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[Commodore Chuckles]

We already have Neat and Potentially Useful Card Interactions. This thread is for warnings about interactions that seem good at first but turn out not to be so good.

I'll start with:

Poor House + Coin of the Realm
Coin can be a great way to play multiple Houses in one turn... But it's a treasure

Bridge (Troll) + City Quarter
City Quarter can be a great way to play multiple Bridge (Troll)s in one turn... But they don't actually lower its cost. You'll need some other way to get $, or you'll find yourself running out of it fast. Especially a problem with Bridge Troll, since it doesn't provide any $.

[Awaclus]

Bridge Troll + Sage doesn't work when you want Sage to find $3 cards.

Banquet is not a good Duchy/Duke enabler; while Copper helps you hit $5, Copper+green cards doesn't hit $5.

[4est]

Banquet is especially annoying for Duchy/Duke since it can't gain victory cards. 

[Cave-o-sapien]

Bridge Troll + Sage doesn't work when you want Sage to find $3 cards.

I'm terrible at noticing these sorts of cost-reduction anti-synergies. My recent one:

Peddler + Ritual
Me (early in the game): Oh sweet, I can gain a bunch of Peddlers cheaply and then trash them for 8VP + Curse
Me (later in the game): Oh. Right.

[Cuzz]

Me (early in the game): Let me buy this Overlord for maximum flexibility
Me (later in the game): So many wonderful choices here, but right this second I could really use a Duplicate.
Me (seconds later): Oh. Right.

[mameluke]

Bridge Troll + Sage doesn't work when you want Sage to find $3 cards.

I'm terrible at noticing these sorts of cost-reduction anti-synergies. My recent one:

Peddler + Ritual
Me (early in the game): Oh sweet, I can gain a bunch of Peddlers cheaply and then trash them for 8VP + Curse
Me (later in the game): Oh. Right.

You can always buy Bonfire first to get rid of those pesky Bridge Trolls in play!

[Commodore Chuckles]

Bridge Troll + Sage doesn't work when you want Sage to find $3 cards.

I'm terrible at noticing these sorts of cost-reduction anti-synergies. My recent one:

Peddler + Ritual
Me (early in the game): Oh sweet, I can gain a bunch of Peddlers cheaply and then trash them for 8VP + Curse
Me (later in the game): Oh. Right.

You can always buy Bonfire first to get rid of those pesky Bridge Trolls in play!

The particular problem with Ritual is that it happens during your buy phase, which is also when Peddler's cost reduction happens.

[Skumpy]

Black Market + Capital

It's actually a decent combo if you know what you're doing. But if you're like me and you don't understand debt, it'ill be frustrating when you think you have enough money for that shiny $7 card early, and then you discover that you can't pay off debt in the Action phase. Try again later.

[sorawotobu]

In a similar vein, Storyteller + Capital

I've once had an opponent do it and I guess it could be reasonable some of the time but he didn't get any other money and just kept going deeper and deeper into debt. He resigned at 30 or so.

[sudgy]

Here's two obvious ones:

Prince + Durations
Band of Misfits/Overlord + Reserve cards

[trivialknot]

It turns out that Count can't help you reach $5 to get Windfall without a splitter.

[Seprix]

Playing Black Market/Storyteller and a Silver when you have a ton of Merchants left to play.

Upgrading coppers with Poor House on the board. We've all done it, don't lie.

It turns out that Count can't help you reach $5 to get Windfall without a splitter.

Please don't call them splitters.

[luser]

classical one:

Hm, board is just cultist bm.
20 turn later
Why are opponents vineyards worth so much?

[Awaclus]

Please don't call them splitters.

Please don't promote the usage of vaguely defined terms when clearly defined alternatives exist.

[luser]

Another antisynergy is trying to make bridge troll/higway with apprentice draw work.

[Burning Skull]

Splitter was replaced by Village in 2-nd Edition.

[Jimmmmm]

I tried to play Double Tactician into Vineyards once (No Black Market or Storyteller).

[teamlyle]

One I came by today: Torturer + Mountebank. Play Torturer, draw Mountebank, and your opponent takes the curse to block your Mountebank 

[luser]

One I came by today: Torturer + Mountebank. Play Torturer, draw Mountebank, and your opponent takes the curse to block your Mountebank 

Torturer-masq is worse. You run out of curses without cursing because opponents just gains them to send them via his or your masq to you.

[infangthief]

Cities are beginning to run low, so I want as many as I can... but until they actually run out they're not a lot of use. Hey wait, why don't I get some Overlords, they can do other useful things right now then I'll use them as Cities later.

(Later) Ho ho my opponent has obligingly emptied the Cities, now here I come with my super power Overlords...

Oh.

[Awaclus]

Cities are beginning to run low, so I want as many as I can... but until they actually run out they're not a lot of use. Hey wait, why don't I get some Overlords, they can do other useful things right now then I'll use them as Cities later.

(Later) Ho ho my opponent has obligingly emptied the Cities, now here I come with my super power Overlords...

Oh.

I had an opponent do that in a game recently.

[McGarnacle]

Fool's Gold/Hunting Party

[schadd]

rebuild + kingdom cards

[Dingan]

It turns out that Count can't help you reach $5 to get Windfall without a splitter.

Yes it can - you just gain & trash a lot of Coppers

[trivialknot]

It turns out that Count can't help you reach $5 to get Windfall without a splitter.

Yes it can - you just gain & trash a lot of Coppers

The three "drawback" options on Count all prevent Windfall from triggering because they put cards on your deck or in your discard.

[Dingan]

It turns out that Count can't help you reach $5 to get Windfall without a splitter.

Yes it can - you just gain & trash a lot of Coppers

The three "drawback" options on Count all prevent Windfall from triggering because they put cards on your deck or in your discard.

Not if you've trashed all the Coppers

[mameluke]

Bridge Troll + Sage doesn't work when you want Sage to find $3 cards.

I'm terrible at noticing these sorts of cost-reduction anti-synergies. My recent one:

Peddler + Ritual
Me (early in the game): Oh sweet, I can gain a bunch of Peddlers cheaply and then trash them for 8VP + Curse
Me (later in the game): Oh. Right.

You can always buy Bonfire first to get rid of those pesky Bridge Trolls in play!

The particular problem with Ritual is that it happens during your buy phase, which is also when Peddler's cost reduction happens.

Peddler's cost reduction is contingent on Action cards in play; Bonfire can get rid of those for you.

[trivialknot]

It turns out that Count can't help you reach $5 to get Windfall without a splitter.

Yes it can - you just gain & trash a lot of Coppers

The three "drawback" options on Count all prevent Windfall from triggering because they put cards on your deck or in your discard.

Not if you've trashed all the Coppers

I do not understand what you're saying.  If you trash all coppers and have a deck of just Count plus Silver, you cannot trigger Windfall.

[AJD]

It turns out that Count can't help you reach $5 to get Windfall without a splitter.

Yes it can - you just gain & trash a lot of Coppers

The three "drawback" options on Count all prevent Windfall from triggering because they put cards on your deck or in your discard.

Not if you've trashed all the Coppers

I do not understand what you're saying.  If you trash all coppers and have a deck of just Count plus Silver, you cannot trigger Windfall.

If you've trashed all the Coppers in the supply you can.

[trivialknot]

It turns out that Count can't help you reach $5 to get Windfall without a splitter.

Yes it can - you just gain & trash a lot of Coppers

The three "drawback" options on Count all prevent Windfall from triggering because they put cards on your deck or in your discard.

Not if you've trashed all the Coppers

I do not understand what you're saying.  If you trash all coppers and have a deck of just Count plus Silver, you cannot trigger Windfall.

If you've trashed all the Coppers in the supply you can.

Oh I see.  I thought Dingan was referring to some ridiculous edge case, like having a Watchtower in hand.  I now see I was incorrect.

[Awaclus]

It turns out that Count can't help you reach $5 to get Windfall without a splitter.

Yes it can - you just gain & trash a lot of Coppers

The three "drawback" options on Count all prevent Windfall from triggering because they put cards on your deck or in your discard.

Not if you've trashed all the Coppers

I do not understand what you're saying.  If you trash all coppers and have a deck of just Count plus Silver, you cannot trigger Windfall.

If you've trashed all the Coppers in the supply you can.

Oh I see.  I thought Dingan was referring to some ridiculous edge case, like having a Watchtower in hand.  I now see I was incorrect.

Well, he was referring to a ridiculous edge case, just a bit more ridiculous than you expected.

[Dingan]

Just trying to tell an annoying and potentially harmful joke

[Commodore Chuckles]

Sarcasm and the internet have an annoying and potentially harmful communication anti-synergy.

[Seprix]

Throne Herald, hit Counting House, draw all the Coppers, and then hit Royal Blacksmith with the second play.

[E.Honda]

I recently played a game with tournament and mountain pass and noticed mountain pass makes it even more critical to get the province first, since when you buy it, your opponent has to bet afterwards and if they bet high, you simply pass and have several rounds where they pay off their debt, unable to buy a province and you can get the prices easily. If they bet low, well, you already have a province to take prices and the debt wont hurt you that much.

[Awaclus]

I recently played a game with tournament and mountain pass and noticed mountain pass makes it even more critical to get the province first, since when you buy it, your opponent has to bet afterwards and if they bet high, you simply pass and have several rounds where they pay off their debt, unable to buy a province and you can get the prices easily. If they bet low, well, you already have a province to take prices and the debt wont hurt you that much.

However, in Rebuild games with Mountain Pass, it's very critical to not get the first Province, because if your opponent bets 40 (as they should), you can't bet more than that and then they're going to have a very major advantage.

[Commodore Chuckles]

Pretty obvious one, but hasn't been mentioned yet:

Armory + Gardens

Cheap gainers are normally a great way to rush gardens, but Armory gains those dead cards to the top of your deck.

And a less obvious one:

Overlord + Cultist

So, you can essentially gain a Cultist before your first shuffle no matter what your opening is. Great! Then comes the moment when you realize that Overlord can only be used at the START of a Cultist chain, not in the middle. D'oh!

Incidentally, the game I discovered this anti-synergy was a game I lost to a guy who bought nothing but Bakers. He didn't buy a single Cultist and got all 10 ruins, and he still won. No, I have no idea how it happened! But I suspect this blunder had something to do with it.

[Kirian]

Playing Black Market/Storyteller and a Silver when you have a ton of Merchants left to play.

Upgrading coppers with Poor House on the board. We've all done it, don't lie.

It turns out that Count can't help you reach $5 to get Windfall without a splitter.

Please don't call them splitters.

[insert Life of Brian picture]

[Cave-o-sapien]

Armory + Gardens

Cheap gainers are normally a great way to rush gardens, but Armory gains those dead cards to the top of your deck.

I think this falls squarely in the "potentially harmful" category rather than the "Oh wow, that did not work at all" category that fits some of these others. I don't think I'd aim for this strategy, but if forced into Gardens, Armory is better than nothing.

Overlord + Cultist

I would fall for this, for sure.

[sudgy]

One I came by today: Torturer + Mountebank. Play Torturer, draw Mountebank, and your opponent takes the curse to block your Mountebank 

Torturer-masq is worse. You run out of curses without cursing because opponents just gains them to send them via his or your masq to you.

Are you sure you wouldn't be cursing in this situation?

[Commodore Chuckles]

I think this falls squarely in the "potentially harmful" category rather than the "Oh wow, that did not work at all" category that fits some of these others. I don't think I'd aim for this strategy, but if forced into Gardens, Armory is better than nothing.

Well, if you read the OP, you'll see that this thread was originally supposed to be about synergies that aren't as strong as they look at first due to one or more annoying factors. It got hijacked fairly early on, though. I mean, there are lots of cards that just plain don't work with each other, at all. Those pairings just aren't all that interesting to point out, though.

[Cave-o-sapien]

I think this falls squarely in the "potentially harmful" category rather than the "Oh wow, that did not work at all" category that fits some of these others. I don't think I'd aim for this strategy, but if forced into Gardens, Armory is better than nothing.

Well, if you read the OP, you'll see that this thread was originally supposed to be about synergies that aren't as strong as they look at first due to one or more annoying factors.

Right, I'm not disagreeing with your assessment; I guess I was just "sub-classifying" it. And the argument I made for it being useful -- a mid-game pivot to Gardens -- is certainly not the Gardens-rush scenario you suggested.

[Gazbag]

Scrying pool+Chariot Race

Oh boy that spy attack will really help me win all these races!

Wait I need cards left in my deck to win races...

[Beyond Awesome]

Any cantrip is reasonable in a pool deck. Just play race first.

[Gazbag]

Any cantrip is reasonable in a pool deck. Just play race first.

Of course, but then if your opponent has an expensive card on top you can't use the spy attack on pool to help. Not to mention the fact that you don't always start with a race in your opening hand. I mean you'll still be relatively happy to pick a few races with spare buys in a pool game but there's certainly some annoying anti-synergy there.

[KingPeter]

Any cantrip is reasonable in a pool deck. Just play race first.

Of course, but then if your opponent has an expensive card on top you can't use the spy attack on pool to help. Not to mention the fact that you don't always start with a race in your opening hand. I mean you'll still be relatively happy to pick a few races with spare buys in a pool game but there's certainly some annoying anti-synergy there.

pool + race only works if you have cards left in your deck after playing pool, which isn't always the case.  If you've trashed all your starting cards and have nothing but actions in your deck, the anti-synergy is certainly there.

[Awaclus]

Any cantrip has positive synergy with Scrying Pool by virtue of being a cantrip. Pool draws it because it's a cantrip, and then it can draw another card (which is nice when you have cards in your deck that aren't Actions).

[Gazbag]

Any cantrip has positive synergy with Scrying Pool by virtue of being a cantrip. Pool draws it because it's a cantrip, and then it can draw another card (which is nice when you have cards in your deck that aren't Actions).

Everything you've said here is correct but I think you're missing the point a bit. It is in fact possible for a pair of cards to have both synergies and anti-synergies with each other. In the case of pool and race obviously cantrip actions are great with pool for the reasons you have stated. The anti-synergy is about the often overlooked spy attack that comes with pool which you want to use before you play your races but will often end up in too much of your deck being drawn due to scrying pools general brokenness.

You can do this with a number of card combinations mentioned in this thread. For example there is certainly synergy between Overlord and Cultist, any 5 cost has synergy with Overlord by virtue of being a 5 cost. If you play the Overlord as Cultist first and proceed to chain all of your regular Cultists after then it's great, play a Cultist first or expect a stack of Overlords to chain... not so great.

Count has pretty strong synergy with Windfall- it's a thinner, a really good one at that! That makes it so much easier to  draw your deck and trigger Windfall right? But then there's the anti-synergy that Count adds cards back to your deck and so you can't play it to actually buy the Windfall (unless it's the last card in your card).

[Commodore Chuckles]

Another problem is that for Chariot Race, Scrying Pool itself counts as a measly $2.

[singletee]

Another problem is that for Chariot Race, Scrying Pool itself counts as a measly $2.

Even worse, your opponent is likely to have Scrying Pools in their deck.

