I'm mostly creating this post to annoy Awaclus with the subject line.
Kidding. Actually, it's partly because I need to get better at slogs. In my IRL playgroup, I feel like everyone almost always plays an engine, even when it's probably wrong. I can usually look at a kingdom and know immediately there's just no way anyone's going to draw deck before piles run out, or get to doubles before singles drain the pile. I also roll my eyes at players settling for singles when the kingdom clearly supports doubles/triples or even a megaturn.
So...Sea Hag. 3P, 20 curses. I opened SH and Silver. Festival/Oracle sure didn't sound enginey to me, but Herald? And City Quarter? Overlooked cards in my group.
As soon as I started hitting $5, I repeatedly overpayed for Herald, topdecking my one copy of Sea Hag. The only trashing was Raze. Picked up a Festival at some point for the +buy to get Pearl Divers in handfuls to make Heralds/City Quarter better.
The other two players struggled to do anything. One tried many Razes. One bought two copies of Sea Hag, but still lost the curse split badly. So many curses!
I picked up a couple of Pearl Divers on dud turns, and one City Quarter, and a late gold.
It seems ridiculous to call that an engine, because the whole build was predicated on playing key actions reliably without necessarily drawing deck and without sifting. I played SH far more often than opponents, and got to my razes far more often, killing the few curses I had (and the dead Sea Hag) but ended the game with a final turn in which I did, in fact, draw deck, and with $10 and two buys bought the only Province in the game and the last Pearl Diver, for something like a 6/-3/-2 victory. Silly. (Curse/Raze/Pearl Diver.)
And probably wrong. This is why I say I'm bad at slogs. I feel like I would have been killed by experienced players who know to grab lots of cheap VP (even Duchies and Estates) knowing that there's no way anyone's going to hit $8 before piles run out.
On the other hand, my build worked exactly as I planned, and feels like it may have out-performed a points slog in a 2P game because those are some nice components that could easily have bought a few Provinces before ending the game.
