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[ehunt]

what are your tips?

[dedicateddan]

Well, Lurker does two things. 

The first (and more important) is gaining action cards from the trash. Two of them is like a super-workshop that can gain good actions like King's Court and Grand Market. 

The second is trashing cards from supply. This gives Lurker decks a lot of pressure on the piles and leads to shorter games that involve dancing around lowered piles. 

Trashing cards from supply also leads to combos with cards with on-trash abilities like Fortress, Catacombs, Hunting Grounds, and Cultist. These combos are quite powerful and generally worth prioritizing early on.

Without a combo, Lurker is a fine-but-middling card that acts like half of a super workshop. In engine decks, you usually want to trash first, then add Lurkers as payload. Somewhere around the mid-game, you'll have to make a judgement call on whether the game is likely to be determined by piles or total VP. If it's piles, add additional Lurkers. If it's VP, stay at just a few Lurkers and build a deck that has enough money to buy VP.

A lot of it depends on the board, but a lot of playing Lurker well comes down to paying a lot of attention to the threat of three piling endings.

[Dingan]

Squire

[Chappy7]

Without a combo, Lurker is a fine-but-middling card that acts like half of a super workshop. In engine decks, you usually want to trash first, then add Lurkers as payload.

Do you still approach it like this if your opponent opens with lurker? I mean, even if they just start with one then they can trash stuff worry free and easily pick it up later.  I'm not disagreeing, just sincerely asking.  When my opponent gets a lurker, I always pick at least one up to keep them honest, but I'm not sure if this is the right play.

[vsiewnar]

Play 100 (or more) games with Lurker in the kingdom. Try using it in different ways (no Lurker, double/single Lurker opening, odd or even amounts etc.) to see what is best when. Observe how other people use it. I remember it taking me a very long time to work through and develop a better understanding of Scrying Pool and Apothecary(first online expansion).

[csa]

Just read the forum a lot but don't post things. It's not as hard as it looks (or doesn't look).

Source: decent as Lurker.

[dedicateddan]

Without a combo, Lurker is a fine-but-middling card that acts like half of a super workshop. In engine decks, you usually want to trash first, then add Lurkers as payload.

Do you still approach it like this if your opponent opens with lurker? I mean, even if they just start with one then they can trash stuff worry free and easily pick it up later.  I'm not disagreeing, just sincerely asking.  When my opponent gets a lurker, I always pick at least one up to keep them honest, but I'm not sure if this is the right play.

It’s usually worth contesting Lurker to deny your opponent the chance of “saving” powerful actions in the trash. Depending on the board, this could mean getting 1, 2 or more Lurkers - or just threatening to gain one mid-turn.

[Titandrake]

Play 100 (or more) games with Lurker in the kingdom. Try using it in different ways (no Lurker, double/single Lurker opening, odd or even amounts etc.) to see what is best when. Observe how other people use it. I remember it taking me a very long time to work through and develop a better understanding of Scrying Pool and Apothecary(first online expansion).

100 games is a lot of games...I only have about 500 games lifetime on the Shuffle IT client.

One thing good to know about Lurker is that it's a form of indirect interaction between players (i.e. this was part of the intended design if you look at the Secret History for the card.) If your opponent buys Lurker, there's a good chance you need to buy Lurker too, but you may not need to buy as Lurkers as they do. That doesn't mean it's overpowered, or that you always need to buy Lurker first, but it does mean that its power level is really, really dependent on what the current game is like (and not just based on the other cards in the Kingdom.)