[Titandrake]

Today I set aside Ironworks with Inheritance. "This'll be great! I can pile down the Estates because Ironworks gaining Estate will give +1 Card +1 Action".

It turns out that after you pile the Estates, a deck with 10+ Ironworks is really bad at doing anything besides gaining Actions that cost < $4.

(Setting aside a better action and using 1-2 Ironworks to gain the Estates works a lot better.)

[mameluke]

Lurker + Hunting Grounds

[Awaclus]

Lurker + Hunting Grounds

That's actually a very strong combo. You can win the game in 9-10 turns by piling out on Lurkers, Hunting Grounds and Duchies.

[gloures]

Today I set aside Ironworks with Inheritance. "This'll be great! I can pile down the Estates because Ironworks gaining Estate will give +1 Card +1 Action".

It turns out that after you pile the Estates, a deck with 10+ Ironworks is really bad at doing anything besides gaining Actions that cost < $4.

(Setting aside a better action and using 1-2 Ironworks to gain the Estates works a lot better.)

I did this once and soon realized my mistake, my opponent didn´t though and resigned just as i emptied the estate pile... 

[mameluke]

Lurker + Hunting Grounds

That's actually a very strong combo. You can win the game in 9-10 turns by piling out on Lurkers, Hunting Grounds and Duchies.

Sure, I guess. I think the point was that if you are intending to pick up HGs, you'll get something else before you get them even if you didn't want it. Maybe Catacombs is a better choice, but it's easier to choke on the green.

[Beyond Awesome]

That's a legit rush strategy there.

[Commodore Chuckles]

Lurker + Hunting Grounds

That's actually a very strong combo. You can win the game in 9-10 turns by piling out on Lurkers, Hunting Grounds and Duchies.

Sure, I guess. I think the point was that if you are intending to pick up HGs, you'll get something else before you get them even if you didn't want it. Maybe Catacombs is a better choice, but it's easier to choke on the green.

Yeah, but his point is that if those two cards are on the board, the Duchy rush is pretty much always going to be a better strategy than whatever fancy pants engine is possible.

[Awaclus]

Yeah, but his point is that if those two cards are on the board, the Duchy rush is pretty much always going to be a better strategy than whatever fancy pants engine is possible.

Well, this isn't exactly true either. You definitely have to contest the Lurkers, but after your opponent puts some Hunting Groundses into the trash, you can use your Lurkers to gain a bunch of them for free, which is also extremely strong and it may allow you to build an engine that's capable of getting Provinces fast enough that you can catch up on points and then just use the Lurkers to 3-pile the game for the win just like the rush would.

[Sidsel]

Wolf's Den - Fortune.

Will you take the 3vp penalty to buy one? Will you scrape up the cash/debt for a second?

(We took a penalty each.)

[Limetime]

I piled in 11 turns using lurker hunting grounds uncontested. I had 8 duchies and 6 estates and the game ended with lurker, hunting grounds and duchies. It probably speeds up significantly in a mirror.

[Awaclus]

Wolf's Den - Fortune.

Will you take the 3vp penalty to buy one? Will you scrape up the cash/debt for a second?

(We took a penalty each.)

Getting a second Fortune is pretty often pretty good even without Wolf's Den, unless you have +buy in your engine components. At that stage, +buy is super valuable, and Fortune does it non-terminally.

[Chris is me]

Wolf's Den - Fortune.

Will you take the 3vp penalty to buy one? Will you scrape up the cash/debt for a second?

(We took a penalty each.)

Getting a second Fortune is pretty often pretty good even without Wolf's Den, unless you have +buy in your engine components. At that stage, +buy is super valuable, and Fortune does it non-terminally.

Been saying this for a long time. A second Fortune is correct way more often than the card would imply at first glance due to the scarcity of nonterminal +Buy.

[aku_chi]

Been saying this for a long time. A second Fortune is correct way more often than the card would imply at first glance due to the scarcity of nonterminal +Buy.

The opportunity cost of the second Fortune is a Province (at the very least).  You'd need to play the second Fortune at least two times to get any advantage over the Province line.  So, I'd only consider buying a second Fortune as non-terminal +buy if there was significant Alt-VP (and I was otherwise buy-limited).

[Chappy7]

Inheritance-Crossroads.

This is awesome! Inheritance loves estates, and crossroads loves estates! My first Estate will give me +3 Actions and all of them will self synergize and draw tons of cards! I can just buy all of them and be unstoppable!

Oh, what? I don't get +3 Actions ever? Now my deck is just full of tons of terminal draw? gg, Resign.

This happened to my opponent last week.  Luckily I had just read about this annoying anti-synergy on fds somewhere, so I didn't fall for it. 

[Awaclus]

You'd need to play the second Fortune at least two times to get any advantage over the Province line.

Well, that's not really true because of PPR considerations. It's usually better to have a card in your deck that allows you to gain a Province (even if it's just once) than having the Province, just so you don't have to end your turn with one fewer Province left in the supply.

Furthermore, it's a pretty common scenario that you'll still have two more turns before the game ends.

[Seprix]

Distant Islands: Get Island, set aside Distant Lands. Now Distant Lands is even more distant!

[luser]

crossroad-haunted woods attack helps opponent who could just draw lot of cards with topdecked crossroads.

[aku_chi]

Advance + Tactician

Advance can help you gain Tacticians, but the Advance fun ends once you play Tactician.

[ackmondual]

Goons + Events
I have enough an Event or two... Buying Events doesn't trigger the VP gain
I'll jus get a Wedding, Dominate, some Delves... same difference.. you gain those cards, NOT buy them

Castles, Prizes, and/or Knights + Wolf Den
Variety is not the name of this game!

Shanty Town + Pathfinder
Alright!  I have a hand with a Shanty Town and no action cards!  +3 cards for me!
Play Shanty Town, draw an action card, reveal hand... nope!  Just 1 card for you!

[Kirian]

Inheritance + Tokens

Estates don't Inherit the name of the card they've copied.  So that +1 Card token on Peddler only works when you play a Peddler, not an Estate/Peddler.

[jonaskoelker]

Throne Herald, hit Counting House, draw all the Coppers, and then hit Royal Blacksmith with the second play.

Here, have a penguin

[sorawotobu]

Lurker + Hunting Party
You really want to draw Lurkers in pairs but Hunting Party will skip additional Lurkers if you already have one. Playing Lurker before Hunting Party lets you get around that but if you whiff on the second Lurker the action card you trashed will be there for your opponent to grab.

[Dingan]

Cultist / Counterfeit

Counterfeit - clear out the Coppers, yay! But ... in a typical Cultist/Ruins battle, Coppers can be decent. In other words, a deck of 4 Cultists, a Counterfeit, 3 Estates, 4 to 6 Ruins, like 1 or 2 Silvers, and nothing else just stinks. A few Coppers can actually make it better.

I feel like Counterfeit can be worth it in that by making your deck smaller, you can chain more Cultists early to win the Ruins split. But I'm just not convinced this is actually a thing - i.e. I might rather that Counterfeit just be, say, another Cultist.

[cascadestyler]

Cultist / Counterfeit

Counterfeit - clear out the Coppers, yay! But ... in a typical Cultist/Ruins battle, Coppers can be decent. In other words, a deck of 4 Cultists, a Counterfeit, 3 Estates, 4 to 6 Ruins, like 1 or 2 Silvers, and nothing else just stinks. A few Coppers can actually make it better.

I feel like Counterfeit can be worth it in that by making your deck smaller, you can chain more Cultists early to win the Ruins split. But I'm just not convinced this is actually a thing - i.e. I might rather that Counterfeit just be, say, another Cultist.

A non-terminal trasher (like Counterfiet) is about the best thing you can put in a cultist deck. If you actually had that deck you described with just 1 silver then it would suck, but why on earth would you ever get rid of all your copper and only replace it with one silver? Chances are you have two silvers if you were opening towards a cultish rush anyway, and you'd pick up a 2nd one at some point in your cultish rush by default anyway. The deck you've described with 2 silvers sounds awesome. That's going to draw itself every turn without fail, hand out 4 ruins a go, produce $7 on it's first cycle and buy a gold, the depending on whether there's any virtual money or handy kingdom treasure like relic you'll transition through that or through a bit more gold into a lovely reliable province-buying deck that destroys your opponent.

[LaLight]

Forge + Cost Reduction is a trap i got in lately.

Play highway play Forge, trash 2 Rats... gain a card costing exactly 6.

[faust]

Forge + Cost Reduction is a trap i got in lately.

Play highway play Forge, trash 2 Rats... gain a card costing exactly 6.

On the plus side, that can be another Forge!

[Awaclus]

Forge + Cost Reduction is a trap i got in lately.

Play highway play Forge, trash 2 Rats... gain a card costing exactly 6.

On the other hand, you can Forge Coppers (or nothing) into something that's actually useful.

[Cave-o-sapien]

Forge + Cost Reduction is a trap i got in lately.

Play highway play Forge, trash 2 Rats... gain a card costing exactly 6.

On the other hand, you can Forge Coppers (or nothing) into something that's actually useful.

Yeah, I actually think this is a great synergy if you plan for it.

[ackmondual]

Windfall + card drawers that force you to discard
You never actually get an empty discard

[allanfieldhouse]

Tactician + Night Cards

I have all these lovely Night cards that I'm saving for then end of my turn...and then Tactician discards them all!

[Chappy7]

This thread is about to get popular.  Night cards are cray-cray.

University can't gain Raider or any night cards

Summon Doesn't like them either

[Awaclus]

University can't gain Raider

Altar can't gain Raider, either!

[kieranmillar]

Haunted Woods vs Night Cards

Opponent played a Haunted Woods? Better not buy anything if you want to play your Night cards.

[ackmondual]

Treasures + Tactician
All of those juicy Treasures... Discarded!

[jonaskoelker]

Mint + Mine
Use Mint to upgrade your bad treasures into good treasures and make it hard to get a good Mine turn.
Use Mine to trash a lot of bad treasures in one go and leave not a lot left to upgrade with Mint.

[Gherald]

Mint + Mine

I thought the anti-synergy was when you try to buy one and accidentally buy the other.

[jonaskoelker]

I thought the anti-synergy was when you try to buy one and accidentally buy the other.

Oh hey, I must have typo'd a lot in my post. I accidentally wrote Mine when I meant Mint and vice versa. Isn't it funny how often you confuse the two? 

("accidentally")

[Dylan32]

I thought the anti-synergy was when you try to buy one and accidentally buy the other.

Oh hey, I must have typo'd a lot in my post. I accidentally wrote Mine when I meant Mint and vice versa. Isn't it funny how often you confuse the two? 

("accidentally")

I wonder how many people read your original joke and actually missed the fact you really did flip them. *slowly raises hand*

[ackmondual]

I thought the anti-synergy was when you try to buy one and accidentally buy the other.

Oh hey, I must have typo'd a lot in my post. I accidentally wrote Mine when I meant Mint and vice versa. Isn't it funny how often you confuse the two? 

("accidentally")

I like Minte!

[Eran of Arcadia]

I thought the anti-synergy was when you try to buy one and accidentally buy the other.

Oh hey, I must have typo'd a lot in my post. I accidentally wrote Mine when I meant Mint and vice versa. Isn't it funny how often you confuse the two? 

("accidentally")

I like Minte!

What's your favorite card? Mint is mine.

[Kirian]

Throne Herald, hit Counting House, draw all the Coppers, and then hit Royal Blacksmith with the second play.

WHy do you have both Counting House and Royal Blacksmith in your deck?

[Commodore Chuckles]

Throne Herald, hit Counting House, draw all the Coppers, and then hit Royal Blacksmith with the second play.

WHy do you have both Counting House and Royal Blacksmith in your deck?

It's a super-strong synergy if you play them the other way around: Draw a bunch of stuff with Royal Blacksmith and then get back all the coppers with Counting House. The main mistake is probably using Herald for this sort of thing.

[LibraryAdventurer]

Nothing to do with the card's effects, but I just had a game with both Jester and Fool and kept getting mixed up between them in my head because they can mean the same thing...
(I played a fool thinking it would do something because my opponent played a Jester on his previous turn, which would give him Lost in the Woods -wouldn't it?)

EDIT: Thought about posting this in the "Is Fool Ambiguous?" thread, but I didn't want that thread coming up in my new replies.

[Commodore Chuckles]

Pilgrimage can't gain Night cards

[AJD]

Pilgrimage can't gain Night cards

It can if they're Durations! Or Werewolf.

[gloures]

Cobbler/Cost Reduction, gainers usually work great with Cost Reduction, Cobbler unfortunately does not... (And luckily I discovered this againg Lord rat...)

[Donald X.]

Cobbler/Cost Reduction, gainers usually work great with Cost Reduction, Cobbler unfortunately does not... (And luckily I discovered this againg Lord rat...)

Well you'll always have Bridge Troll, Ferry, or e.g. playing Bridge twice with Ghost before resolving Cobbler.

[crj]

Or Summon, Prince, ...

[Accatitippi]

I just had what was probably my most traumatic Dominion experience ever. Yes, it was even worse than King's Court - Goons - Masquerade.

Locusts ate my beautiful goat.
It was bloody, it was messy, and it was all my fault.

A buys and gains a Cursed Village
A takes Locusts
A receives Locusts
A reveals a Goat
A trashes a Goat
A gains a Copper

Learn from my mistake and take care of your pets, people. You can't realize how much they meant to you before they are gone.

[Sidsel]

Spoils cannot be used to pay your charioteer.  Looks like a gold, pays like a gold - must be a copper.

[ThetaSigma12]

Spoils cannot be used to pay your charioteer.  Looks like a gold, pays like a gold - must be a copper.

Well of course, if you could it would spoil the whole race.

[jonaskoelker]

Maybe half-way on topic, half-way OT, but on the two-card kingdom {Enchantress, Rebuild}, is Enchantress a counter to Rebuild?

Against a scripted Rebuild bot, yeah, I think so. But against someone who knows what's coming—I mean, if it's me playing Rebuild, I guess I pile up on Enchantresses. Feeding one to play my Rebuild seems great. Having Enchantress without Rebuild means I play it, making me that much more likely to pair Enchantress with Rebuild in my next hand (or just hit $5 for an extra Rebuild). With a bit of luck, my Enchantress can even shut their Enchantress down.

So the anti-synergy between your Enchantress and my Rebuild is maybe not as harmful as one would first think, which itself is harmful to you? Maybe?

I should probably go test that; this is pure speculation.

[Dingan]

Cobbler/Cost Reduction, gainers usually work great with Cost Reduction, Cobbler unfortunately does not... (And luckily I discovered this againg Lord rat...)

Feel victim to this literally 5 minutes after reading this   Tried to set up a Native Village / Highway / Cobbler megaturn.

[Accatitippi]

As it turns out, Vampires don't like Villas.

[William Howard Taft]

Cobbler/Cost Reduction, gainers usually work great with Cost Reduction, Cobbler unfortunately does not... (And luckily I discovered this againg Lord rat...)

Feel victim to this literally 5 minutes after reading this   Tried to set up a Native Village / Highway / Cobbler megaturn.

