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[ben_king]

I played this game against my wife the other day, and it was one of the most interesting Dominion boards I've played in a long time.  I don't usually post in this subforum, but this board seemed worth sharing.  What made this board really interesting was:
* Tactician is the only +buy
* Double Tactician is really good with Outpost
* Alchemist stack is also really good with Outpost, but Alchemists can't be placed back on top after playing Tactician
* You can buy Donate to get a slim, efficient deck
* The number of villages is quite limited when playing Double Tactician
* But if you bought a Coin of the Realm before you went Double Tac, you can use that as a one shot village
* Wolf Den makes you want to double up on things you wouldn't normally get two of, such as potion and Outpost
* Jester is good payload and can make piles run fast (which junks the decks), but unpredictably (which makes it hard to know when to get a second Donate)

Even having played the board, I'm still not sure what the best strategy here is.  My wife and I both did Double Tactician and skipped the Alchemists.  But a case could definitely be made for single Tactician with an Alchemist stack, or maybe even an Alchemist stack that just does single Province.  Which strategy do you think is best?  Does it depend on what your opponent does?

[Deadlock39]

Double-Tac/Outpost jumps out, but the Coin payload comes only from Jester,Cutpurse, or Amulet, which is going to be slow to build.  You can get 4 buys per round there, but building it to produce enough coin to make use of the Tactician buy is going to be difficult. If you can get enough Fortresses, this is probably the better strategy, but it is not obvious to me.

I would maybe lean toward an Alchemist stack with Outpost.  It only gets 2 buys per round, but can make use of Coin of the Realm to play more Jesters without buying a ton of Fortresses.  Jester is the gainer here that you hope you get some free engine components out of.  If your opponent buys Donate, you will frequently hit something good. (and if they don't...)  This option might need to deny some Fortresses if the opponent is building Double-Tactician? 

[Seprix]

I think Tactician can't be ignored here, even with Alchemist and Outpost, because getting two buys per turn is just so huge. Winning the Fortress split is crucial. If you lose that split, you'll want to go hard for Alchemists (as if that was easy) and Jesters and piledrive before the Double Tac engine overtakes you.

[Chris is me]

Totally skip Tactician here. What good is two buys a turn if you can't hit $16? You have the best trashing and good draw with Donate and Alchemist, so you really don't need the extra draw of Tactician. Fortress is your only Village, so you are somewhat limited on your terminal money, and you have no non terminal source of money, so it is very difficult to have 2 Province turns with double Tac. Instead I would go heavy on Alchemists, Donate to nuke your deck, use Outpost + Alchemist to have two good turns (and two Province buys) in a row, and take advantage of being able to use regular ass Treasure like Silver and Gold. Tac just seems too temperamental here for a real benefit when you can get as thin as you want.

[Seprix]

Totally skip Tactician here. What good is two buys a turn if you can't hit $16? You have the best trashing and good draw with Donate and Alchemist, so you really don't need the extra draw of Tactician. Fortress is your only Village, so you are somewhat limited on your terminal money, and you have no non terminal source of money, so it is very difficult to have 2 Province turns with double Tac. Instead I would go heavy on Alchemists, Donate to nuke your deck, use Outpost + Alchemist to have two good turns (and two Province buys) in a row, and take advantage of being able to use regular ass Treasure like Silver and Gold. Tac just seems too temperamental here for a real benefit when you can get as thin as you want.

Yeah, this actually seems right.

[Aleimon Thimble]

Also, I don't think you get a second Outpost even with Wolf Den. It's just going to be a dead card, so at that point, you might as well buy a Duchy for $5 (unless it's going to be your only Duchy, of course). Second Potion is probably worth it since it only costs $4 and your Alchemists benefit from it as well.

[LaLight]

Also, I don't think you get a second Outpost even with Wolf Den. It's just going to be a dead card, so at that point, you might as well buy a Duchy for $5 (unless it's going to be your only Duchy, of course). Second Potion is probably worth it since it only costs $4 and your Alchemists benefit from it as well.

Okay and what will be the difference between Duchy and outpost at this point? Duchy will be the same "Dead card bought not to get -3 points". At least Outpost can be played sometimes

[Aleimon Thimble]

Also, I don't think you get a second Outpost even with Wolf Den. It's just going to be a dead card, so at that point, you might as well buy a Duchy for $5 (unless it's going to be your only Duchy, of course). Second Potion is probably worth it since it only costs $4 and your Alchemists benefit from it as well.

