Stash is a card that at first glance seems ever-so boring. Ok, at first glance it seems awesome, because it has a different back than every other card. But the functionality, at first, makes you think ‘Really? Really? Is this really substantially better than silver? Does this really need to cost $5?’ And it’s true, it’s a pretty lackluster card. But it does really need to cost $5, and it does have some substantial improvements.
Ok, let’s get all of the downsides out of the way first. It costs $5. This is the big one. Usually, you have something better to do on $5. Also, your opponent knows when you have it and where it is in your deck, just as much as you do. Finally, if you get possessed, it has some drawbacks, over and above just ‘it’s bad to let my opponent use good cards’. Because if your opponent possesses you when you’re reshuffling, including if you reshuffle at the end of your turn, in your cleanup phase, drawing your new hand, they get to place all your stashes. Which means they can place them WORSE than randomly throughout your deck. But ok, these (other than the cost) aren’t really that bad.
Now let’s look at the plus points. The biggest positive you’ve got is that you can stack all the stashes together. Normally, your good cards get spread out throughout your deck, and you really need to chain a few together in order to get something really nice done on your turn. This is why trashing is so good. This is why card draw is so good. They both give you good chances to have multiple good things in a turn. Stash gives you the same thing, except with stash, the upside of the ‘good things’ is a bunch of silvers. And a bunch of silvers can still be good, it’s just usually not as powerful as the benefits you get in other cases. You can also guarantee you have the stashes early in your reshuffle rather than late, which makes a big difference on, say, the last reshuffle, where getting a province now as opposed to in 4 turns can make an awfully big difference. But it’s important to note that sticking all the stashes back-to-back on top is not always optimal. There are a few reasons for this. First of all, you’re very often reshuffling when you’re drawing your new hand. If you’ve drawn 3 cards already, and you have 4 stashes, you may well want to put two other random cards on top to draw this hand, so that you get 4 all together next hand for a province. There are also some situations where you actually want your stashes spread out – menagerie and wishing well come to mind. Furthermore, if you’re coming to the endgame and you’re going to need some duchies before getting the penultimate or ultimate province, you may want to stack the stashes back-to-back say 5 or 10 cards down the line.
Stash’s ability can also be used in a few more creative ways than the big stack. The most normal of these is as a defense to an attack. Your opponent’s pirate ships and thieves bothering you? Stash can very often be placed so as to avoid them. The same is true of most cares-about-top-of-deck cards, from swindler to saboteur to even tribute sometimes. Very often, you want to hide the stashes from these kinds of cards, and you can do that pretty well. But there are lots of other situations where you can stick the stash in the way of these attacks, so that they take the hit instead of your more valuable cards. You need to watch the situation and your deck to know which is which, and you need to be good at guessing when your opponent will do these things at the time of your reshuffle in order to get maximum defensive benefit. Sometimes this is really easy (usually when they have uber-reliable engines that let them do it every single turn), but others, it’s not. In the endgame, stash can often play a critical role. Usually this happens when you already have a stash or two or especially three, you hit 5 or 6 or 7 money near the end of a reshuffle, and duchies are either out or a single duchy won’t make much difference on the outcome. Buy an extra stash or two, and you’re angling for that province pretty reliably. It sounds like a fringe case, and it is, because you don’t have stashes that often to start with, but you know, in super-clogged decks, those stashes can make a big difference.
There’s also several interesting combinations out there with stash, very non-standard stuff. There’s Native Village/Stash, which is pretty sensational on a 5/2 and barely above BM/Stash on the 4/3. There’s of course the very powerful Chancellor/Stash, which is just mega-good. There are also combos with almost anything that cycles well. So oracle+Stash is pretty nice, as are warehouse+stash and cellar+stash. Golem+Stash would be nice, but it’s exceptionally slow to set up. Golem+scheme+stash is cute, but usually there’s something better. Embassy, the king of cyclers, works wonders with stash. Only, usually if embassy’s available, there’s something better than stash to buy (embassies or golds or provinces).
Stash is very successful against cursing attacks and other junking attacks like ambassador, because you still get to ensure yourself that clean slate of stashes very nicely bunched together, allowing you a province even with a bunch of garbage in your deck. $8 one hand and $0 the next is better than $4 and $4. Where it suffers is against discard attacks. You’ll never get a province out of only 3 stashes (although to be fair, that’s going to be true of many cards). It’s also not so hot in colony games. 5 stashes never get you a colony, and it’s pretty slow to get you much anything you need actually; still better than silver, but you typically WANT high variance to get to 11 quickly, or at least lots of golds.
Works with:
Chancellor, chancellor, chancellor
Wishing Well
Cyclers
Cursing attacks
Opponents' top-of-deck attacks
BM games where your terminal isn’t a 5-cost and you don’t want many of it
Works poorly with:
Most anything strong, which will be faster
Discard attacks
Colony games