Get some Ghosts next time.

[ipofanes]

Watchtower - Villa

Me: Hmm, let's grab that Watchtower. Put down all the coins, buy Villa, play Villa, gain enough Action to re-stock my hand, sounds like a plan.

System: "It looks like you are going to gain a Villa. Do you want to topdeck or trash?"

[CPiGuy]

Watchtower - Villa

Me: Hmm, let's grab that Watchtower. Put down all the coins, buy Villa, play Villa, gain enough Action to re-stock my hand, sounds like a plan.

System: "It looks like you are going to gain a Villa. Do you want to topdeck or trash?"

If it's not letting you simply gain the Villa, that's bad... you should be able to simply not reveal the Watchtower.

[JW]

In that case you can continue without using Watchtower by clicking "Villa" in the log next to the two Watchtower options. It's a pretty confusing interface. I've posted about this issue on ShuffleIT's forums (re: Death Cart), and will make sure it gets added to the "Interface Issues" compilation: http://forum.shuffleit.nl/index.php?topic=1014.msg2630#msg2630

[teamlyle]

I had Shelters + Hunting Party in a recent game. Since all the Shelters are different, HP still finds other Shelters if you have one in your hand.

[SmokeyRivers]

Faithful Hound and Quest are not a very strong synergy, if not an active anti-synergy.

[JThorne]

Faithful Hound and Quest are not a very strong synergy, if not an active anti-synergy.

Why, just because Gold is often bad? Seems to me once you have six cards in hand, including a Hound, you could discard your hand for a Gold as many turns in a row as you wanted. Not that one Gold per turn is all that exciting. Getting six cards and a Hound in hand could be accomplished simply with another Hound.

I mean, as combos go, it seems right up there with Golem/Counting House. Cute, but probably not worth doing. I'm not sure that's an anti-synergy. It's only annoying and potentially harmful in the sense that you might get suckered into actually doing it.

I remember something similar happening when I saw that Druid came up with the Gift that draws two cards and discards two. The kingdom had Faithful Hound in it, so I started imagining how I might leverage the discard. Then I realized I was trying to figure out how to turn the Druid into a slightly worse version of Faithful Hound. Duh. I didn't need the +buy that bad.

[teamlyle]

Rouge/Lookout: Eventually, you want to trash your Lookout, but if Lookout is the only card in the trash costing from 3 to 6, you have to gain it back instead of doing the attack.

[Dylan32]

Rouge/Lookout: Eventually, you want to trash your Lookout, but if Lookout is the only card in the trash costing from 3 to 6, you have to gain it back instead of doing the attack.

Not to mention, a lookout wearing rouge would probably be easy for the enemy to see instead of being well-hidden the way a good lookout would be.

[Commodore Chuckles]

You can't Ferry Den of Sin.

[Asper]

Rouge/Lookout: Eventually, you want to trash your Lookout, but if Lookout is the only card in the trash costing from 3 to 6, you have to gain it back instead of doing the attack.

Not to mention, a lookout wearing rouge would probably be easy for the enemy to see instead of being well-hidden the way a good lookout would be.

I think it's not all that hidden, towering from that ship in the middle of the ocean.

[Eran of Arcadia]

Rouge/Lookout: Eventually, you want to trash your Lookout, but if Lookout is the only card in the trash costing from 3 to 6, you have to gain it back instead of doing the attack.

Not to mention, a lookout wearing rouge would probably be easy for the enemy to see instead of being well-hidden the way a good lookout would be.

I think it's not all that hidden, towering from that ship in the middle of the ocean.

It's surprisingly easy to sneak up on an iceberg without being detected.

[jonaskoelker]

It's surprisingly easy to sneak up on an iceberg without being detected.

But doing so is a gigantic titanic mistake.

[ackmondual]

Card discounters + Debt cost cards
Quarry, Bridge, Highway, etc. doesn't directly help in eliminating Debt, so you're still paying "full price" for those that only cost Debt anyways.

[greybirdofprey]

Jester + cultist/marauder. Hit a ruin, different ruin on top of the ruins pile.
Baron + shelters. I'll just open baronOH WAIT.
Mission + black market. More turns means more black market plays means more oh wait.

[Cave-o-sapien]

Haunted Woods vs Night Cards

Opponent played a Haunted Woods? Better not buy anything if you want to play your Night cards.

Specifically, Guardian is crap vs. Haunted Woods

[CPiGuy]

Haunted Woods vs Night Cards

Opponent played a Haunted Woods? Better not buy anything if you want to play your Night cards.

Specifically, Guardian is crap vs. Haunted Woods

Actually, by my reading, the Guardian should go into your hand anyway, since Haunted Woods is on-buy. So, what happens is you buy the Guardian, you topdeck your hand (sans guardian) as a side effect of having bought it, and then you gain the Guardian, to your hand.

Edit: the online implementation confirms this behavior is correct.

[Cave-o-sapien]

Haunted Woods vs Night Cards

Opponent played a Haunted Woods? Better not buy anything if you want to play your Night cards.

Specifically, Guardian is crap vs. Haunted Woods

Actually, by my reading, the Guardian should go into your hand anyway, since Haunted Woods is on-buy. So, what happens is you buy the Guardian, you topdeck your hand (sans guardian) as a side effect of having bought it, and then you gain the Guardian, to your hand.

Edit: the online implementation confirms this behavior is correct.

Ah, nice. I was just thinking of previously-gained Guardians. It's nice to know this is an option.

[JThorne]

Bridge Troll + Patrician

I reveal an Emporium! Hooray! It costs $5, so it goes in my haaaaa.....oh, no it doesn't.

[weesh]

farming village / night cards
ironworks / night cards

[Accatitippi]

As Bella found out the hard way, if you put Vampires and a Wolf Den together, what you'll get is a headache.

[LaLight]

Artificer + Cemetery. Not all gainers are good for Cemetery.

[Cave-o-sapien]

Bandit + Haunted Mirror

Bandit hitting your opponent's Haunted Mirror has a high probability of giving them a Ghost.

[Scoobie]

Is this because the Bandit puts the Haunted Mirror in the trash, thus allowing the opponent to possibly get the Ghost? If so, that assumes Heirlooms are also Coppers since Bandit trashes Coppers. I would not have thought to have Bandit trash Heirlooms.

[Awaclus]

Is this because the Bandit puts the Haunted Mirror in the trash, thus allowing the opponent to possibly get the Ghost? If so, that assumes Heirlooms are also Coppers since Bandit trashes Coppers. I would not have thought to have Bandit trash Heirlooms.

Bandit can't trash Coppers and Heirlooms aren't Coppers.

[Scoobie]

Oops. I haven’t played with Bandit in awhile and my randomizer app has the Bandit text wrong.Sorry to be a nuisance!

[William Howard Taft]

Night cards ruin Vassal.

Except Werewolf. Werewolf's cool.

[humcalc216]

Stonemason + Keep

Stonemason can't gain (non-Crown) Treasures via overpay, and be careful when trashing Treasures to pile out!

[ackmondual]

Ghost + Fool
If there's going to be a tug-of-war between you and 1 or more other players, than multiple Fools don't seem to be so bad.  However having Ghost hit this, especially when you're ALREADY Lost In The Woods is just lousy.

[Dingan]

Tormentor - Prince
Once you Prince something, you can never get an Imp from Tormentor.

[Cave-o-sapien]

Tormentor - Prince
Once you Prince something, you can never get an Imp from Tormentor.

Similar problem with Duration cards, especially those that stay out for multiple turns (or forever).

[Cuzz]

Scrying Pool-Vassal

If you had an action on your deck for vassal to play, scrying pool would have drawn it already, so your vassals are all almost guaranteed to be terminal.

[GendoIkari]

Tormentor - Prince
Once you Prince something, you can never get an Imp from Tormentor.

Edge case... using a cost reducer you also Prince a Tormentor.

[crj]

Ooh yes; I momentarily forgot Prince doesn't re-enter play each turn along with what it plays.

I was thinking you could cost-reduce then Summon a Tormentor, but it's neater using Prince when that's already in the kingdom.

[infangthief]

I ran out of junk for my ambassadors to give to my opponent.
Ah, I'll get an Ill-Gotten Gains, so my opponent gets a curse, then I can give them that useless IGG too.
[reads the texts on IGG and Ambassador more closely...]
Well, it still kind of works, just a few more steps to it than I was expecting.

[crj]

Having gained IGG, it might be simpler to use it as a source of Copper to throw at your opponent, rather than hurling IGG at them followed by the Curse you receive as a result?

[MatthewCA]

Having gained IGG, it might be simpler to use it as a source of Copper to throw at your opponent, rather than hurling IGG at them followed by the Curse you receive as a result?

It just seems like too much opportunity cost to be worth it. Yes, you're keeping the Ambassador useful by gaining coppers, but you're also making your deck worse, and having to spend time Ambassadoring the coppers away. Buy the IGG, curse your opponent, then Remodel it, or trash it.

[crj]

I'm not saying IGG for Coppers which you feed to Ambassador is a superb line of play, just that it's better than feeding IGG to Ambassador and later feeding the Curse to IGG.

[Dingan]

Tormentor - Prince
Once you Prince something, you can never get an Imp from Tormentor.

Edge case... using a cost reducer you also Prince a Tormentor.

Ha, that's a potentially harmful anti-synergy in and of itself -- you'd be gaining a lot of Imps, of which you don't want too many. You'd have to Prince something else or get a Hireling, Champion, etc.

[Accatitippi]

Imp, on the other hand, is a very good Prince target.

Oh sorry wrong thread.

[AJD]

Champion + Tormentor

"After I play Champion, I'll be able to play Tormentor first every turn and get all the Imps I want!"

...oops.

[Skumpy]

Champion + Tormentor

"After I play Champion, I'll be able to play Tormentor first every turn and get all the Imps I want!"

...oops.

Bonfire to the rescue!

Seems thematic enough à la Joan of Arc.

[teamlyle]

Battlefield + Ambassador: If you Ambassador away Estates, your opponent takes VP from battlefield.

[LibraryAdventurer]

If Mountain's gift wasn't bad enough, Bandit Camp Fort turns it into a curse.

EDIT: Yes, I meant Bandit Fort.

[Cave-o-sapien]

Sage + Wish

So you buy a Sage to help you trigger Magic Lamp and what do you know, it worked! Aren't you smart (or maybe just lucky)?

Decidedly less smart is playing Sage to skip over and discard all the Wishes you worked so hard to get.

[Eran of Arcadia]

If Mountain's gift wasn't bad enough, Bandit Camp turns it into a curse.

Do you mean Bandit Fort?

[Chappy7]

If Mountain's gift wasn't bad enough, Bandit Camp turns it into a curse.

Do you mean Bandit Fort?

I was thinking so hard about how this would possibly make sense.  But I knew if I asked, someone would make me feel sheepish by showing me how obviously bandit camp turns into a curse.  Now my brain can relax.

[ehunt]

Diplomat is not a good reaction to Soldier

[Eran of Arcadia]

If Mountain's gift wasn't bad enough, Bandit Camp turns it into a curse.

Do you mean Bandit Fort?

I was thinking so hard about how this would possibly make sense.  But I knew if I asked, someone would make me feel sheepish by showing me how obviously bandit camp turns into a curse.  Now my brain can relax.

I took a huge risk that that wasn't the case.

[Awaclus]

If Mountain's gift wasn't bad enough, Bandit Camp turns it into a curse.

Do you mean Bandit Fort?

I was thinking so hard about how this would possibly make sense.  But I knew if I asked, someone would make me feel sheepish by showing me how obviously bandit camp turns into a curse.  Now my brain can relax.

Wouldn't it have been a good idea to ask then?

[Chappy7]

If Mountain's gift wasn't bad enough, Bandit Camp turns it into a curse.

Do you mean Bandit Fort?

I was thinking so hard about how this would possibly make sense.  But I knew if I asked, someone would make me feel sheepish by showing me how obviously bandit camp turns into a curse.  Now my brain can relax.

Wouldn't it have been a good idea to ask then?

Only if I was okay with the risk of feeling like a sheep.

[crj]

Diplomat is not a good reaction to Soldier

Why not?

It may not alter what size hand you end up with, but Diplomat still sifts which cards remain in your hand.

[Awaclus]

Diplomat is not a good reaction to Soldier

Why not?

It may not alter what size hand you end up with, but Diplomat still sifts which cards remain in your hand.

Yeah and you probably want to have a lower handsize if you have Diplomats in your deck.

[Gazbag]

Diplomat is not a good reaction to Soldier

Why not?

It may not alter what size hand you end up with, but Diplomat still sifts which cards remain in your hand.

If you react Diplomat to Soldier then you discard down to 3 cards in hand, which may or may not be bad in a Diplomat game.

[teamlyle]

Swindler + Mountebank:

1. If you trash your opponent's Coppers into Curses, he/she can later discard them to your Mountebanks.
2. When the Curses run out, you will occasionally trash Curses off the top of your opponent's deck, giving them Coppers.

[cascadestyler]

Cursed Village / Torturer

Cursed Village / Torturer engines really don't do that much because CV is a superlative counter to discard attacks (probably the best).

Counter: This isn't really an antisynergy because any draw-to-X counters any discard attack - we knew this already.

Counter to the counter: This is a special case because CV is something you could use to build a torturer engine. Library might be a good defence against torturer chains but it won't let you play any yourself. Nobody builds a library / torturer deck. But because CV is a ruddy good village, it's a good candidate for building a torturer chain, and also a superb way to defend against one. For me, this counts as an AaPHCA-S.

Also I hexed myself war which trashed one of the two torturers I had and that's not an AaPHCA-S, just a risk of using CV, but it did anger me somewhat.

[ipofanes]

Cursed Village / Torturer

Cursed Village / Torturer engines really don't do that much because CV is a superlative counter to discard attacks (probably the best).

Counter: This isn't really an antisynergy because any draw-to-X counters any discard attack - we knew this already.

Counter to the counter: This is a special case because CV is something you could use to build a torturer engine. Library might be a good defence against torturer chains but it won't let you play any yourself. Nobody builds a library / torturer deck. But because CV is a ruddy good village, it's a good candidate for building a torturer chain, and also a superb way to defend against one. For me, this counts as an AaPHCA-S.

Also I hexed myself war which trashed one of the two torturers I had and that's not an AaPHCA-S, just a risk of using CV, but it did anger me somewhat.

Cursed Village does not really play optimally with Torturer as in most cases all CV after the first might as well have been Necropoles. Also, both cards are competing for the $5 purchase slot. Of course theres a better chance to start the Torturer chain after the first CV play, but all in all I'd rather have good old Fishing Village to complement my Torturers.

Nice complements to CV are cards that supply what CV does not: Vaults, Storerooms or Horse Traders. They enable your hand to breathe in and out and generate $$$ in the process.

[Accatitippi]

Cursed Village / Torturer

Cursed Village / Torturer engines really don't do that much because CV is a superlative counter to discard attacks (probably the best).

Counter: This isn't really an antisynergy because any draw-to-X counters any discard attack - we knew this already.

