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[cherdano]

The following board looked pretty boring to me, but thinking about it I came to a solution that surprised me:

$6	Adventurer
$5	Counting House, Trading Post
$4	Farming Village, Mining Village, Navigator, Salvager
$4P	Golem
$3	Chancellor
$2	Hamlet

Now I am curious whether people here come to the same conclusion, or find it obvious, or whether I am wrong...

Edit: Assume a 4/3 opening, 1st position.

[WanderingWinder]

This is counting house's dream! It combos quite well with hamlet, and chancellor, and Golem. The only question is whether it's actually worth it to go golem - I'm guessing no. So basically you want to rush the Hamlets, pick up a few chancellors, a couple counting houses, and go! Even just Hamlet+CH is pretty good, here, it's amazing. You have to watch out for 3 piles though (or in some cases abuse this to end the game at an opportune moment.

[Axe Knight]

I'm not the expert some people are around here are, but I've been playing Dominion long enough to be to have tried many similar setups where it seems everything would benefit Copper, and it always turns out that I would have done the same or better with a more efficient financial strategy.  I would do the same here.  Golem with Trading Post scares me (and Golem/Salvager to a lesser extent), so I'd probably skip the Golem.  There are other things here that work better.  I'd probably open Salvager/Silver, and and get Gold as fast as I can, perhaps picking a few more Salvagers since there's a plethora of +Action cards.  Then I'd spam the hell out of Farming Villages and Adventurers, with Hamlets thrown in for extra buys.  If played right, the Farming Village would rarely hit anything bad.

[minced]

Hmmm, I wonder: is it worth using extra Hamlet buys on coppers? If so, how many?

[Anon79]

Play modified big money:
$6 2 Golds, then one Adventurer, then back to Golds
$5 One Trading Post, then see $4
$4 FarmV, then Salvager, then depending on deck get FarmV or MiningV or Salvager
$3 Silver

[Young Nick]

To me, it would be quite fun to try out the Counting House/Golem combo here. Because there is no overpowering strategy, I would go for it. First, buy a Counting House ASAP. Pick up Potions to get as many Golems as possible. If you cannot buy either, get Copper. When you play a Golem, it will find your 1 Counting House and then put your whole deck in your discard looking for another non-Golem action. Thus your Counting House finds all the Copper in your deck! It's pretty cool, maybe not the most efficient, but certainly the coolest strategy on the board.

[Superdad]

Countinghouse/golem is cute and all, but what happens when you reshuffle your deck and you draw Countinghouse + 4 copper. Or what if your golem(s) are on the bottom of your deck? Both situations lead to you having 2-3 pretty ugly turns, then hoping to get a good reshuffle.

This would only work if you could get multiple golems early, but you spend a lot of time gaining your golems. You are really banking on those critical turns 12-16 that you get IDEAL reshuffles. If you get the countinghouse + junk hand upon a fresh reshuffle in those critical turns, you just plain lose.

I would bet that something simple like Big Money + Salvager/Trading Post is the more consistent choice. Infact, I think the very presence of Salvager completely negates the Counting house strategy and makes big money the deck of choice.

Big money will certainly be the first to a province, and will likely take a 2-0 province lead. This is the point where you hope your Counting House golem combo starts hitting $8 every turn.

But then they Salvage a province and buy one (possibly salvage province, buy 2 province). If this happens, then they can win a 4v3 province fight, and you are going to run out of time quickly. Another salvage next turn, on a gold for example, could end the game before you get going. I think salvager alone should steer you away from the cute countinghouse-golem strat.

I could be wrong though.

[Superdad]

I've just played about 10 games on this kingdom trying to get the golem/counting house strategy to work.

The best I've been able to 4-province is around turn 18, and that happened with some crazy luck. Turn 3 $5 for a quick counting house, then drawing silver/potion/copper/copper estate turn 4 (i.e. EE as my 11th/12th cards) for a golem turn 4. That's as ideal as it gets, and I still only 4-province'd on turn 18 in that game.

My priorities were then to get 1 more counting house on $5 and more golems on <$7P, otherwise Province if possible, or silver/copper. I'm still not sure if you should buy silver or copper with $4 on early turns.

Still, even with that amazing start, I had numerous hands where I'd reshuffle and draw Counting House + 4 copper. Or on the 2nd reshuffle, draw counting house + copper, returning maybe 2 copper (from the previous P 2c, 2 E hand) and gaining $6 only.

I dunno, it seems super inconsistent to me. One game, I had my 4th province on turn 25, simply because the shuffler hated me.

Counting house/golem is not a gameplan I'd advocate on this board. I'm not sure what would have to be on the board to advocate it. Maybe Goons, or an opponent's mountebank? lol).

