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[Morgrim7]

By looking at this combo I bet you can already guess how to pull this off. Simple: Open Hamlet/Talisman and some turn later, (turn 3 or 4 ideally) play the Hamlet, discard for +1 Buy, then buy two Fool's Golds, and gain two more via Talisman. With a bit of shuffle luck, you can pull this off. And when it is pulled off, the next time you shuffle you will have at least four (probably 5) Fool's Golds in your deck.
One good thing about this combo is that you can open with it if you get a 5/2 or a 4/3. This cannot be said about most combos. Secondly, after that shuffle, you only need to waste a few more turns buying FG before you can switch to green.

Thought? Comments? Critique?

[O]

Seems too risky to actually choose over FG/Talisman or the likes. Maayyybee as 2nd player when you want to pick up other cards too.

[qmech]

This has the advantage that the Talisman and Hamlet each function well independently, so not colliding is not an instant disaster (it only costs you a single Fool's Gold).  But in the best case scenario you only pick up one extra Fool's Gold, and have to put up with a Talisman in your deck.  This is probably OK if you want the Talisman for something else anyway, but isn't a huge step up over just buying Fool's Gold if that's your only interest.

[WanderingWinder]

First thing is that it's a 3-card combo.
Second thing is that it has to be at least as likely to get you behind on FG as ahead? Or roughly so? Which is still really good if you want to use talisman for other stuff, but bad otherwise. Which really makes it at least a 4 card combo...

Because, let's break it down now (cue MC Hammer)
Best-case: you get hamlet and talisman together on turn 3-4, with 3 other coppers. You get 4 FG in one turn, and win the split 6-4 or 7-3. This is pretty rare, happening... just over 5% of the time? Does someone want to do exact math here?
Also Possible: You get hamlet and talisman together without 3 more copper. You get 2 FG in one turn, 1 in another, and either split the FG or maybe win 6-4 with a little luck. This will happen maybe ~20% of the time.
Otherwise you're either missing one of them to the reshuffle, which can always happen, (and around a quarter of the time, it will here), or you get the talisman on one turn (2 FG) and:
hamlet with 4+ coppers out of 5 cards, 2 more FG, happens ~25% of the time;
Hamlet with only 2-3 coppers, only 1 FG, happens ~ 25% of the time.

So, in terms of winning the FG split, it's... a bit worse than just buying them/a lot worse than talisman/FG? And of course if these cards are otherwise useful, than yes, it will be good. If not, it's risky, and I... wouldn't go for it, probably, because I don't want the talisman, or I do want the talisman but the hamlet is too big a risk. If there's another useful $2, or you really want the hamlet at some point and a talisman to pick something up at some point, than definitely go for it.

But I guess I'm saying a bit too niche for a combo article.

edit: Still good to talk about though!

edit2: I can't do math!

[def]

Do I miss something; how can you gain 6 FGs in one turn? Or 4 in your other case?

Also, why Hamlet and not Herbalist which seems way better?

[WanderingWinder]

Do I miss something; how can you gain 6 FGs in one turn? Or 4 in your other case?

Also, why Hamlet and not Herbalist which seems way better?

No, I miss something...

[HiveMindEmulator]

Also, why Hamlet and not Herbalist which seems way better?

Herbalist is definitely way better.
Draw them together with 2 Copper and you get 4 this turn, AND 2 next turn. The Herbalist also stays good for later.

[Asklepios]

Best-case: you get hamlet and talisman together on turn 3-4, with 3 other coppers. You get 4 FG in one turn, and win the split 6-4 or 7-3. This is pretty rare, happening... just over 5% of the time? Does someone want to do exact math here?

Out of interest, are you accounting also for drawing hamlet, talisman, 2 coppers and an estate, then drawing a copper with hamlet?

I can't do the math, but I tried out this combo on some solo games to say how quickly they run down the fools gold pile.

On the one hand, it seemed rare for the perfect collision to occur, though when it did the four fools golds at once felt pretty damn sweet.

On the other hand, it seemed to be very fast and consistent at getting all 10 fools golds within 7-8 turns, and felt faster than using either talisman or hamlet on its own. This seemed to be the case as even if you draw Talisman or Hamlet separately, you still often get a double Fools Gold off each of their turns: 4 fools golds over two turns is not as good as 5 (4+1) over two turns, but is still better than any single card doubling strategy (2+1 = 3) over two turns, and even the small chance of the collision makes it logically faster than two non-synergising doubling cards (say woodcutter/woodcutter).

However there's a lot of factors that I find hard to measure here, such as the guaranteed extra $2 of woodcutter (to reach $4 in hand) vs the $1 value of talisman (to reach $2 in hand), and the relative deck dilution effect of talisman once you have the fools golds, as its no better than a copper at that time, whereas a late game woodcutter might give you enough to hit province, or a spare buy that places you on first province + last fools gold in one turn.