Counter to the counter: This is a special case because CV is something you could use to build a torturer engine. Library might be a good defence against torturer chains but it won't let you play any yourself. Nobody builds a library / torturer deck. But because CV is a ruddy good village, it's a good candidate for building a torturer chain, and also a superb way to defend against one. For me, this counts as an AaPHCA-S.

Also I hexed myself war which trashed one of the two torturers I had and that's not an AaPHCA-S, just a risk of using CV, but it did anger me somewhat.

Cursed Village does not really play optimally with Torturer as in most cases all CV after the first might as well have been Necropoles. Also, both cards are competing for the $5 purchase slot. Of course theres a better chance to start the Torturer chain after the first CV play, but all in all I'd rather have good old Fishing Village to complement my Torturers.

Nice complements to CV are cards that supply what CV does not: Vaults, Storerooms or Horse Traders. They enable your hand to breathe in and out and generate $$$ in the process.

Well there also Secret Chamber!

Notice that vault's on-gain is actually super useful for your opponent in cursed village games. That could annoy you, and even harm you.

[ipofanes]

Notice that vault's on-gain is actually super useful for your opponent in cursed village games. That could annoy you, and even harm you.

You mean on-play? There is no on-gain effect of Vault.

[jonaskoelker]

Notice that vault's on-gain is actually super useful for your opponent in Cursed Village games. That could annoy you, and even harm you.

You mean on-play? There is no on-gain effect of Vault.

Maybe Accatitippi means the on-gain effect of Embassy? They're easy to mix up: they're both terminals for $5 which net you one card, they're only really good in BM and they both play nice with Tunnel—that is, they're pretty interchangeable.

[Accatitippi]

I meant on-play, yeah. I should really start proofreading my posts before I hit the send button...

[humcalc216]

Sure, Haunted Woods counters Nights.  But, Haunted Woods REALLY counters Monastery.

[Awaclus]

Sure, Haunted Woods counters Nights.  But, Haunted Woods REALLY counters Monastery.

I don't think that's true, actually. Monastery should do most of its job before you start to get hit by a Haunted Woods attack every turn.

[humcalc216]

It did some work, but the only extra gains on this board, aside from +buys, were from Noble Brigand, Artisan, and Develop.  So it was slow to get going, unless you also went with another trasher (Develop).  I managed to kill my Estates, but not many coppers.

[Awaclus]

You can (usually should) definitely use another trasher with Monastery, since it can't terminally collide, even without Haunted Woods present.

[Cave-o-sapien]

Conclave + Duration

This should be obvious, but trying to turn Conclave + Wharf into an engine was a Very Bad Idea.

[Chase Adolphson]

Thief and harem
Thief steals your harem. You gave them victory points, and you lost victory points.

[Seprix]

Thief and harem
Thief steals your harem. You gave them victory points, and you lost victory points.

That's not.. What card anti-synergies means, is cards in your own deck that just don't work well together. Like Tactician and any Night Cards. You can't play both Tactician and Night cards*, so there is an anti synergy there.

(You can also cheat and play a Werewolf before the Tactician, and say that is a Night card, which is correct but you know what I mean)

*you actually can, but it involves cost reduction to set aside a Tactician with Prince and another draw card set aside with Prince as well. Summoning also works in this way, as does Ghost, and any beginning of turn play Action cards. It's also not good.

[LaLight]

Thief and harem
Thief steals your harem. You gave them victory points, and you lost victory points.

That's not.. What card anti-synergies means, is cards in your own deck that just don't work well together. Like Tactician and any Night Cards. You can't play both Tactician and Night cards*, so there is an anti synergy there.

(You can also cheat and play a Werewolf before the Tactician, and say that is a Night card, which is correct but you know what I mean)

*you actually can, but it involves cost reduction to set aside a Tactician with Prince and another draw card set aside with Prince as well. Summoning also works in this way, as does Ghost, and any beginning of turn play Action cards. It's also not good.

But you can't argue that playing Thief and stealing someone else's Harem is actually quite a bad move. The more Harems you have the rarer you're playing your precious Thief and the less Treasures you can steal. You can of course buy more Thieves playing Harems you just stole: it seems to be a synergy, especially given that Harem provides $2 and Thief costs $4, so you need to have only 2 Harems to buy another Thief to play your Thieves more often. Writing that I realised that I am doing something wrong with my life Thief and Harem actually is an awesome synergy, shame on Wiki for not having it.

[Chase Adolphson]

Philosophers stone/windfall
I want to go through my whole deck but I also want lots of cards in my deck

[Chase Adolphson]

Philosophers stone/donate
I trash all of those coppers and estates, but now I'm going through my whole deck every turn. WHY DID I BUY A PHILOSOPHERS STONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?!!!!!!!!!!!!!?

[Chase Adolphson]

Donate/chapel
I used donate to trash my coppers and my estates. Wait, why did I buy a chapel, then.

[William Howard Taft]

Wandering Minstrel does not play well with Night cards that aren't Werewolf.

[Jack Rudd]

Thief and harem
Thief steals your harem. You gave them victory points, and you lost victory points.

That's not.. What card anti-synergies means, is cards in your own deck that just don't work well together. Like Tactician and any Night Cards. You can't play both Tactician and Night cards*, so there is an anti synergy there.

(You can also cheat and play a Werewolf before the Tactician, and say that is a Night card, which is correct but you know what I mean)

*you actually can, but it involves cost reduction to set aside a Tactician with Prince and another draw card set aside with Prince as well. Summoning also works in this way, as does Ghost, and any beginning of turn play Action cards. It's also not good.

A more sensible way to play Tactician and Night cards involves Golem. Which can be good in the right circumstances.

[jomini]

It turns out that Count can't help you reach $5 to get Windfall without a splitter.

Nah, Count does fine.

Say you can make your $5 without treasures. The simplest option is something like Candlestick/Count. You save up a coin, trash away everything with Count (top deck the Candlestick), and then next turn play the Candlestick and Count (discard nothing). This is an easy shot for a very nice Windfall.

More generally, you can just use Count as Trash 3/2 card and build up some Coin. 3 Plays of count will trash out 9 starting cards (net), this allows you to buy two silvers and keep a copper; don't play the Count for a turn when you buy the Windfall. After that you basically get a Province a turn and you can nurse the treasures along with top decking/discard as needed. You even can grab the odd duchy towards the end. Opening a $5 Count means I can Windfall ~ T8-10. Any sort of support (like Haven) will likely take this down around T7-9.

Never underestimate the pure raw power of good trashing in Dominion.

[4est]

Raze isn't so helpful once you have a few Bridge Trolls in play. 

[jomini]

Wandering Minstrel does not play well with Night cards that aren't Werewolf.

I would submit that Wandering Minstrel actually plays excellently with Night cards. For most Wm boards you want to be building an engine, the biggest problem with engines is having the engine whiff. Wm bottom decks something like half your stop cards (coins, green, nights) so you can much more reliably draw everything. Say nights and golds are your only payload - everything else is village/draw/+buy; ideally you want to have all your village/draw in the top half of your deck and all your payload in the bottom. Wm does this nicely. He makes your engine vastly more reliable at drawing through and he does so at a much lower opportunity cost than many other options.

Wm gets better with Nights when you time his addition to your deck well. Early on you may care more about playing power Nights than about deck drawing (e.g. Monastery), so do not buy Wm until after they are less useful. Conversely a lot of fun Night tricks are better after you are drawing deck (e.g. Changeling is mostly worthless until you can draw deck), don't bother with them until you can draw through. If you have double villages out, then certainly take the other one early and add in Wm in later.

It really is no different than Plats here. Sure may have a mid-game turn or two where you miss the plat from Wm, but pretty quickly your engine should hit and you can spend fewer buys on maintaining reliability. Reliable deck drawing is just that idiotically powerful.

[jomini]

Donate/chapel
I used donate to trash my coppers and my estates. Wait, why did I buy a chapel, then.

I've gotten decent mileage out of Chap/Donate on boards with Junking/On trash effects. Sure Donate can do most everything Chap can ... it just costs $8 per use. My personal favorite was Donate/Chap/Market square. Optimal play is almost always open Chap/Msqr -> Donate (possibly gaining a gold), keep 3(2) coppers. Then trash down the coppers and gain golds. Less powerfully, Squire can also make a Chap a good investment with attacks you want to spam (e.g. Werewolf).

Against junkers, like Cultist or Mountebank, Chap is likely a good addition with a spare $2. It costs a draw and an action, but it also saves you several $8 buys.

[teamlyle]

Haggler + debt-costing cards: you're forced to take Copper when you buy a debt-costing card with Haggler in play.

[crj]

Not necessarily. Often, you'll be happy to take a free Engineer with your Overlord.

And you're spoiled for choice if you buy a Fortune...

[Cave-o-sapien]

Haggler + Me when I forget that Haggler's gain is mandatory

[Awaclus]

Not necessarily. Often, you'll be happy to take a free Engineer with your Overlord.

Not very often. That'll probably happen about 0 or 1 times in the average Dominion player's lifetime.

[crj]

...and how often will the average Dominion player Haggle a debt-costing card at all?

[LibraryAdventurer]

Not necessarily. Often, you'll be happy to take a free Engineer with your Overlord.

Not very often. That'll probably happen about 0 or 1 times in the average Dominion player's lifetime.

Only assuming you play full random. Why do people always assume that?

[Awaclus]

Not necessarily. Often, you'll be happy to take a free Engineer with your Overlord.

Not very often. That'll probably happen about 0 or 1 times in the average Dominion player's lifetime.

Only assuming you play full random. Why do people always assume that?

Because that's what you get when you automatch on ShiT.

[LibraryAdventurer]

Not necessarily. Often, you'll be happy to take a free Engineer with your Overlord.

Not very often. That'll probably happen about 0 or 1 times in the average Dominion player's lifetime.

Only assuming you play full random. Why do people always assume that?

Because that's what you get when you automatch on ShiT.

I made a feature request to change that.
http://forum.shuffleit.nl/index.php?topic=2847.msg12597#msg12597

[cascadestyler]

Haggler + Me when I forget that Haggler's gain is mandatory

Haggler + Me when I forget that Haggler's gain is mandatory + Irritating butt-ass opponent who doesn't grant the simplest of no-info undos

I know that's a 3-part combo so might cause thread derailment arguments over what's a useful combo but I would plead that the second component is super-common and the third component is also much more common than any given card so the chance of this occuring is at least as high as any given 2-card combo.

[ipofanes]

Haggler + debt-costing cards: you're forced to take Copper when you buy a debt-costing card with Haggler in play.

Not while there are Curses or Ruins in play.

[faust]

Haggler + debt-costing cards: you're forced to take Copper when you buy a debt-costing card with Haggler in play.

Not while there are Curses or Ruins in play.

How would you even put Curses in play, and why does it matter?

[ipofanes]

Sorry, I meant "in Supply".

[Cave-o-sapien]

Plaza + Black Market

You can't spend tokens while buying from Black Market. I played against someone who repeatedly discarded Coppers to Plaza then played Black Market and couldn't afford power cards.

[Commodore Chuckles]

Summon + Skulk
I didn't know this, but apparently Summon doesn't work on Skulk because the Gold covers it up.

[Honkeyfresh]

I recently played a game with tournament and mountain pass and noticed mountain pass makes it even more critical to get the province first, since when you buy it, your opponent has to bet afterwards and if they bet high, you simply pass and have several rounds where they pay off their debt, unable to buy a province and you can get the prices easily. If they bet low, well, you already have a province to take prices and the debt wont hurt you that much.

However, in Rebuild games with Mountain Pass, it's very critical to not get the first Province, because if your opponent bets 40 (as they should), you can't bet more than that and then they're going to have a very major advantage.

why 40?  That seems crazy.  The other person just needs to buy duchies and churn em while u are paying back the 40 to do anything.

[Awaclus]

why 40?  That seems crazy.  The other person just needs to buy duchies and churn em while u are paying back the 40 to do anything.

I'm not 100% sure this is still the modern consensus, but at that time, it was supported by both simulators and real test games that the point advantage from Mountain Pass far outweighs the ability to buy stuff for the rest of the game, because Rebuild doesn't really even need to buy anything after the initial couple of Rebuilds.

[Honkeyfresh]

why 40?  That seems crazy.  The other person just needs to buy duchies and churn em while u are paying back the 40 to do anything.

I'm not 100% sure this is still the modern consensus, but at that time, it was supported by both simulators and real test games that the point advantage from Mountain Pass far outweighs the ability to buy stuff for the rest of the game, because Rebuild doesn't really even need to buy anything after the initial couple of Rebuilds.

I guess I could see that assuming u don't get to MP to fast, and don't have enough rebuilds to reliably churn through the rest.

[Awaclus]

why 40?  That seems crazy.  The other person just needs to buy duchies and churn em while u are paying back the 40 to do anything.

I'm not 100% sure this is still the modern consensus, but at that time, it was supported by both simulators and real test games that the point advantage from Mountain Pass far outweighs the ability to buy stuff for the rest of the game, because Rebuild doesn't really even need to buy anything after the initial couple of Rebuilds.

I guess I could see that assuming u don't get to MP to fast, and don't have enough rebuilds to reliably churn through the rest.

It's not about having enough Rebuilds, you simply don't have enough time when the opponent has an 8 VP advantage and keeps removing Provinces from the pile.

[markusin]

why 40?  That seems crazy.  The other person just needs to buy duchies and churn em while u are paying back the 40 to do anything.

I'm not 100% sure this is still the modern consensus, but at that time, it was supported by both simulators and real test games that the point advantage from Mountain Pass far outweighs the ability to buy stuff for the rest of the game, because Rebuild doesn't really even need to buy anything after the initial couple of Rebuilds.

I guess I could see that assuming u don't get to MP to fast, and don't have enough rebuilds to reliably churn through the rest.

It's not about having enough Rebuilds, you simply don't have enough time when the opponent has an 8 VP advantage and keeps removing Provinces from the pile.

So then, how do you deal with that situation? It seems like Mountain Pass can bring the game to a stand still if no player wants to gain the first Province.

[Awaclus]

So then, how do you deal with that situation? It seems like Mountain Pass can bring the game to a stand still if no player wants to gain the first Province.

I don't remember if anyone ever came up with a solution other than trying to beat that with a non-Rebuild strategy.

[markusin]

So then, how do you deal with that situation? It seems like Mountain Pass can bring the game to a stand still if no player wants to gain the first Province.

I don't remember if anyone ever came up with a solution other than trying to beat that with a non-Rebuild strategy.

That's still rough, because the Rebuild player likely won't have a problem bidding 40. But unmirrored, there should still be Duchies available for the non-rebuild player.

[William Howard Taft]

It's nice having victory cards for Oasis to discard but not when you also need them for Shepherd.

[jomini]

So then, how do you deal with that situation? It seems like Mountain Pass can bring the game to a stand still if no player wants to gain the first Province.

I don't remember if anyone ever came up with a solution other than trying to beat that with a non-Rebuild strategy.

That's still rough, because the Rebuild player likely won't have a problem bidding 40. But unmirrored, there should still be Duchies available for the non-rebuild player.

