Oh, wow, I won. Cool! I really like your challenges Geronimoo; I feel like there's a clear overarching strategy but your card selections allow for several different approaches. I learn a ton while tuning my entries.
Looking at the logs, yeah, the extra pawns did it with the +Buys. Looking at the second and third place logs, I have a couple of thoughts. I'd love to hear other opinions on this:
- Multiple Silvers feels sooo dangerous to me. Unless you also have enough Havens or Trading Posts also in-hand, that automatically sinks your Menageries; it'll kill an otherwise-smooth run, which is why I trashed so aggressively.
- I also quickly decided the Peddlers were totally extraneous, since buys are the limiting factor in a sufficiently-bridge-powered engine. In retrospect, I should have picked up at least one for free. It would have increased the card diversity and given me extra spend to help finish building the engine.
Obviously the primary key to this challenge is managing deck diversity. With no +Cards other than Menagerie, it's all about triggering them so you can actually draw all your WV / Bridges. Pawns are great for this; they can either disappear or draw a card, depending on what you need at the moment.
The secondary key, IMO, is deck balance. With no TR / KC, the only way to play enough Bridges is to actually have them and have the same number of Worker's Villages. I also found that it was often essential to play a single Worker's Village to play a single Bridge to trigger a Menagerie. Maybe that was obvious to some people but I'm used to megaturns being "draw everything, play everything, buy stuff" and this was much more of a "draw and play as you go" engine. It was lots of fun!