Had a miserably bad shuffle luck game last night...until I thought about it some more.
Border Village, Forum, Capital, Smithy, Ranger, Mining Village, Quarry, Chapel, Miser, Overlord.
4P, IRL. The obvious play in my estimation was opening Quarry, Chapel and using QCCC to buy Border Village/Smithy pairs (or even a Border Village/Forum once or twice.)
My first post-shuffle hand was EEEQC. Argh! I couldn't even get a Forum! I mean, I'm a disciplined enough player to trash four coppers with the following hand of Chapel/CCCC, but still. Infuriating. Unfortunately, I made another blunder. Since I knew the plan, as above, I knew I would have some extra terminal space and purchased a Smithy with my QC.
I drew Smithy/Chapel together in the next three shuffles, never once hitting the QCCC I needed to have the deck start doing anything even remotely useful. In a four-player game, I ended up with ONE BV.
I kept cursing my shuffle luck, but on reflection, perhaps I should have bought Mining Village on QC, because it couldn't possibly hurt. Playing that Terminal Smithy and drawing Estates I couldn't trash (and not the QCCC) just murdered my game.
I'm beginning to think that in Chapel games, you should be carefully considering buys by thinking about both the best thing and worst thing that can possibly happen on the next shuffle.