That depends on what Rebuild player does. They are going to nab 3 Provinces for a point total of 26. They will burn 3 Duchies in game so total points left are only 45 outside of estates. If Rebuild gets an Estate before the trigger is pulled on Mpass, this pushes their total up to 32 and drops the opponent down to 34 (at best). It is exceedingly hard to beat Rebuild with only the stock VP when they can take 8 and run. It certainly can be done (e.g. Knights)

The solution for the mirror is to win the Duchy split, then buy Rebuilds and Estates. Name Duchy, burn Estates, and then slowly eat the Rebuild pile. If your opponent gets a province - bid 40. If they never touch it, then you just keep eating the piles. Be careful about the Estate count; a 4:3 province lead means you cannot let them get 3 Estates ahead of you. If you lock them out of Duchy or Estate points, then you just wait for them to name province, net your 8 VP and then name Estate.

Losing the Duchy split is pretty fatal here, but it is in many Rebuild games regardless; you can get insane mileage out of Rebuilding Duchy -> Duchy.

[NoMoreFun]

I keep thinking of Crown as my choice as to whether it's a Treasure or Action, rather than being both at the same time.

I never quite got used to the fact that Shanty Town wouldn't draw when Crown was the only other Action in my hand.

[Commodore Chuckles]

My opponent just learned the hard way not to put +card on Shanty Town.

G plays a Shanty Town.
G draws a card (from Teacher).
G gets +2 Actions.
G reveals a Rats.

[Chappy7]

Swindler and Star Chart. 

Just had a game where my Swindler triggered a shuffle and my opponent got to choose what card to put on top to get Swindled.  I ended up Swindling their Hovel....lame. 

So if this comes up, just pay attention to their deck state like I should have.

[NoMoreFun]

Militia style attacks hurt thin decks hard, but they are especially hard on cathedral.

[Awaclus]

Silos + Mountain Village.

[NoMoreFun]

If you trash a card with Priest, the trashing effect from Sewers comes before Priest giving $2 for trashing a card. It's still valuable,  but Priest+Sewers is definitely a "nombo".

[buckets]

"OMG Poor House will be SO broken with Capitalism "

jk all of your actions are now treasures and will lower the $ value of PH

[Awaclus]

"OMG Poor House will be SO broken with Capitalism "

jk all of your actions are now treasures and will lower the $ value of PH

You play all the other Actions first.

[Screwyioux]

Has anyone said Ritual/Peddler yet?

[JW]

When I was young and foolish, I once tried Ritual-Peddler.

Don't build a deck that plays a bunch of Peddlers and then keeps some Peddlers in hand to trash with Ritual.

J buys a Ritual.
J gains a Curse.
J trashes a Peddler.
[No VP!]

[Screwyioux]

We made a bunch of jokes about her not being a virgin sacrifice. Were they tasteful? Absolutely not. Were they funny? Not really.

[markusin]

We made a bunch of jokes about her not being a virgin sacrifice. Were they tasteful? Absolutely not. Were they funny? Not really.

This just in, there is no straighter path to sin than crossing the bridge. Also, this interpretation has unfortunate implications about the Princess.

[Simon Jester]

We made a bunch of jokes about her not being a virgin sacrifice. Were they tasteful? Absolutely not. Were they funny? Not really.

I think it's pretty funny ^^ More of the expense of the "sacrifice virgins"-concept than anything else..

[faust]

We made a bunch of jokes about her not being a virgin sacrifice. Were they tasteful? Absolutely not. Were they funny? Not really.

This just in, there is no straighter path to sin than crossing the bridge. Also, this interpretation has unfortunate implications about the Princess.

I don't know, the implications may very well be fortunate for the Princess.

[Asper]

We made a bunch of jokes about her not being a virgin sacrifice. Were they tasteful? Absolutely not. Were they funny? Not really.

Looks at Duchess confused.

[Fragasnap]

We made a bunch of jokes about her not being a virgin sacrifice. Were they tasteful? Absolutely not. Were they funny? Not really.

This just in, there is no straighter path to sin than crossing the bridge. Also, this interpretation has unfortunate implications about the Princess.

[faust]

Scepter + Royal Carriage

Neat, I can set aside the Royal Carriage I called for next turn... oh wait.

[Dylan32]

Scepter + Royal Carriage

Neat, I can set aside the Royal Carriage I called for next turn... oh wait.

Took me a couple seconds longer than it should have to see the "anti" part of the synergy...

[LibraryAdventurer]

Scepter + Royal Carriage

Neat, I can set aside the Royal Carriage I called for next turn... oh wait.

Took me a couple seconds longer than it should have to see the "anti" part of the synergy...

...What is the "anti" part? Does the "still" on Scepter mean that if it's been on the tavern mat it can't replay it even if it's in play when you play Scepter?

[Erick648]

Scepter + Royal Carriage

Neat, I can set aside the Royal Carriage I called for next turn... oh wait.

Took me a couple seconds longer than it should have to see the "anti" part of the synergy...

...What is the "anti" part? Does the "still" on Scepter mean that if it's been on the tavern mat it can't replay it even if it's in play when you play Scepter?

I'm guessing so.  There's probably also a similar problem to Princing a Reserve: Scepter doesn't know if the Royal Carriage you called is the same one you played.

[ThetaSigma12]

The anti-synergy is that when you call a Reserve card you don't play it. Scepter says you can replay an action you played this turn. So if you play Mountebank, and then call Royal Carriage, you can't use Scepter to immediately return that Royal Carriage to the Tavern mat, although at first glance it feels entirely possible.

[crj]

The confusion is that you can (and frequently do) call Royal Carriage on the turn you play it.

If you play Royal Carriage, then play an Action, then call Royal Carriage, then Royal Carriage is "an Action card you played this turn that's in play", but is it "an Action card you played this turn that's still in play". Answer (by my understanding): no, you've Lost Track. It's now in play again, not still, and you can't play Scepter on it.

[William Howard Taft]

Guildhall/Mountebank

Now give your opponents Coffers when you attack them.

[hypercube]

Guildhall/Mountebank

Now give your opponents Coffers when you attack them.

Similarly, Academy + (Cultist/Marauder).

[chipperMDW]

If you play Royal Carriage, then play an Action, then call Royal Carriage, then Royal Carriage is "an Action card you played this turn that's in play", but is it "an Action card you played this turn that's still in play". Answer (by my understanding): no, you've Lost Track. It's now in play again, not still, and you can't play Scepter on it.

Although I agree with your conclusion, it seems like you're implying that this is an instance of the Lose Track rule. The reason Scepter doesn't work here is specifically because it says "still"; I don't believe the Lose Track rule comes into play.

</nitpick>

[GendoIkari]

If you play Royal Carriage, then play an Action, then call Royal Carriage, then Royal Carriage is "an Action card you played this turn that's in play", but is it "an Action card you played this turn that's still in play". Answer (by my understanding): no, you've Lost Track. It's now in play again, not still, and you can't play Scepter on it.

Although I agree with your conclusion, it seems like you're implying that this is an instance of the Lose Track rule. The reason Scepter doesn't work here is specifically because it says "still"; I don't believe the Lose Track rule comes into play.

</nitpick>

Correct. This should be exactly the same as Royal Carriage's "still in play" clause, which was confirmed by Donald to mean "hasn't left play since it was most recently played".

http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=18798.msg762342#msg762342

[jomini]

Has anyone said Ritual/Peddler yet?

Works well with Coffers. Yeah it means you spend a turn netting just 7VP and have to generate $4 without playing an action ... but for crappy engines, it is just another source of VP if you are losing the province split and have time to play around with it.

Mission, Fleet, Den of Sin, and a few other things can make it viable to cash out one or more 7 VP peddlers. Honestly, 7 VP is worth basically anytime you are hitting the Duchies for VP and an idiot-not-to-take it option if you are unlikely to hit 2 +buy. Draw two silvers, a Ped, Village, Smithy? A lot of end games that should be a Ritual and be glad.

[teamlyle]

Apothecary + Mint: Apothecary allows you to get big hands of treasure, but then you don't want to trash the Copper with Mint.

[Iridium]

Tactician + Capitalism

All your nice juicy actions become way easier to play! Except you have to discard them all when you play Tactician...

[Asper]

Tactician + Capitalism

All your nice juicy actions become way easier to play! Except you have to discard them all when you play Tactician...

You just play Tactician last...

[faust]

Tactician + Capitalism

All your nice juicy actions become way easier to play! Except you have to discard them all when you play Tactician...

You just play Tactician last...

Tactician does not have +$ amounts in its text...

[Asper]

Tactician + Capitalism

All your nice juicy actions become way easier to play! Except you have to discard them all when you play Tactician...

You just play Tactician last...

Tactician does not have +$ amounts in its text...

Yep, I realized that shortly after posting. Sorry, I'm not that good at Capitalism.

[JoeBot]

Tactician + Merchant

Tactician likes virtual coin, but the silver condition is problematic.

[King Leon]

Capitalism + Mandarin/Mint
In Capitalism, all your Monuments are Plunder. Mandarins love Plunder, while Mints prefer to trash it.

[jomini]

Apothecary + Mint: Apothecary allows you to get big hands of treasure, but then you don't want to trash the Copper with Mint.

Eh, I've done it several times. Apothecary lets you draw mad coppers, true. But it also makes for extremely reliable engines. With Herald, Wishing well, Mystic, Golem, or even just Village/Smithy Apothecary with zero coppers greatly increases engine reliability.

Ultimately it is the same idea as buying a Guide rather than a Silver. Guide does not give you a lick more buying power, but she drastically decreases your odds of whiffing. The opportunity cost of Guide is losing the $ density that Silver would give. Similarly, nuking 7 coppers is losing a lot of functional cash density ... but on the flip side your odds of whiffing on a deck drawing engine plummet when you have 7 fewer stop cards.

And lastly there are quite unambiguous cases: open something like Fortune teller/Pot. Get the big hand, buy a Plat. Get the big hand again, don't play the Plat, get Mint. Then Mint plats repeatedly. Yeah, you could build up with Silver to Minting Plats ... but if you are doing something even vaguely engine-ish Apothecary -> Mint is far better after you buy the Mint and much easier to effectively trash down.

[jomini]

Tactician + Merchant

Tactician likes virtual coin, but the silver condition is problematic.

Ehh, sure it stops double Tac barring other enablers, but if you are building any sort of single Tac setup, Merchant can be just fine. Something like Tac/Merchant/Bank can increase buying power without requiring increased drawing.

I mean, I have bought many Tacs knowing that the only $ on the board was treasure. I just make sure that I can get twice as much or more out of the one turn where I get to gain anything.

For example, Tac/Merchant is perfectly fine with Baths. On Tac turns you get 2 VP and a double hand to follow. On post-Tac turns you have double the buying power. If Merchant would be better than Silver in a 5 card hand, it is rarely worse in a 10 card hand.

[jomini]

Capitalism + Mandarin/Mint
In Capitalism, all your Monuments are Plunder. Mandarins love Plunder, while Mints prefer to trash it.

I am not sure I follow you.

Capitalism/Mint allows you to get expensive cards (e.g. $5/6) from playing a single action. Terminal $6 gainer? You mean like Artisan without the top deck penalty? Totally worth it.

Mandarin/Capitalism? Okay so say I use something like Haven or Gear to make a hand of 3 Sacred groves/Silver/Copper. I then buy Mandarin (topping deck them all) and having $8 left for province. Or do 5 Groves for colony. Each turn I top deck all the Groves after buying a Mandarin. There are many, many potential Golden Decks with Capitalism/Mandarin. Things like Haggler/Mandarin or Courtier/Mandarin become easy Golden Decks with Capitalism.

Why exactly do you think these things are bad?

[GendoIkari]

Capitalism + Mandarin/Mint
In Capitalism, all your Monuments are Plunder. Mandarins love Plunder, while Mints prefer to trash it.

I am not sure I follow you.

Capitalism/Mint allows you to get expensive cards (e.g. $5/6) from playing a single action. Terminal $6 gainer? You mean like Artisan without the top deck penalty? Totally worth it.

Mandarin/Capitalism? Okay so say I use something like Haven or Gear to make a hand of 3 Sacred groves/Silver/Copper. I then buy Mandarin (topping deck them all) and having $8 left for province. Or do 5 Groves for colony. Each turn I top deck all the Groves after buying a Mandarin. There are many, many potential Golden Decks with Capitalism/Mandarin. Things like Haggler/Mandarin or Courtier/Mandarin become easy Golden Decks with Capitalism.

Why exactly do you think these things are bad?

Pretty sure he's talking about the on-gain abilities. When you buy Mint, you trash all your good actions.

[jomini]

Capitalism + Mandarin/Mint
In Capitalism, all your Monuments are Plunder. Mandarins love Plunder, while Mints prefer to trash it.

I am not sure I follow you.

Capitalism/Mint allows you to get expensive cards (e.g. $5/6) from playing a single action. Terminal $6 gainer? You mean like Artisan without the top deck penalty? Totally worth it.

Mandarin/Capitalism? Okay so say I use something like Haven or Gear to make a hand of 3 Sacred groves/Silver/Copper. I then buy Mandarin (topping deck them all) and having $8 left for province. Or do 5 Groves for colony. Each turn I top deck all the Groves after buying a Mandarin. There are many, many potential Golden Decks with Capitalism/Mandarin. Things like Haggler/Mandarin or Courtier/Mandarin become easy Golden Decks with Capitalism.

Why exactly do you think these things are bad?

Pretty sure he's talking about the on-gain abilities. When you buy Mint, you trash all your good actions.

Yes, not being a complete idiot, I understand that. How is that worse synergy than with Plat or Bank?

Has anyone ever cared that buying Mint made them trash all their Plats or Banks? I mean seriously, I cannot think of a single game where I thought I would totally buy Mint if only these expensive and high utility treasures weren't on the board.

With Capitalism it is even worse. I can play a few of the "good actions" ... just before I trip Capitalism. At most I have one turn with a dead Mint, but I can still trash coppers, use Mint as "gain a power $5", and win.

And particularly for Mandarin, again how is top decking actions bad? I have the option of spending $5 and top decking all my Bazaars? You mean I get 100% chance of hitting all my villages  and zero chance of whiffing for a shuffle? Yeah, real terrible "on gain" effect. I have a dozen odd setups to make a Golden Mandarin deck. Or another fun option, gain Mandarin, gain Villa, replay all your action coins (or do it off Story or Bm).

It is like the silliness with Nights and Wandering minstrel. Yes there is a blindingly obvious negative to mixing the cards if you play poorly and just look at one interaction. But if you play well, they work amazingly well together. If Capitalism is worth buying, it is a minority of boards where Mint is not also worth buying. Mandarin is far more likely to be worth buying on Capitalism boards, particularly for the interaction between the on-gain effect and the action-treasures.

I mean seriously if Mint/Mandarin don't synergize with Capitalism and good +$ actions ... what exactly do we think they synergize with?

[hhelibebcnofnena]

I posted this originally in the neat card interactions because I couldn't find this thread, but I will post it in the correct thread now.

Double Tactician doesn't work with Goons/Watchtower.

