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[Tahtweasel]

I got a 5-2 split on a big money board that had these two, and I realized that they're absolutely dominant when put together.

Courtyard loves to join with any strong terminal non-drawer, because there's zero collision risk. My belief is that Explorer actually becomes a strong terminal non-drawer when paired with Courtyard.


Explorer gets a lot of hate because it's hard to get it to generate the Gold (and when it generates the Silver, it's not worth its price.)

But with good deck-counting, you know (1) whether your Explorer is left in the deck, and (2) whether your Provinces are left in the deck. Courtyard's ability becomes critical there, because you can actually put a Province back on your deck, instead of treasure, if you know the Explorer is coming.

I feel, in my heart, that this has to be significantly stronger than a pure Courtyard and money strategy. I can't get simulator results to back it up, but I don't think the simulator would play the strategy well.

I'd love to hear thoughts from some of the better big money players.

[tlloyd]

I don't consider myself a better BM player, but I'll give my two cents. I don't think this is a strategy I would intentionally plan for, but if I'm already going Courtyard+BM (and there's a good chance I am, given how strong that is), and I happen to pull an early $8, I might buy the Province rather than a Gold and plan to pick up an Explorer soon thereafter. But I still suspect that you'll gain more Silvers than Golds.

[DG]

The simulator says that this is a decent pairing even without any province management, certainly better than courtyards on their own. I'm guessing the province management is an advantage but only a modest one since it would most likely to happen late in the game and wouldn't necessarily help you any more than putting a copper back onto your deck.

[Fabian]

Explorer gets an unfairly bad rap on this forum. It's a totally fine card in BM decks, I'm not surprised someone would find Courtyard/Explorer to be pretty sweet on a reasonable percentage of boards. I say that without really considering the gold gaining aspect, either, which is obviously a nice bonus.

[Tahtweasel]

Re-checking my simulator instructions, I can get Courtyard/Explorer to beat Courtyard/Silver about 53-38.