Regardless, coarse experimentation seems to suggest that the combination of talisman with hamlet is actually pretty fast, and almost certainly faster than any single enabling card.

I'd like to see some simulation, I think!

[HiveMindEmulator]

it seemed to be very fast and consistent at getting all 10 fools golds within 7-8 turns, and felt faster than using either talisman or hamlet on its own.

If Fool's Gold is in fact strong on a given board, being fastest to 10 is not a good metric for an opening, since your opponent should contend with you for FGs.
 

even if you draw Talisman or Hamlet separately, you still often get a double Fools Gold off each of their turns: 4 fools golds over two turns is not as good as 5 (4+1) over two turns, but is still better than any single card doubling strategy (2+1 = 3) over two turns, and even the small chance of the collision makes it logically faster than two non-synergising doubling cards (say woodcutter/woodcutter).

But if you open Talisman/FG, even though you only get 3 instead of 4 on turns 3-4, you also got an extra one on turn 1-2, so at this point, you've broken even, and you're not ahead yet. You only get ahead by hitting double FG again on turn 5, or by hitting a quad FG at some point. And you only fall behind if your Hamlet turn fails to produce a double FG. I think the odds of getting ahead should be better than falling behind...

EDIT: Doing some math, the probability of hitting the killer turn (Hamlet+Talisman+3-4xcopper) is:
P(hamlet on turn 3-4)*P(talisman on hamlet turn)*P(at least 3 of other 4 cards are copper) = 5/6 * 5/11 * [6C3/10C3 + 4*6C2/10C3] = 5/6*5/11*2/3 = 0.252525...
Pawn or Herbalist should do slightly better, since you only need 2/3 to be copper instead of 3/4. And woodcutter only needs 1/3, so that's even better.
But then you have to worry about competing with pure Woodcutter+FG with no Talisman. A lot of times you'll end up even on FGs in which case you're behind, because you have the useless Talisman...

EDIT2: Actually, I was wrong about Herbalist. Since it doesn't draw a card, it's 20% less likely to come up on the same turn as Talisman. Still it has the added benefit of being *really* good on a turn 3 play, since you can have the Talisman again on turn 4. Plus the Herbalist should be more useful later for returning FGs.
Pawn still comes out ahead of Hamlet, because if you don't draw it with Talisman, you can take +card/+buy, which is the same as playing Hamlet; plus if you draw PTCCE anyway, you can use +buy/+$ to remove the risk of drawing an estate when you want a copper.

[gorgonstar]

I've played with the combo once (with a woodcutter instead of a hamlet).  My opponent mirrored me and we just ended up splitting the Fool's golds.  I pulled the combo off and so did my opponent.  From the looks of things, both of us hitting was pretty low probability.  If both players understand the cards it just becomes a game of who gets better shuffle luck.

It's more of a opening than a combo I think.  There's also not a whole lot of thought involved after you purchase the initial cards.

[Asklepios]

it seemed to be very fast and consistent at getting all 10 fools golds within 7-8 turns, and felt faster than using either talisman or hamlet on its own.

If Fool's Gold is in fact strong on a given board, being fastest to 10 is not a good metric for an opening, since your opponent should contend with you for FGs.
 

even if you draw Talisman or Hamlet separately, you still often get a double Fools Gold off each of their turns: 4 fools golds over two turns is not as good as 5 (4+1) over two turns, but is still better than any single card doubling strategy (2+1 = 3) over two turns, and even the small chance of the collision makes it logically faster than two non-synergising doubling cards (say woodcutter/woodcutter).

But if you open Talisman/FG, even though you only get 3 instead of 4 on turns 3-4, you also got an extra one on turn 1-2, so at this point, you've broken even, and you're not ahead yet. You only get ahead by hitting double FG again on turn 5, or by hitting a quad FG at some point. And you only fall behind if your Hamlet turn fails to produce a double FG. I think the odds of getting ahead should be better than falling behind...

You're certainly right there. Solo games don't really represent the race very well. Having said that, sometimes an opponent won't play for Fools Gold, which makes overall speed at acquiring all ten more important. Say you are player 2, for example, and your opponent opens with a card that doesn't support a fool's gold strategy (say silver, or jack). Then it becomes more worthwhile.

However, as I said, you're right. Mostly if Fool's Gold is there a Fool's Gold race begins, and it looks to me as if Talisman/Hamlet sacrifices acceleration for velocity (in terms of fg acquisition rate), and in fg races, acceleration is probably more important than velocity as there's only 10 to go around.

Perhaps a better test is how quickly a solo game can reach five or six fgs? If you can get to six fgs, you've won the fg race, after all.

Still, as I said, I think simulation is needed.