[LittleFish]

Bridge Troll + Sage doesn't work when you want Sage to find $3 cards.

I'm terrible at noticing these sorts of cost-reduction anti-synergies. My recent one:

Peddler + Ritual
Me (early in the game): Oh sweet, I can gain a bunch of Peddlers cheaply and then trash them for 8VP + Curse
Me (later in the game): Oh. Right.

this works as long as you don't play actions before ritual

[buckets]

ShiT.

lol, great nickname

[William Howard Taft]

Poacher / Fleet

I took my Fleet turn with four empty piles...

[Commodore Chuckles]

Overlord + Haggler/Highway/Bridge Troll/Tracker/Other While-In-Play
One of the biggest nerfs caused by the errata.

[grep]

I'd call a couple of Duplicates to get more Gold from my Leprechaun - oops, now it's a Hex

[William Howard Taft]

I'd call a couple of Duplicates to get more Gold from my Leprechaun - oops, now it's a Hex

Duplicating the Golds won’t get you hexed. Sceptering or Royal Carriaging the Leprechaun will, though.

[Wizard_Amul]

I'd call a couple of Duplicates to get more Gold from my Leprechaun - oops, now it's a Hex

Duplicating the Golds won’t get you hexed. Sceptering or Royal Carriaging the Leprechaun will, though.

He's talking about if Leprachaun was your 7th card in play--calling the duplicate gives you another gold and puts the duplicate in play (making you now have 8 cards in play before the instructions on Leprachaun continue) before the rest of the instructions on Leprachaun resolves. I just tried it online, and it does give you a Hex this way. You can simply avoid this by making Leprachaun the 6th card in play before you call the Duplicate, though.

[crj]

That feels kinda wrong to me.

If the card had said "If you have exactly 7 cards in play, gain a Wish. If you do not have exactly 7 cards in play, receive a Hex." then I'd agree with that interpretation. But "If X then A. Otherwise B." very strongly suggests that you do B if X did not hold when you tested it.

[markusin]

That feels kinda wrong to me.

If the card had said "If you have exactly 7 cards in play, gain a Wish. If you do not have exactly 7 cards in play, receive a Hex." then I'd agree with that interpretation. But "If X then A. Otherwise B." very strongly suggests that you do B if X did not hold when you tested it.

But on the card, the "If X then A" check comes after the Gold gain, in a separate sentence. You are only testing for the seven cards after the Gold gain. So, if you call Duplicate on the Gold, you'll have an extra card in play when it comes time to decide between Hex or Wish.

In case people forgot, you get the Gold from Leprechaun either way.

[GendoIkari]

That feels kinda wrong to me.

If the card had said "If you have exactly 7 cards in play, gain a Wish. If you do not have exactly 7 cards in play, receive a Hex." then I'd agree with that interpretation. But "If X then A. Otherwise B." very strongly suggests that you do B if X did not hold when you tested it.

This point would apply if they were talking about calling a Duplicate in response to gaining the Wish (which you can do, although it won’t get you a second Wish). In that case, I expect you are right; you won’t receive the Hex.  The if was already fulfilled; so you won’t do the else/otherwise.

But they are talking about calling it in response to the Gold, which all happens before the if/else.

[Wizard_Amul]

That feels kinda wrong to me.

If the card had said "If you have exactly 7 cards in play, gain a Wish. If you do not have exactly 7 cards in play, receive a Hex." then I'd agree with that interpretation. But "If X then A. Otherwise B." very strongly suggests that you do B if X did not hold when you tested it.

This point would apply if they were talking about calling a Duplicate in response to gaining the Wish (which you can do, although it won’t get you a second Wish). In that case, I expect you are right; you won’t receive the Hex.  The if was already fulfilled; so you won’t do the else/otherwise.

But they are talking about calling it in response to the Gold, which all happens before the if/else.

I tried using Duplicate on the gaining of Wish to see what would happen in Dominion Online. You're correct--you don't get a second Wish, and you don't get a Hex, either.

[AJD]

This point would apply if they were talking about calling a Duplicate in response to gaining the Wish (which you can do, although it won’t get you a second Wish). In that case, I expect you are right; you won’t receive the Hex.  The if was already fulfilled; so you won’t do the else/otherwise.

This is actually kind of surprising to me. I guess "otherwise" means 'if the thing in the previous sentence didn't happen', not 'if you don't meet the condition in the previous sentence'. If it were the latter, I would expect a Hex.

[GendoIkari]

This point would apply if they were talking about calling a Duplicate in response to gaining the Wish (which you can do, although it won’t get you a second Wish). In that case, I expect you are right; you won’t receive the Hex.  The if was already fulfilled; so you won’t do the else/otherwise.

This is actually kind of surprising to me. I guess "otherwise" means 'if the thing in the previous sentence didn't happen', not 'if you don't meet the condition in the previous sentence'. If it were the latter, I would expect a Hex.

I have always read "otherwise" as the English version of "else" in programming languages. And I think common English usage backs this up... people generally will read "otherwise" as meaning you will only ever do one or the other; never both.

[crj]

(Yeah, OK - I thought we were talking about calling Duplicate on the Wish-gaining, not the Gold-gaining. Though I accept in hindsight that's pretty unlikely given you wouldn't actually get a second Wish that way!)

[spineflu]

Using Madman via Innovation. Whoops.

[leapoffaith24]

Ghost/Golem and Beggar!! OOF

[Honkeyfresh]

Not exactly an anti-synergy, but since it's new and some might think it lays opposite, if you have capitalism in play and play a Storyteller it only counts as one coin, not the 5 my opponent hoped would happen when luckily he played it before i did (and was going to try it until then).  Which kinda doesn't make sense, if you get like 5 coins from playing a IGG why wouldn't story teller count as 5 if it has a 5 coin amount on it?

[Honkeyfresh]

actually just read the text closer, and i guess it makes sense.  I guess I never read it that close. It only specifies the costs of the 3 coins you play not storyteller. Still good to know.

[William Howard Taft]

Cardinal/Gatekeeper and Knights

At least trashing attacks give you the potential to get your Knight back with Lurker or Graverobber. Exiling a Knight means they’re gone forever.

Extra painful for Sir Vander. Now you can’t even get a lousy Gold!

[spineflu]

Cardinal/Gatekeeper and Knights

At least trashing attacks give you the potential to get your Knight back with Lurker or Graverobber. Exiling a Knight means they’re gone forever.

Extra painful for Sir Vander. Now you can’t even get a lousy Gold!

unless Transport is in the kingdom

[D782802859]

Cardinal/Gatekeeper and Knights

At least trashing attacks give you the potential to get your Knight back with Lurker or Graverobber. Exiling a Knight means they’re gone forever.

Extra painful for Sir Vander. Now you can’t even get a lousy Gold!

Same for the Prizes and, most of the time, the Castles, not that you really want Castles in your deck most of the time.

[LittleFish]

Cardinal/Gatekeeper and Knights

At least trashing attacks give you the potential to get your Knight back with Lurker or Graverobber. Exiling a Knight means they’re gone forever.

Extra painful for Sir Vander. Now you can’t even get a lousy Gold!

Same for the Prizes and, most of the time, the Castles, not that you really want Castles in your deck most of the time.

most of the castles that have duplicates are the ones you want in your deck

[spineflu]

"ah, they're going for a gardens strategy," i think, "I'll embargo gardens - heck, I'll embargo it twice."
the extra curses pushed them over the next decile for deck quantity. oops.

[ipofanes]

Rogue in a kingdom with Necromancer. For some rason, my opponent bought a Rogue anyway.

[silverspawn]

Rogue in a kingdom with Necromancer. For some rason, my opponent bought a Rogue anyway.

I know the reason

[Commodore Chuckles]

Stealing the Zombies from the trash?

[jomini]

Stealing the Zombies from the trash?

You can also use any sort of TfB and gain back the trashed component with Rogue. For instance, if you are running Apprentice for big draw. A few Rogues let you gain $6 feed (e.g. Gold) from the trash to turn into draw. All told if you play Apprentice(G) -> Rogue you net +3 cards/+2$ which is on net what you get from Hunting grounds, Bazaar, and a +1 coin token on either. Apprentice is particularly good as you can trash back Zombies. There, of course, a million odd other useful combos for trash diving (e.g. Small castle, Groundskeeper/action-VP/trashing) so that you may want to go Rogue even without ever pulling out a Zombie.

Even absent a combo, it can be pretty decent if the other guy opens Necromancer to open Rogue in hopes of shutting down his early trashing and leaving him with a dead card throughout the game. It is not like the Zombies are all that terrible to have in your deck and it only takes 3 plays to clear them out.

[LibraryAdventurer]

Was thinking Faithful Hound would protect me from the gang of pickpockets. I was wrong.

[spineflu]

Was thinking Faithful Hound would protect me from the gang of pickpockets. I was wrong.

yeah suddenly i have to care about what order duration draw happens at the start of next turn. I had played a highwayman and did that before Gang of Pickpockets and uh whoops

[J Reggie]

If you buy Band of Misfits in a kingdom with Family of Inventors, your opponent can screw you over by making BoM cheaper.

[Commodore Chuckles]

Was thinking Faithful Hound would protect me from the gang of pickpockets. I was wrong.

yeah suddenly i have to care about what order duration draw happens at the start of next turn. I had played a highwayman and did that before Gang of Pickpockets and uh whoops

It also makes Expedition a lot less useful if you don't have a good way to gain Favors.

[mxdata]

Was thinking Faithful Hound would protect me from the gang of pickpockets. I was wrong.

yeah suddenly i have to care about what order duration draw happens at the start of next turn. I had played a highwayman and did that before Gang of Pickpockets and uh whoops

It also makes Expedition a lot less useful if you don't have a good way to gain Favors.

Any Duration draw too, for that matter. Especially Hireling. I guess you'd get some free sifting, but that's about it

[grrgrrgrr]

If you buy Band of Misfits in a kingdom with Family of Inventors, your opponent can screw you over by making BoM cheaper.

They can also nerf Remodel and its enhanced variants by making Gold/Platinum cheaper.

Another annoying anti-synergy is Courier + Herb Gatherer. You'd think Herb Gatherer can give Courier a maximum array of targets. But then you realize Courier starts with "Discard the top card of your deck". Yikes.

[dpm]

If you buy Band of Misfits in a kingdom with Family of Inventors, your opponent can screw you over by making BoM cheaper.

They can also nerf Remodel and its enhanced variants by making Gold/Platinum cheaper.

Another annoying anti-synergy is Courier + Herb Gatherer. You'd think Herb Gatherer can give Courier a maximum array of targets. But then you realize Courier starts with "Discard the top card of your deck". Yikes.

Courier is really good with League of Masons, though -- spend a favor to put the exact card you need into the discard, and Courier it. 

Suppose Remake is the trasher, you're a little bit behind in getting thin, and your opponent puts -1 on Duchess...

[AJD]

Was thinking Faithful Hound would protect me from the gang of pickpockets. I was wrong.

yeah suddenly i have to care about what order duration draw happens at the start of next turn. I had played a highwayman and did that before Gang of Pickpockets and uh whoops

It also makes Expedition a lot less useful if you don't have a good way to gain Favors.

Any Duration draw too, for that matter. Especially Hireling. I guess you'd get some free sifting, but that's about it

It's better to have that sifting than just have reduced handsize! The problem with Expedition/Pickpockets is that you have to draw the extra cards before you discard down to 4, but that's not the case with Hireling, so you can draw back to 5 anyway.

[mxdata]

Was thinking Faithful Hound would protect me from the gang of pickpockets. I was wrong.

yeah suddenly i have to care about what order duration draw happens at the start of next turn. I had played a highwayman and did that before Gang of Pickpockets and uh whoops

It also makes Expedition a lot less useful if you don't have a good way to gain Favors.

Any Duration draw too, for that matter. Especially Hireling. I guess you'd get some free sifting, but that's about it

It's better to have that sifting than just have reduced handsize! The problem with Expedition/Pickpockets is that you have to draw the extra cards before you discard down to 4, but that's not the case with Hireling, so you can draw back to 5 anyway.

Oh, right! I forgot you can order Duration draw after Gang of Pickpockets

[spineflu]

Was thinking Faithful Hound would protect me from the gang of pickpockets. I was wrong.

yeah suddenly i have to care about what order duration draw happens at the start of next turn. I had played a highwayman and did that before Gang of Pickpockets and uh whoops

It also makes Expedition a lot less useful if you don't have a good way to gain Favors.

Any Duration draw too, for that matter. Especially Hireling. I guess you'd get some free sifting, but that's about it

It's better to have that sifting than just have reduced handsize! The problem with Expedition/Pickpockets is that you have to draw the extra cards before you discard down to 4, but that's not the case with Hireling, so you can draw back to 5 anyway.

Oh, right! I forgot you can order Duration draw after Gang of Pickpockets

yeah more on the "annoying" side than "potentially harmful" side

[mxdata]

Fortune Teller can function as a counter to Order of Masons. If you leave your Victory cards in the discard pile with Order of Masons, then Fortune Teller just ends up putting your entire deck into the discard pile, and you'd have to use Masons all over again on your next draw if you want to keep them out of your draw pile. So, unless you have enough Favors to do it twice in a row, you end up getting those cards mixed back into your draw pile

[mxdata]

Distant Shores is a terrible card when Black Cat is also in the kingdom

[Gherald]

Royal Galley + Groundskeeper

[ipofanes]

Cards gained by Crafter's Guild do not count towards the Garrison tokens, no matter if you spend the favours this turn or next turn. (Edge cases aside.)

[humcalc216]

Crossroads + Ways. If you play your first Crossroads as a Way, you don't get +3 Actions from any of your Crossroads.

[Honkeyfresh]

Distant Shores is a terrible card when Black Cat is also in the kingdom

Why is it that the ultimate card in a pile spams me with estates?  +1 vp and 1 estate in exile would've made it actually a good card.

[Honkeyfresh]

Royal Galley + Groundskeeper

umm what is annoying about a +1 card/Action an +1vp bonus on the second turn?

[Gubump]

Royal Galley + Groundskeeper

umm what is annoying about a +1 card/Action an +1vp bonus on the second turn?

For the first turn, it's set aside and not in play.

[Honkeyfresh]

Royal Galley + Groundskeeper

umm what is annoying about a +1 card/Action an +1vp bonus on the second turn?

For the first turn, it's set aside and not in play.

ah i see.  I was thinking the second turn

[jomini]

Royal Galley + Groundskeeper

umm what is annoying about a +1 card/Action an +1vp bonus on the second turn?

For the first turn, it's set aside and not in play.

ah i see.  I was thinking the second turn

Which is the correct way to think about it. Not the best option out there as you only have your Keeper in play every other turn ... but Rg is very good at setting up megaturns where you can bank massive points piling down the estates or even the duchies.

Crossroads + Ways. If you play your first Crossroads as a Way, you don't get +3 Actions from any of your Crossroads.

