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[aku_chi]

Tip for making your passage more secret: extinguish the torch illuminating the entrance.

- Isn't this the niftiest card?
- What are some of its niftiest synergies?  Personally, I like Native Village and Lookout.
- Even on boards without any nifty synergies, Secret Passage can help you avoid terminal collision, space out your villages and terminals, seed your next turn, smooth money, or make bad cards miss the shuffle.  How valuable is this?
- Under what circumstances would you open with Secret Passage?

[4est]

Secret Passage of course works great with actions that care about the top or second card of your deck: wish well with Wishing Well and Mystic, set up an action card for Herald or Vassal to play, place junk for Sentry or Lookout to trash, etc.

A few other Estate sifting synergies come to mind: Topdeck an Estate and then skip it with Farming Village. Put an Estate second from the top and then your Ironmonger is a Lab.

Secret Passage isn't necessarily a power card, but it's certainly a handy utility and has some tricks up its sleeve.

[Chris is me]

It's a neat sifter variant, plus all the topdeck tricks and all that. I usually get my money's worth out of it.

[jomini]

The biggest use of Secret Passage is simply smoothing out your deck. Dump a village into the top of next turn. Keep the silver, send back the gold when you have $11 in hand. It is vastly more flexible than Courtyard so you can use it to kick back one of two terminals (e.g. 1 action with Smithy & Hag in hand) and it drops effortlessly into most engines. On the flip side it is exceedingly weak as a standalone play.

Late game it gets a second wind as you can eke out Duchies and Provs easier for a few critical turns by stuffing the bottom deck with green. Yeah when you get to those garbage hands they will suck, but very often you will have won or lost before you get to the bottom of your deck if you and the opponent both when engine, nabbed a few provinces, and are now tanking on duchies.

Unlike most sifting, Spass is actually pretty terrible at dealing with junk - it increases your search space by only 1 card for most things, but does not increase the frequency with which you see cards (shuffles are just as long and generally you still "play" each card once per shuffle). Smoothing is good, and it is nice not to lose draw like with a lot of sifters (e.g. Whouse, Cellar), but if you have garbage in hand it is often better to discard it rather than have to Gship it back somewhere in your deck.


On the other hand, it is great at setting up combo turns of low density/high impact cards (e.g. dumping back Kc x2 and Brg x3 from a 20 card deck into a single hand, or Nec, Smithy, Spass, Hgrounds, Silver, Gold, Copper, Hops). Doing that requires a high density of Spass's, but they are cheap enough to get in bulk from gainers.

[Dingan]

it is great at setting up combo turns of low density/high impact cards (e.g. dumping back Kc x2 and Brg x3 from a 20 card deck into a single hand, or Nec, Smithy, Spass, Hgrounds, Silver, Gold, Copper, Hops).

Just to add to this -- it's not only good for power combos but also pretty much any multi-card synergies.  Baron/Estate, Tournament/Province, Quarry/Stonemason, whatever.  Just as long as you're Ok with delaying those cards by a turn or 2; and potentially by a shuffle.

[aku_chi]

Secret Passage does seem pretty great in a Tournament game.  It can help you spike $8, help pair up your Tournament and Province, help repeatedly block opponents' Tournaments (at the cost of making your starting hands otherwise worse), and help make the most of your prizes (e.g. make sure that Princess isn't wasted on a turn with a low coin payload).

I would need a pretty compelling reason not to buy Secret Passage over duplicate Tournaments.

[majiponi]

Chapel.

[trivialknot]

I've tried a few not-so-bright ideas with Secret Passage.  One time I got several to protect myself from Mountebank in a game without trashing (make sure I have a curse in hand to discard).  I think it might have worked a total of one time.

I am not sure that Secret Passage is always good for colliding cards, particularly when the cards you want to collide are cheaper than Secret Passage itself.  Tournament+Province maybe, but Baron+Estate I'm not so sure.  Quarry+Stonemason, uh that doesn't require card collision does it?

[jomini]

I've tried a few not-so-bright ideas with Secret Passage.  One time I got several to protect myself from Mountebank in a game without trashing (make sure I have a curse in hand to discard).  I think it might have worked a total of one time.

I am not sure that Secret Passage is always good for colliding cards, particularly when the cards you want to collide are cheaper than Secret Passage itself.  Tournament+Province maybe, but Baron+Estate I'm not so sure.  Quarry+Stonemason, uh that doesn't require card collision does it?

Quarry/Smason is vastly more powerful if you can line up Quarry x2 and +buy. Take something like Quarry x2, Market. If you can line that up you have very good odds of hitting $6 and having everything cost $4 less. That means with overpay you could buy fun stuff like Kc x2, Hgrounds x2 or Prince x2, Market x2.

Or think of it this way: with 1 buy and a Quarry in play, the Quarry is a functional Gold. With overpay the Quarry is functionally a Plat. With a +buy and overbuy, Quarry is functionally $9.

Smason doubles the effect of Quarry and +buy can multiply it again. This sort of multiplication can get crazy strong, particularly if you want a lot of hard to purchase cards (e.g. Gmarket, Kc, mass Suana/Avantos, Hireling, Hgrounds). If you are making a double Quarry setup, then lining them up with +buy is just crazy strong.

[Chappy7]

I just had a really fun game with secret passage.  We had Secret Passage, Courtier, Legionary, Enchantress, Vagrant, Castles, squire, forager, baron, and wild hunt.  It made for tons of fun possibilities.  Use courtier and always get it with you enchantress, or use wild hunt and easily pair up your gained estates with barons, easily set up your legionaries with golds, or simply turn your vagrants all into laboratories.  That was easily one of the most fun games I've had in a while.

Plus I just have a crush on Castles and I think they make every game more fun.