buy the golem but that might not fit well with non-income cards like workshops. Finally you want to avoid overloading with terminals that can end the turn when drawn as a pair by a golem.

So how does that change how we build the deck? Well the shanty towns are risky and can be avoided unless they are very likely to draw. The moneylender still looks good in setting up the tournament deck even if it is bad once the prizes come out. Silver is ok but you don't really want to spend time trashing copper with a moneylender just to replace it with silver. The workshop now looks worse in a number of ways and can be skipped. Some tournaments are needed but too taking many will clog the golems in the endgame. There's still a lot of difficult questions remaining in this kingdom though.

[SCSN]

Firstly, In a golem deck any poor action cards are a handicap. If the poor action card wasn't there then the golem would find a better card to play.

I agree with your board-specific recommendations, but when you state the above as a general principle I strongly disagree with it. The most important thing in Golem decks is to maintain a healthy ratio of non-terminals to terminals, with the non-terminals ideally being at least cantrips.

Pearl Diver—a poor action card if there ever was one—is quite good in a Golem deck when there aren't better cantrips. A deck of Golems and Bridges is certainly much improved by adding a bunch of Pearl Divers to it, and on most Golem plays you'd prefer to hit 1+ Pearl Diver over 2 Bridges, despite Bridge being a much stronger card overall.

[DG]

I didn't go into the full definition of a 'poor card' for brevity and it is certainly true that it depends upon the kingdom. There are also cards such as moneylender, in this kingdom, that vary in quality throughout the game.