Sure, but for a lot Xroads decks you want to have extra Xroads to be sure to get the actions (e.g. for something like Bridge troll) and then you can use the others for something better (e.g. Xroads/Btroll/Mole needs to play exactly one Xroads, and then just cycles through the deck off the other Xroads until you get to the Btrolls). In any event, there are exceedingly few Ways that you will want to play before gaining the +3 Actions if you want them. E.g. Seal, Monkey, and Ox are not going to be your first Xroads play, let alone Butterfly or Horse.

Xroads is actually extremely strong with just about all the Ways and definitely better than Xroads alone. Having options on $2 cards makes them wildly better pretty much regardless of what the option is.

Distant Shores is a terrible card when Black Cat is also in the kingdom

This is rarely true. If Distant shores is good you either have a green tolerant deck (e.g. Shepherd) or, more commonly, good enough trashing to deal with incoming estates. Adding a few curses on top may well be trivial to burn off (e.g. Count, Chapel, Forge, Sauna, Donate). Likewise games with other cursers often mean that few curses are left to toss with Black cats. The draw for your opponent is annoying, but a deck that supports a lot of Bcats is likely one where they are going to draw through regardless of if you gain an estate or buy a province.

And even if the trashing is not there, Dshores is net neutral on deck quality one shuffle after you play it. Often, game is winding down as you buy it and there are likely to be few curses left regardless. Yes, if you lack curse trashing (e.g. Spice merchant) if can be hard. But if you would gamble on a duchy, you should likely gamble on a Dshore.

The real brutal attack here is Rabble. Even if you are green tolerant, you will have a lot of hands with 3 estates and no enabler.

[Honkeyfresh]

Royal Galley + Groundskeeper

umm what is annoying about a +1 card/Action an +1vp bonus on the second turn?

For the first turn, it's set aside and not in play.

ah i see.  I was thinking the second turn

Which is the correct way to think about it. Not the best option out there as you only have your Keeper in play every other turn ... but Rg is very good at setting up megaturns where you can bank massive points piling down the estates or even the duchies.

Plus the extra action/draw could be massive, especially if there are no _2 actions/draw on the board

[mxdata]

Hermit is unable to trash Curses when Charlatan is in the kingdom, meaning that what is normally a great way to deal with Curses becomes useless for that function

[mxdata]

Hermit is unable to trash Curses when Charlatan is in the kingdom, meaning that what is normally a great way to deal with Curses becomes useless for that function

I came across this in a kingdom with Charlatan, Hermit, and Pooka. Which was kinda funny because Hermit lost its ability to trash Curses, while Pooka gained that ability

[Honkeyfresh]

Highwayman and cursed gold.  Basically gives a free copper and they don't get the curse. And they get the option to +3 & curse if it helps them.  Probably won't stop u getting highwayman, but makes other strong attacks more sesirable and haunted haunted woods a no brainer.

[jomini]

Highwayman and cursed gold.  Basically gives a free copper and they don't get the curse. And they get the option to +3 & curse if it helps them.  Probably won't stop u getting highwayman, but makes other strong attacks more sesirable and haunted haunted woods a no brainer.

Highway man is highly effective at mitigating the impacts of curse on your turn, though. The worst thing about the early curses is that they lower the odds that you will line up your trasher & curses, villages & terminals, cursed gold & remodel, or the rest. Highwayman does the drawing up front and trades off a shorthand for a big hand, which is wildly better for things like using Remake.

Yeah, the attack on Highwayman is less impressive, but the draw is much, much better when dealing with mid-efficiency trashers or attempting to fire off engines with low efficiency trashers with the extra curses from Cursed gold. Being able to open something like Remake/Highwayman is exceedingly powerful.

[Honkeyfresh]

Highwayman and cursed gold.  Basically gives a free copper and they don't get the curse. And they get the option to +3 & curse if it helps them.  Probably won't stop u getting highwayman, but makes other strong attacks more sesirable and haunted haunted woods a no brainer.

Highway man is highly effective at mitigating the impacts of curse on your turn, though. The worst thing about the early curses is that they lower the odds that you will line up your trasher & curses, villages & terminals, cursed gold & remodel, or the rest. Highwayman does the drawing up front and trades off a shorthand for a big hand, which is wildly better for things like using Remake.

Yeah, the attack on Highwayman is less impressive, but the draw is much, much better when dealing with mid-efficiency trashers or attempting to fire off engines with low efficiency trashers with the extra curses from Cursed gold. Being able to open something like Remake/Highwayman is exceedingly powerful.

Oh I agree, like I said it probably won't really stop u buying highwayman (as I agree it's an elite attack card) it's just a small anti-synergy with it. More likely it will just make you track if their cursed gold is coming up in debating 2 terminal actions and possibly then choose the non highwayman option, but it's still only a very small negative anyway.

[vidicate]

Haha imagine these two in the same kingdom—Skirmisher + Berserker, lulz. I think they might actually be the same dude, when he’s both on and off duty, or perhaps before and after unemployment Oh! Maybe that’s why they can’t trigger each other’s attack Yep, that’s now my head-canon.

[Honkeyfresh]

Not a total anti-synergy but it changes how u play it.  Alchemist and Crypt, what a neat combo. You are so smart! Crypt potions so you always have 1 on play right?  Yeah, but only if you don't put it in the crypt (so maybe get 2 to cycle them) b/c when you put it in the crypt it leaves play and all your alchemists leave the realm of the top-decked.

[faust]

In a game with Warlord winning the Magpie split suddenly becomes a lot less appealing...

[mxdata]

In a game with Warlord winning the Magpie split suddenly becomes a lot less appealing...

Alchemist really hates Warlord too

[Awaclus]

Playing a Champion stops your opponent's Old Witches from trashing your Curses.

[mxdata]

Rabble no longer topdecks Curses if Charlatan is in the kingdom

[mxdata]

In a game with Warlord winning the Magpie split suddenly becomes a lot less appealing...

Had a really bad Warlord interaction in a recent game. Peasant game with Highway. I bought a bunch of Highways and put the +buy token on the pile

... And then ended up frequently only able to play two Highways and having a hand full of unplayable Highways, because my opponent managed to get 3 Warlords

[Honkeyfresh]

This one might not even be a negative synergy, but an inverse reverse negative synergy?  Possession and Barbarian.  If your opponent has Barbarians it becomes pretty dangerous to play them, as Barbarian smashes to a curse like 30% of the time.  You won't lose the cards you trash, and if you faux trash good cards, you could get some free lower-cost cards, but if you could easily cause yourself to gain a curse too.

[vidicate]

This one might not even be a negative synergy, but an inverse reverse negative synergy?  Possession and Barbarian.  If your opponent has Barbarians it becomes pretty dangerous to play them, as Barbarian smashes to a curse like 30% of the time.  You won't lose the cards you trash, and if you faux trash good cards, you could get some free lower-cost cards, but if you could easily cause yourself to gain a curse too.

Anyone not possessed still trashes their cards, including the possessor.

[Honkeyfresh]

This one might not even be a negative synergy, but an inverse reverse negative synergy?  Possession and Barbarian.  If your opponent has Barbarians it becomes pretty dangerous to play them, as Barbarian smashes to a curse like 30% of the time.  You won't lose the cards you trash, and if you faux trash good cards, you could get some free lower-cost cards, but if you could easily cause yourself to gain a curse too.

Anyone not possessed still trashes their cards, including the possessor.

oof. u are right.then it is even better.  as you force them to choose between the 2 coins or trashing their own cards.  Really makes Barbarian a nice possession counter.  More fun than greening your deck to death to spite them.

[GendoIkari]

This one might not even be a negative synergy, but an inverse reverse negative synergy?  Possession and Barbarian.  If your opponent has Barbarians it becomes pretty dangerous to play them, as Barbarian smashes to a curse like 30% of the time.  You won't lose the cards you trash, and if you faux trash good cards, you could get some free lower-cost cards, but if you could easily cause yourself to gain a curse too.

Anyone not possessed still trashes their cards, including the possessor.

oof. u are right.then it is even better.  as you force them to choose between the 2 coins or trashing their own cards.  Really makes Barbarian a nice possession counter.  More fun than greening your deck to death to spite them.

That’s just all attack cards, though.

[Honkeyfresh]

populate mint.  When you gain populate you lose all coins used to buy it when Mint is in play.  Still probably worth it usually, but might not wanna get it with plunder or magic lamp in play.  This is a very nasty negtive synergy with like Capitalism say...

[NoMoreFun]

If you play a Stockpile after playing Kiln, you gain a Stockpile before you play (and Exile) the first one. This means the Stockpile you gained can't be used to get that Stockpile out of Exile. Not necessarily a bad play, but it limits the number of times you can play Stockpile during a game compared to other gainers.

[mxdata]

Turns out that Trail isn't that useful a counter to Skirmisher, if there's more than one Skirmisher in play. This happened to me in a recent game and really confused me at first

My opponent had several Skirmishers in play and bought another Skirmisher, forcing me to discard. One of the cards I discarded was a Trail, so I got to draw another card. But then the server forced me to discard again. It happened that I'd drawn another Trail, so I discarded that, but then I had to discard again, and this time I discarded an Estate. I couldn't figure out what was going on at first, and I thought maybe there was some glitch with the server, but then I realized what was going on

Each Skirmisher that was played had the "discard down to three" effect. Normally that doesn't matter, because once you've discarded to the first Skirmisher, the other Skirmishers can't do anything. But in this case, I had more than three cards after resolving the first Skirmisher, so then when the next Skirmisher was resolved, I had more than 3 cards in hand and thus had to discard again!

[Honkeyfresh]

Devils Workshop and Cavalry.  Cavalry don't ride at night.  Only in buy phase.

salvager/trail.  trashing a trail only causes it to be played, and you get a buy from salvaged, but you don't get the 4 coins you were expecting for salvaging trail. Though TBH I'm not sure why you don't get the coins?

[kieranmillar]

Devils Workshop and Cavalry.  Cavalry don't ride at night.  Only in buy phase.

salvager/trail.  trashing a trail only causes it to be played, and you get a buy from salvaged, but you don't get the 4 coins you were expecting for salvaging trail. Though TBH I'm not sure why you don't get the coins?

Salvaging a Trail definitely gets you 4 coins.

[Honkeyfresh]

Devils Workshop and Cavalry.  Cavalry don't ride at night.  Only in buy phase.

salvager/trail.  trashing a trail only causes it to be played, and you get a buy from salvaged, but you don't get the 4 coins you were expecting for salvaging trail. Though TBH I'm not sure why you don't get the coins?

Salvaging a Trail definitely gets you 4 coins.

Then it was a glitch. Because me and the other player were discussing it because we didn't get the coins for some reason.  However, the 2 of us played so many games I could never remember which one it was.  It happened to both of us on 2 different turns too.

[Awaclus]

Devils Workshop and Cavalry.  Cavalry don't ride at night.  Only in buy phase.

salvager/trail.  trashing a trail only causes it to be played, and you get a buy from salvaged, but you don't get the 4 coins you were expecting for salvaging trail. Though TBH I'm not sure why you don't get the coins?

Salvaging a Trail definitely gets you 4 coins.

Then it was a glitch. Because me and the other player were discussing it because we didn't get the coins for some reason.  However, the 2 of us played so many games I could never remember which one it was.  It happened to both of us on 2 different turns too.

Was it by any chance game 108054093 against dominationnation on 16-Sep-2022, in which you were the only player who bought Salvager, only trashed a Trail with it once (on your turn 7), and did in fact get +$4?

[jomini]

Devils Workshop and Cavalry.  Cavalry don't ride at night.  Only in buy phase.

salvager/trail.  trashing a trail only causes it to be played, and you get a buy from salvaged, but you don't get the 4 coins you were expecting for salvaging trail. Though TBH I'm not sure why you don't get the coins?

Devil's Workshop gets phenomenally better with any horse gainer as it provides a limitless target for Imps (barring, of course the use of Ways, Enchantress, and the like). Further, Cavalry come with a built-in buy and on most boards, functionally cost something like $2 during the buildout phase. That makes it much easier to gain Imps. And as something of a functional equivalent of a Moat; Cavalry work very well with Devil's workshop just gaining whatever village is out.

And then there is the chance to hit early double Dws turns. Going from 5 to 7 cards is a very big increase in odds of getting Cavalry/Village/Imp.

[Honkeyfresh]

Devils Workshop and Cavalry.  Cavalry don't ride at night.  Only in buy phase.

salvager/trail.  trashing a trail only causes it to be played, and you get a buy from salvaged, but you don't get the 4 coins you were expecting for salvaging trail. Though TBH I'm not sure why you don't get the coins?

Salvaging a Trail definitely gets you 4 coins.

Then it was a glitch. Because me and the other player were discussing it because we didn't get the coins for some reason.  However, the 2 of us played so many games I could never remember which one it was.  It happened to both of us on 2 different turns too.

Was it by any chance game 108054093 against dominationnation on 16-Sep-2022, in which you were the only player who bought Salvager, only trashed a Trail with it once (on your turn 7), and did in fact get +$4?

Is this the DSF version of getting doxxed?   
Does it have the chat text too? Because if so we both somehow got that wrong...

[mxdata]

Abundance's Duration effect doesn't play well with cards that let you gain Action cards on an opponent's turn. I had a recent game with Falconer + Abundance, and with one or more Abundances in play I found myself unwilling to use Falconer's Reaction. It would be even worse with cards that can force you to gain Action cards, like Barbarian or Jester, or your opponent buying a Messenger

[Gherald]

My opponent bought Rogue from the BM on a board with Siren.

I don't think the investment paid off as they were hoping.

[4est]

Abundance's Duration effect doesn't play well with cards that let you gain Action cards on an opponent's turn. I had a recent game with Falconer + Abundance, and with one or more Abundances in play I found myself unwilling to use Falconer's Reaction. It would be even worse with cards that can force you to gain Action cards, like Barbarian or Jester, or your opponent buying a Messenger

It's doesn't play nice with Cultist or Marauder either.

[NoMoreFun]

Lich and Journey

Think you can play a Lich without consequences by getting an extra turn? Well if it's Journey, you still don't discard cards from play during Clean-up, so your next turn is going to be a Journey turn. And it's likely to be quite a weak turn with Lich drawing you so many cards.

Never mind, you discard your cards from play during your opponent's Clean-Up phase. The hand you draw won't be as good, but at least you have access to your cards.

[mxdata]

Lich and Journey

Think you can play a Lich without consequences by getting an extra turn? Well if it's Journey, you still don't discard cards from play during Clean-up, so your next turn is going to be a Journey turn. And it's likely to be quite a weak turn with Lich drawing you so many cards.

I think you'd discard during your opponent's Clean-Up phase. That's what it says in the wiki anyways "If you play Lich and buy Journey on the same turn, your cards remain in play, the Journey turn gets skipped, and you'll discard everything from play during the next Clean-up (yours or another player's)." So, I think that when your next regular turn comes around, you'll have already discarded all your cards (barring your opponent skipping a turn from their own Lich)

[allanfieldhouse]

Abundance's Duration effect doesn't play well with cards that let you gain Action cards on an opponent's turn. I had a recent game with Falconer + Abundance, and with one or more Abundances in play I found myself unwilling to use Falconer's Reaction. It would be even worse with cards that can force you to gain Action cards, like Barbarian or Jester, or your opponent buying a Messenger

It's doesn't play nice with Cultist or Marauder either.

