Ok, so I kind of stumbled upon this without realizing it. One problem with City is that if you buy nothing buy Cities, until they power up, you have spent 10 $5 buys on expensive Villages that do nothing at all for your deck. Then they get powered up, right about the time that your opponent buys his 5th or 6th Province.
Remake gets piles emptied really quick. The basic idea is this: Always open Remake/Silver. Then Remake Estates into Silvers, Silvers into Remakes, and Remakes into Cities. Buy City or Remake or Silver. Doing this, you can empty Remake, or City, or both, pretty quickly.
As with probably any City combo, this is going to depend a lot on what your opponent does. If he buys a couple Cities or Remakes, great! All the faster. Another great thing with this is the ability to power up your Cities mid-turn. Nothing more annoying than buying the last City, just to give your opponent first turn with any powered-up Cities he may have. But with this, you can play a City, then Remake something to empty a pile (or 2!) and then play more Cities all at once.
I'm uncertain about several aspects of specific technique. I think early on, you should prefer a Remake to a City with $5. Emptying the City pile isn't all that important, and it will take longer than emptying the Remake pile. But if you have 6-7 Cities, and you get the Remakes emptied, you will have the rest of the cities super-quick, quite possibly on one turn! I don't think you want to trash 2 Coppers for nothing any time you can. Trash a few, but not all of them. You need money, and your Silvers are turning into Remakes. Level 2 Cities suck when there's no money in your deck. As soon as you hit level 2, though, you will be drawing your entire deck each turn, and you should be at most 1-2 turns away from level 3. Also, if your opponent isn't also buying Cities, you will have more than enough, so you can Remake a couple into Gold (or into Border Village, gaining Remake or City).
Finally, ending the game. Once you have level 3 Cities, the game probably won't last very long. From here, it all depends on what your opponent has been doing. If he hasn't begun greening yet, or just recently started, you should be able to buy a Province (or Colony) or 2, and then empty a third pile super-quick, for a small victory. If he has a few Provinces already, watch out for a third pile that's low! Don't buy anything from it. Just get those green cards. Any VP's will be good; you don't need to worry too much about clogging. You should be able to overcome a 5/3 Province split even.
Sample games: Like I said, I stumbled on this by accident. After winning with City/Remake, I searched my logs, and found that I've played 6 games where both were available... and won 5 of them. These 3 are probably the best examples because they all involve the Remake pile being emptied:
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120309-173444-840987c3.htmlhttp://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120309-215451-45ccc251.htmlhttp://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120225-215453-2df0d459.htmlWorks with:
Colony games - longer games means more time to use those level 3 Cities.
Opponent's buying of Remake or City.
$2 cost Kingdom Cards - on a turn you play Remake, you might not have $3 to spend. Buying a $2 is a great way to have more fuel to get more Silvers into your deck.
Cursing attacks - Remakes can handle the Curses ok, and anything that slows your opponent is great for this.
Monument/Bishop/Goons - Once those Cities are powered up, even to level 2, a few of any of those cards in your deck will be huge.
Doesn't work with:
Super-fast boards - This combo isn't going to compete with Quarry-Chapel-Grand Market, or anything where your opponent can get more than half of the points super-quick.
I'm sure there's more I haven't thought of...
