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[gt_peter]

I apparently caught a much higher ranked player by surprise!

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120111-132545-b2356f3a.html

Adding commentary:

Here is the board:
Black Market, Courtyard, Highway, Lighthouse, Moneylender, Silk Road, Tactician, Thief, Worker's Village, and Young Witch ( Workshop♦ )

I'm pretty sure he's going to go Young Witch, and sure enough on turn 1 he does it. On turn 1 I pick up a Workshop (bane) and on his turn 2 he buys the lighthouse. I decide to NOT buy ANY Young Witches.

For some reason I have a masochistic streak where I try to win while NOT buying cursing cards when possible. The standard buy for me is to pick up the Young Witch, but I can't resist trying to go without it. If the bane card is good then there are often better things to do with a $4 buy and using a terminal action slot in your deck. The presence of lighthouse is very helpful as well. I decide to go for a low money deck built around highways and worker's villages and go for 1 or 2 mega turns. My fall back is to go to Silk Road with Duchy and Estates derived from the Workshops.

I use the workshops to get a big advantage on Worker's Villages, which I need to +buy and enable multi-Workshop turns. Then I start after the Highways in Turn 7. Up to this point my startegy probably looks a lot like a village idiot. The Worker's Villages will allow me to play my Workshops to gain Highways after one Highway has been played and eventually provinces. With the first Highway in my deck the engine is starting to shape up.

By Turn 10 we split the Worker's Villages 7-3 in my favor and I have 3 Highways. By Turn 12 I have 7 Highways. In Turn 13 I get my 8th Highway and pick up 2 Courtyards to pull cards into my hand and manage subsequent turns.

In turn 15, I add 2 Tacticians to ensure the mega turn. In Turn 16 my opponent buys his first Province, which is late. I would have expected him to further ahead by now (Score is 14-3 in his favor).

And finally in Turn 17 (Even without the Tacticians) I nab 4 provinces (2 with Workshops, 2 with money), 4 Duchies (emptying the 3rd pile) and a silk road as a kicker for 43VPs and the win.

[WanderingWinder]

I'd probably go workshop/silk road without much of a second thought...

[Biderman]

What he said. You should really both be kicking yourselves for not playing Workshop Silk Road. I doubt the optimal play has any cards besides those two, estates, courtyards, and maybe Villages.

[RisingJaguar]

Normally I would think that workshop to silks is best, but with Worker's village for the +buy and +actions as well as tactician (eventually, you shouldn't need any money to continue your engine) compensates for not having a +cards in this deck.  I'm willing to bet if this was player with a few minor adjustments (earlier tactician and less silvers), that it would be best.

Sidenote: if you were to go for silk roads, would you get moneylender here? and how many worker's village would you get? I'm thinking yes and 4-5 eventually.

[ackack]

Normally I would think that workshop to silks is best, but with Worker's village for the +buy and +actions as well as tactician (eventually, you shouldn't need any money to continue your engine) compensates for not having a +cards in this deck.  I'm willing to bet if this was player with a few minor adjustments (earlier tactician and less silvers), that it would be best.

I agree, the combo is quite strong here. I think the question is how likely you are to get an early Tactician with an opening like Silver/Workshop. If you don't hit 5 on turn 3 or 4, seems like a guaranteed loss at that point to the Silk Road/Workshop strategy. One of the problems is that if you're hoping not to clog with Silver (and to eventually exploit Workshop to gain big cards) you probably need a fair number of Workshops to start picking up Highways and WVs. But of course that is accelerating the Silk Road rusher as well.