Just the buff Cultist needed! "Oh, were you saving up your Abundances? Here, have a ruin!"

[NoMoreFun]

Lich and Journey

Think you can play a Lich without consequences by getting an extra turn? Well if it's Journey, you still don't discard cards from play during Clean-up, so your next turn is going to be a Journey turn. And it's likely to be quite a weak turn with Lich drawing you so many cards.

I think you'd discard during your opponent's Clean-Up phase. That's what it says in the wiki anyways "If you play Lich and buy Journey on the same turn, your cards remain in play, the Journey turn gets skipped, and you'll discard everything from play during the next Clean-up (yours or another player's)." So, I think that when your next regular turn comes around, you'll have already discarded all your cards (barring your opponent skipping a turn from their own Lich)

That might be the case - in the game it happened to me on the game actually ended during my opponent's turn. I just saw my crappy hand and a bunch of cards in play.

Still an anti-synergy if you play so many cards that you draw junk or even fewer than 5 cards.

[Commodore Chuckles]

An anti-synergy within the Loot pile: Sword makes Puzzle Box's ability a lot less useful.

[mxdata]

Abundance plays really poorly with Night gainers like Vampire

[Gherald]

Way of the Frog before a Journey turn doesn't work at all.

First there's the straightforward fact that you don't discard and hence topdeck it before your Journey turn, that's just the the normal don't-discard drawback of Journey.

But then, after your Journey turn, when discarding, you don't topdeck it either! Because it says "When you discard this from play this turn" and that never happens.

[Honkeyfresh]

best not to use your Bandit on the 5/2 open when jewelled egg is on the board.  I think I ended up getting like 7 loots because my opponent did this.  applies to other trashers to like Barbarian too.

was able to hit 32 w/ 12 buys on t 13 b4 they resigned (remake was also present which sped it up even more)

https://tinyurl.com/2g7jkuce

[Erick648]

The +1 {bonus} tokens from Adventures can be disappointing on Taskmaster, as they don't do anything when Taskmaster's start-of-turn ability triggers.  "Repeat this ability" is not the same as "Play this again."

[mxdata]

The +1 {bonus} tokens from Adventures can be disappointing on Taskmaster, as they don't do anything when Taskmaster's start-of-turn ability triggers.  "Repeat this ability" is not the same as "Play this again."

That's basically the same concept as all the other Duration cards. Stick an Adventure token on Hireling and you're not getting that bonus every turn

[joefarebrother]

Friendly Trail looks great: You *discard* a trial to *gain* a trail! Except you do so during cleanup, where trial's ability doesn't work.

[mxdata]

Governor + Loot is frustrating, because if you use the trash and gain function on Governor, you run the risk of giving your opponent a Province if they happen to have a Loot in hand

[AJD]

I'm not sure if this counts as an anti-synergy exactly, but Search/Keep makes endgame unpredictable. If you're going to buy the last Province, you better make sure you already have a pretty big lead! Each Search in play when the Province pile is emptied may or may not mean a 5VP swing in favor of its owner!

[Honkeyfresh]

Frigate can really neuter a Tactician turn.

[NoMoreFun]

Thinking of when Traits are at their worst.

• Cheap Band of Misfits - Still good in some boards but there's more of a chance it can't play anything. Other cards Cheap arguably makes worse: Border Village, Falconer, Berserker, Rats, Raze, Fortress. (Not putting Silver Mine as being $4 more than makes up for not being able to get $4 Treasures with it).
• Cursed Port - Turns a safe gain into a big gamble, and the Loots don't care about Port's +Actions. 
• Fated Merchant Camp - It's optional so a card is never worse for being Fated, but sometimes it's not particularly useful. With Merchant Camp, if it's not topdecked there's a reason for it, so the trait ends up being an "are you sure?".
• Fawning Chapel - Once you're getting Provinces, you probably don't have much use for Chapel. At least Rats is a cantrip that could save a late hand. So it's kind of junk.
• Friendly Chapel - An optional effect, so can't ever be worse. So what's a card you don't want that many copies of? Where you're likely to need to decline the "Friendly" prompt most often? Edit: Agree with joefarebrother that the false friend that's Friendly Trail is annoying.
• Hasty Rats - As soon as you buy one, you're going to gain one every turn until the pile runs out and be forced to trash a lot. Maybe not too bad (it's like Cathedral) but having less control over Rats isn't a good thing. Beggar is another card you really don't want to be forced to play.
  
  Edit: Hasty Treasure Maps are pretty much worthless - getting one into your deck requires the same trick as getting a Siren without trashing an Action, and then you have to line it up. Good find by Ethan.
• Inherited Royal Blacksmith - People don't buy this early for a reason. Watch out for misclicks.
• Inspiring Rebuild - What's a non terminal card that also doesn't really appreciate other cards in its deck?
• Nearby Overlord - No real downside, so what's a card where you're unlikely to make use of the on buy +buy? One where you're likely to be in debt after buying, that's much harder to gain through methods other than buying.
• Patient Swamp Shacks - Can actually be extremely useful with Prepare or Journey. But nothing to make you curse your deck order like seeing the option to play a dead card for little effect next turn.
• Pious Distant Lands - It's optional, so what's relatively expensive that you mainly want late game.
• Reckless Tactician - Very thematic. It doesn't work any better than a normal Tactician and you lose it after one battle.
• Rich Poor House - A paradox reflected in gameplay. You get a free Silver that the Poor House doesn't want to see.
• Shy Cursed Village? - Surprisingly not Shy Lab or Lost City etc. as you can draw the Shy Lab to play it "again". I thought Cursed Village as something where you probably aren't getting much benefit from discarding it but even then it might be good to do that in some kind of disappearing money engine. These optional ones are hard.
• Tireless Hireling etc.- Tireless can be meaningless. I really wanted to think of an anti-synergy - a card you want evenly spaced in your deck rather than clumped together (e.g. Throne Room and King's Court). But there's a lot of ways those cards benefit too. So useless Tireless it is.

[mxdata]

Shaman + Swindler can sometimes end up helping your opponent, depending on what cards it trashes, since they can get the trashed card back on their next turn

It's especially bad in a game with Feodum. Trash a Feodum, your opponent gets 3 Silvers plus a $4, and then they get their Feodum right back, so you're basically just increasing the value of your opponent's Feoda

[NoMoreFun]

Shaman + Swindler can sometimes end up helping your opponent, depending on what cards it trashes, since they can get the trashed card back on their next turn

It's especially bad in a game with Feodum. Trash a Feodum, your opponent gets 3 Silvers plus a $4, and then they get their Feodum right back, so you're basically just increasing the value of your opponent's Feoda

It's a real gamble because it's stronger than usual when it hits Curse, Copper and Estate. You probably still want a Swindler but it's a good candidate for late game trashing.

[Gherald]

Shaman does not like Swindler nor other types of net TfB. The meta is to leave only true junk in the trash so your opponent has no choice but to gain true junk.

[mxdata]

Shaman does not like Swindler nor other types of net TfB. The meta is to leave only true junk in the trash so your opponent has no choice but to gain true junk.

The exception is if something that gives extra turns like Journey is in the game. You can trash for benefit on your regular turn, then get it back on your bonus turn, but yeah, that's certainly true in most cases

[faust]

Thinking of when Traits are at their worst.

[...]

• Tireless Hireling etc.- Tireless can be meaningless. I really wanted to think of an anti-synergy - a card you want evenly spaced in your deck rather than clumped together (e.g. Throne Room and King's Court). But there's a lot of ways those cards benefit too. So useless Tireless it is.

I actually found an antisynergy: Reactions that can be played out of turn, such as Falconer. If you play a normal Falconer on an opponent's turn, it is discarded at the end of your opponent's turn. A Tireless Falconer, on the other hand, is set aside and not put back into your deck until the end of your turn, thus making it impossible to play it again.

[AJD]

How so? Tireless doesn't say "end of your turn"; it just says "end of turn".

[faust]

How so? Tireless doesn't say "end of your turn"; it just says "end of turn".

Hm, I could swear it happened to me in a game. Is it possible that there's a bug on ShuffleIT?

[JW]

Fawning on Mint. In a game with few sources of +Coins, no less!

[Honkeyfresh]

Guardian blocks the trashing of a Curse than an Old Witch would normally trash from your hand

[Honkeyfresh]

Pickaxe and Canal have a nasty interaction as now you will have to trash base 4 cost cards in order to gain loots.

[GendoIkari]

Pickaxe and Canal have a nasty interaction as now you will have to trash base 4 cost cards in order to gain loots.

This is basically the same as Canal and any TFB, right?

[Gherald]

Canal also makes all base 4 cost cards be $3 for buy/gain purposes, so what are we even complaining about? That there's no longer a loot benefit to trashing your opening silver I guess.

[faust]

Bonfire / Charlatan

Really makes you long for the pre-errata version of Bonfire.

[mxdata]

Way of the Frog before a Journey turn doesn't work at all.

First there's the straightforward fact that you don't discard and hence topdeck it before your Journey turn, that's just the the normal don't-discard drawback of Journey.

But then, after your Journey turn, when discarding, you don't topdeck it either! Because it says "When you discard this from play this turn" and that never happens.

Hunh. Now I'm wondering why the wording "this turn" was used there

[faust]

Way of the Frog before a Journey turn doesn't work at all.

First there's the straightforward fact that you don't discard and hence topdeck it before your Journey turn, that's just the the normal don't-discard drawback of Journey.

But then, after your Journey turn, when discarding, you don't topdeck it either! Because it says "When you discard this from play this turn" and that never happens.

Hunh. Now I'm wondering why the wording "this turn" was used there

Probably because of weird issues when you throne a Duration and play it regularly first and as WotF second.

[jomini]

An anti-synergy within the Loot pile: Sword makes Puzzle Box's ability a lot less useful.

Exactly the opposite many times. Puzzle box is vastly better when your opponent has Sword because you can topdeck Shield (or Moat or any of the dozens of other Sword counters should they be in the kingdom). Being able to top deck the appropriate reaction (be it Shield or Wt) is much more clutch when dealing with painful discarding attacks.

Abundance plays really poorly with Night gainers like Vampire

Works wonderfully with Cobbler. Gain and play, buy an action, get the coins. It makes a good target to gain with Dw. Changeling has downright synergy (buy a useless $3 to activate a few Abundances, gain an action to activate, return it for a Changeling, use that next turn for another abundance). Even Vamp is not that bad as any viable $3 (e.g. Village or Moat equivalents) can be paired up with a complementary $5 gain. And, of course, +buys are exceedingly handy on Vamp boards if you want to keep gaining through the late game. I mean, yes, you cannot stack them for later but in Vamp games you rarely need to stack them and instead should be using them as renewable Stockpiles.

NMF:

Inherited Royal Blacksmith - People don't buy this early for a reason. Watch out for misclicks.

No this is obnoxiously good. You just elect not to play it until you have some better cards, Literally completely 100% better than estate outside of the universal exceptions (e.g. Baron/Estate). The real bum option is Inherited Castles. Small castle brings your average card to $0.8 wonderful. Crumbling castle is NOT gained so you neither gain the silver (so your average cards is still $0.7) nor the VP point (so it literally starts at the same value as the estate it replaced).

Patient Swamp Shacks - Can actually be extremely useful with Prepare or Journey. But nothing to make you curse your deck order like seeing the option to play a dead card for little effect next turn.

Any sort of duration setup is quite useful as well. And even a Patient ruined village can be quite nice from time to time. I have done quite well with Astrolabes, for instance. Changeling has the same constraints with the added detriment that delayed play trashes the card for nothing barring the outs and can always be played during the Night if you can set it aside during cleanup.

Tireless Hireling etc.- Tireless can be meaningless. I really wanted to think of an anti-synergy - a card you want evenly spaced in your deck rather than clumped together (e.g. Throne Room and King's Court). But there's a lot of ways those cards benefit too. So useless Tireless it is.

I would suggest Shepherd. With a green deck, the end up clumped, not in your hand. Going with one or two to avoid clumping can be helpful, but only if you have green in hand when you draw it.

[NoMoreFun]

The money that you get for trashing cards after playing a Priest won't yet apply if you use Sewers to trash a card after the first with Priest.

There's lots of ways Priest and Sewers can work well together regardless it's just irritating to think cards have a certain interaction that they don't.

[Ethan]

About the worst Trait, just found Hasty Treasure Map.

[GendoIkari]

About the worst Trait, just found Hasty Treasure Map.

There’s a few ways you can still pull it off, but they require specific other things to be in the Kingdom, like Watchtower.

[LibraryAdventurer]

About the worst Trait, just found Hasty Treasure Map.

There’s a few ways you can still pull it off, but they require specific other things to be in the Kingdom, like Watchtower.

Transport a Treasure Map into Exile, then onto your deck. Then Summon buy a 2nd Treasure Map (forgetting that Hasty does the Summon thing already).

[mxdata]

About the worst Trait, just found Hasty Treasure Map.

There’s a few ways you can still pull it off, but they require specific other things to be in the Kingdom, like Watchtower.

Most Ways would work too

[NoMoreFun]

Prepare sets aside your whole remaining hand, including Night cards, which are then discarded during your next turn.

About the worst Trait, just found Hasty Treasure Map.

I think that's worth editing the post over.

[NoMoreFun]

The real bum option is Inherited Castles. Small castle brings your average card to $0.8 wonderful. Crumbling castle is NOT gained so you neither gain the silver (so your average cards is still $0.7) nor the VP point (so it literally starts at the same value as the estate it replaced).

Changeling has the same constraints with the added detriment that delayed play trashes the card for nothing barring the outs and can always be played during the Night if you can set it aside during cleanup.

Traits only apply to Actions and Treasure piles. The Castle pile is Victory/Castle so you can't apply Traits to them, and Changeling is a pure Night Card.

Tireless Hireling etc.- Tireless can be meaningless. I really wanted to think of an anti-synergy - a card you want evenly spaced in your deck rather than clumped together (e.g. Throne Room and King's Court). But there's a lot of ways those cards benefit too. So useless Tireless it is.

I would suggest Shepherd. With a green deck, the end up clumped, not in your hand. Going with one or two to avoid clumping can be helpful, but only if you have green in hand when you draw it.
[/quote]

Makes sense and even 2 Shepherds is pretty risky. But buying a single Tireless Shepherd once you've started greening seems like a pretty good bet for deck consistency? That's why I struggled with Tireless - when clumping seems like a bad thing, you can still kind of play around it.

[mxdata]

Shaman makes Necromancer pretty much useless. The Zombies leave the Trash in the opening, and if you use Zombie Apprentice, your opponent gets to gain what you trashed (barring things like extra turns or playing it at the start of your turn, e.g., with Contract or Royal Galley). Zombie Mason, too, becomes riskier since, if you trash something good, your opponent will also get to have it (of course, if you trash something like an Estate or Copper it's still good)

[Tiago]

Sea Hag + Locusts

You give them a Curse onto their deck... which you then immediately trash for them.