So this is a little article about a fairly strong synergy / weak combo between Cursed Village and Storeroom. It's not something so dominant that you ignore everything else on the board every time it's out, but it's a powerful 2 card engine that really churns through junk / most attacks and produces several big turns in a row when played correctly. It's not especially fast, but it's resilient, and probably worth considering on boards where you really don't want to mirror the opponent, or as a part of a larger strategy. This article is a very rough draft, but I just wanted to get thoughts on the synergy. I do ask that you actually try it a few times before dismissing it though.
How does it work?Essentially, Cursed Village and Storeroom are a complete engine in themselves - Cursed Village provides the actions and the draw, and Storeroom sifts and provides payload in the form of +Buy and economy. You start with a Cursed Village to get a 6 card hand with +2 Actions, then play Storeroom. Discard to draw cards to ensure you have at least a Cursed Village in hand, then discard everything except one Cursed Village (and sometimes also a Storeroom) to get some Coin. Then you can play Cursed Village to draw 5-6 new cards, repeating the cycle until you've got a ton of Buys and money.
On a board with no support, you open Silver / Storeroom, grab CV whenever you can, and then otherwise grab Storeroom, perhaps adding a second Silver if you're having trouble getting CVs into play. With absolutely no support, it does take awhile to set up, though, so don't consider an unsupported strategy against a well supported fast engine like Governor. You basically start greening whenever the game state calls for it, rather than at a specific time (though if you pile the CVs you should probably fire if you haven't already). This strategy is fairly tolerant to extended greening and should do fairly well if your opponent tries to pull a fast one on you by greening earlier than you expect - let them choke while you churn and crawl your way back buying multiple Victory cards a turn!
There are a bunch of small upsides to this combo that make it work reasonably well. First, you don't need to be particularly thin, though modest thinning certainly helps with reliability. Cursed Village followed by Storeroom for full draw can cycle up to 11 cards, making it quite easy to find your next pieces. Discarding your excess CVs and Storerooms for Coin is also not a huge problem because of this - you'll basically shuffle your deck every cycle or two, so discarding those for benefit also helps put them into your next cycle's hand! Another advantage to this strategy is that it is resilient to most attacks. Discard attacks help it out as CV draws more on the first play. Trashing attacks are cushioned by the relatively thick deck of junk. Junking attacks can hurt after awhile, but the deck isn't immediately crippled by a Curse or two. One more small plus is that the Hexes which Cursed Village makes you take are very rarely a big problem - most of them don't really affect you negatively except Deluded, Bad Omens, or War - and these won't totally ruin your game necessarily either.
What are some pitfalls to watch out for?As emphasized before, this strategy is not the fastest, so you need to make sure you have time to set it up and keep it going. If something else on the board is better supported, particularly fast strategies, you're just not going to have the time to get off the ground. The combo unsupported is just okay, not world-breaking or anything.
The easiest play error to make is to force awful shuffles. Remember that you should expect to shuffle about once every 1-2 cycles. This means discarding components for benefit in order to make sure they are in the next shuffle. Near the end of your big turns, you need to keep CAREFUL count of how many cards are left in the deck and decide when to "bail out" and just wipe the rest of your hand for Coin, in lieu of drawing a couple more cards and leaving yourself with a 5+ card deck full of junk. It's pretty easy to either "bail out" too early, or to go too far and end up with a junky deck for a turn or two. This can be mitigated with some basic deck tracking - remember how many CVs and Storerooms you have to work with, and adjust your decisions as you reach the end of your supply of those cards. All of that said, keep in mind if you're still buying CVs, a few of those Hexes mess with the top of your deck, so don't be afraid to keep a card or two there, particularly if you haven't seen those Hexes yet and the Hex stack is getting low.
How do you support this strategy?You absolutely do want to support this strategy with the other parts of the kingdom, it is certainly not a monolithic strategy and gets much better with certain kinds of support. Here are a few examples - these aren't meant to be an exhaustive list or even the most important synergies, just something to get you thinking:
Light Trashing, especially nonterminal - Lookout, Loan, Forager, Raze, Ratcatcher... all of these things help. You don't need to get
that thin for this to work, so you buy fewer than you normally would, but having fewer opportunities to whiff and a smaller handsize for a CV play are both nice. Even terminal TFB like Butcher or Replace can help.
Summon - Summoning a Storeroom guarantees a $5 hand at least, and if you manage to find a CV in that 10 card search space, you can start off your turn with $4, a Buy, and a CV ready to fire.
Artificer - An early Artificer lets you topdeck a CV (from a six card hand) or Storeroom and then immediately draw it with CV, ensuring you get another cycle.
Tunnel - Get just one on the opening, and you won't have trouble hitting $5 for CVs after a few shuffles. Don't get too many Golds.
Other sources of virtual Coin - Cursed Village works great with other virtual Coin sources, particularly if they also do something better than what a Storeroom cycle would do. Maybe a Swindler or a Mountebank for example.
Other Villages - These can be hard to incorporate as they usually compete at cost with Storeroom or CV, but splashing a Village in or two can help you incorporate other payload, making your engine more well-rounded.