[Deadlock39]

In 2 out of 3 games I just tried, I got 4 provinces on turn 15 and 16 with Golem/Counting House.  In the 3rd game, I got some bad shuffles, and don't think I played them correctly at all.

I don't think you are following the strategy right.  You must by only one Counting House, and you only need to buy a single copper.  After that, you buy as many Golems as you can, and you will automatically get a Province any time you play Golem (unless CH is in your hand) because it dumps your whole deck in your discard and then plays CH (drawing your 8 coppers).  If you buy a second CH it breaks the combo.

Given my turn 15/16 results, I doubt this is an ideal strategy, but it should at least beat big money.

[ackack]

Yeah, the 2nd CH wrecks it. You cannot have any actions other than Golems and exactly one CH for the combo to work as advertised. The one game where this was employed against me it was quite fast - 5 Provinces in 14 turns, although I was Ambassadoring Coppers at them that probably helped.

[DG]

You use golem - chancellor - counting house. Play the chancellor first and put the deck into the discard pile. Play the counting house to take the copper from the disacrd pile. Add an extra copper so that you can still buy a province on any turn you draw the golem without the counting house in hand.

[cherdano]

Interesting, I had not seen and didn't notice the Golem/Chancellor/Counting House combination.

Here is what I tried: Open Navigator+Silver, buy a Trading Post as soon as possible, and then use the fast cycling from the Navigator (discard the next 5 unless they contain TP) to play the Trading Post as often as possible early on.
My thinking was that Trading Post is an extremely strong opener, and getting it one round later together with the faster cycling would be just as good. It may have been the first time I ever bought Navigator.

(In the actual game it worked brilliantly: 5th Province with a Duchy on the side at turn 14. But I also got extremely lucky in the beginning: Navigator with 5$ draw in turn 3, drawing Trading Post in turn 4, for which the bad luck at turn 6 -- Navigator and TP clashing -- was only a small offset.

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110705-194505-4862b3ea.html)

[WanderingWinder]

I still maintain that straight-up hamlet CH is pretty strong. Hamlet's getting no love here.

[Superdad]

Ah, I apologize, I didn't realize the aboslute vital importance of Chancellor in the combo.

I've done a few more solitaire games and have had 4 province by turns 14, 16, 16, 24. It seems decent, but you do still run into luck problems.

For example, sometimes you draw your Counting house with your golem, especially early in the shuffle. In that case, all you can do is golem, hitting chancellor, dump your deck and hope for better luck next time. Othertimes, your golem(s) are at the bottom of your deck, and/or when you get problems getting to 4P early.

[cherdano]

I still maintain that straight-up hamlet CH is pretty strong. Hamlet's getting no love here.

So you would open Chancellor/Chancellor, buy CH as soon as possible and otherwise buy Hamlets or maybe a few more Chancellors unless you can buy a province?

[Deadlock39]

You don't need the Chancellor for the CH/Golem combo, because having just one non-Golem action gives Golem the Chancellor effect automatically.  I do however see how it improves this combo since it essentially gives your Golem +$2 even if you have the bad luck of drawing it with your CH. 

I ran a few more games with just CH/Golem, and it seems I may have gotten a bit lucky on my first few attempts.  I am consistently ending up at 18/19 turns for 4 Provinces without using the Chancellor.

[shark_bait]

You don't need the chancellor, but by only buying one chancellor and one counting house, the golem strategy isn't compromised and you gain some deck cycling ability before the combo gets running.  I would imagine that this could help speed up the combo slightly (although I haven't actually tried any simulations).

[WanderingWinder]

Um, not sure I'd open double Chancellor on 4/3. Heck, I might go for something else entirely on 4/3. On 5/2 I'd open CH/Hamlet as in this game.

[Young Nick]

A single Chancellor certainly doesn't break the combo, and as stated, I imagine it helps. I think to negate the CH-in-hand problem, it might help to pick up a few extra Copper. I would think maybe buying 3 more for an even 10 might be around ideal. I would hope that the cycling of Golems/Chancellor can help to negate some of the luckiness/swingy-ness. that CH is known for. I personally might go for a different strategy if I was solely looking to win. In fact, I don't know that a board exists that would make me think Counting House is the optimal strategy. Which is why I am shocked it didn't make it onto the Worst $5 Cards on Dominion Strategy.

[ackack]

I still maintain that straight-up hamlet CH is pretty strong. Hamlet's getting no love here.

I actually don't even really get the synergy here. Are you just using +buy liberally to really pump yourself full of Copper so that you can then get something out of the +buy? I can't see a CH powered deck needing actions (it obviously doesn't stack with itself) and on a smaller scale the +buy isn't likely to be very useful. I could see getting a couple of bigger turns this way, but I'd be surprised if this was faster/better than Golem for a Province game.

added: Going back to your original post, the +actions have a point with Chancellors, but I would say that's not straight-up Hamlet/CH.