Okay and what will be the difference between Duchy and outpost at this point? Duchy will be the same "Dead card bought not to get -3 points". At least Outpost can be played sometimes

You're not going to dud if you have enough Alchemists, so the second Outpost will probably always be dead... but I guess you're right that it makes no difference. The only way it might matter is if you're also using Journeyman for draw, but you'd probably name Province over Duchy and you're probably not using Journeyman anyway...

[ipofanes]

How about buying multiple Fortresses before your Donation in order to pay back your debts with multiple Jesters/Cutpurses?

[markusin]

Totally skip Tactician here. What good is two buys a turn if you can't hit $16? You have the best trashing and good draw with Donate and Alchemist, so you really don't need the extra draw of Tactician. Fortress is your only Village, so you are somewhat limited on your terminal money, and you have no non terminal source of money, so it is very difficult to have 2 Province turns with double Tac. Instead I would go heavy on Alchemists, Donate to nuke your deck, use Outpost + Alchemist to have two good turns (and two Province buys) in a row, and take advantage of being able to use regular ass Treasure like Silver and Gold. Tac just seems too temperamental here for a real benefit when you can get as thin as you want.

Yeah this makes sense, though maybe worth noting that Coin of the Realm is in the game, so Fortress isn't quite your only village oh but Double Tactican would be discarding Coin.

[ipofanes]

Does the card-drawing from Donate come after "this turn's clean-up phase" referred to in Outpost, and effectively overrules the 3 card part of Outpost, but not the extra turn part? The Possession reference in Donate rules clarification says that the effect "happens between turns".

[Chris is me]

Does the card-drawing from Donate come after "this turn's clean-up phase" referred to in Outpost, and effectively overrules the 3 card part of Outpost, but not the extra turn part? The Possession reference in Donate rules clarification says that the effect "happens between turns".

Yes, if you buy Donate after a normal turn but before an Outpost turn, you get an Outpost turn with a 5 card hand; albeit you also lose the benefit of any top decked Alchemists.

[Seprix]

Wow, so you get a nice head start in paying off your debt with Outpost, not to mention buying Donate and trashing nothing may be the correct call when it comes to Outpost turns, assuming you have a payload that does not care for Debt/can pay off Debt in the Outpost turn.

[terminalCopper]

This is really a fascinating board, and I am pretty sure that the answer is surprisingly simple: Go Village-Smithy, kind of. More precisely, I expect the best plan to be:

T1-T4 Get three Silvers and Outpost
T5 Donate everything else
T6 Pay the rest of your debt, buy a CotR, play Outpost; buy a Journeyman
T7-8: Buy two more Journeymen, a second CotR, and a silver/gold
T9-T11, repeat:
Play a Journeyman, call a CotR, a second Journeyman, Outpost, pay (with your second CotR) a province
Outpost turn: play three journeymen, pay with your second CotR, buy a province

If everything works like this, you have 6 provinces in T11 - granted, something will go wrong, but this will be the exception: Both CotR (you don't need a village to start with) and Journeymans skipping increase reliability. Outpost turns will likely be good if you have a journeyman in your first three, and having three journeymen in a thin deck makes it very likely.
 Therefore, I expect a simulator to get an average of less than 13 turns till you buy the 6th prov.

Right then, none of the fancy cards helps you get there nearly in time, and even if you manage to curse a bit with Jester, an extra donation merely costs half a turn.

All in all, I am really happy to see that good old village-smithy seems to be still alive in Empires ... man it's such a great expansion can't wait to play it online

[Seprix]

This is really a fascinating board, and I am pretty sure that the answer is surprisingly simple: Go Village-Smithy, kind of. More precisely, I expect the best plan to be:

T1-T4 Get three Silvers and Outpost
T5 Donate everything else
T6 Pay the rest of your debt, buy a CotR, play Outpost; buy a Journeyman
T7-8: Buy two more Journeymen, a second CotR, and a silver/gold
T9-T11, repeat:
Play a Journeyman, call a CotR, a second Journeyman, Outpost, pay (with your second CotR) a province
Outpost turn: play three journeymen, pay with your second CotR, buy a province

If everything works like this, you have 6 provinces in T11 - granted, something will go wrong, but this will be the exception: Both CotR (you don't need a village to start with) and Journeymans skipping increase reliability. Outpost turns will likely be good if you have a journeyman in your first three, and having three journeymen in a thin deck makes it very likely.
 Therefore, I expect a simulator to get an average of less than 13 turns till you buy the 6th prov.

Right then, none of the fancy cards helps you get there nearly in time, and even if you manage to curse a bit with Jester, an extra donation merely costs half a turn.

All in all, I am really happy to see that good old village-smithy seems to be still alive in Empires ... man it's such a great expansion can't wait to play it online

Wandering Winder would be proud of you, son.

You're probably older than me though.